National Virtual Library of India has a total of about 3.04 lakh digital artefacts, informs Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy.

• The National Virtual Library of India has a total of about 3.04 lakh digital artefacts and more than 34.91 lakh bibliographic entries.’
• This information was provided by Union Minister of Culture, G. Kishan Reddy in the Rajya Sabha on August 4.
• The Union Minister further informed that the Ministry ensures that all its organizations hand over both bibliographical and digital resources to the National Virtual Library of India for integration on the Indian Culture Portal regularly.

About National Virtual Library of India

• The National Virtual Library of India (NVLI) was launched as the Indian Culture Portal (ICP) on December 10, 2019, to showcase all forms of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of India.
• One of the major objectives of NVLI is to collect, standardize and collate all available digital assets and/or digital information about physical assets in an easily searchable form.
• The portal, https://indianculture.gov.in, is available in the public domain. The content on the portal is presented in 18 curated categories, namely, Rare Books, E-Books, Archives, Gazettes and Gazetteers, Manuscripts, Museum Collections, Paintings, Audios, Intangible Cultural Heritage, Photo Archives, Images, Videos, Content from UNESCO, Research Papers, Indian National Bibliography, Reports & Proceedings, Union Catalogues, and other Catalogues.
• Additionally, the portal also has 12 categories of created content, namely, Stories, Snippets, Photo Essays, Forts of India, Textiles, and Fabrics of India, Historical Cities of India, Musical Instruments of India, Food and Culture, Virtual Walkthroughs, Freedom Archives – Unsung Heroes, Ajanta Caves and The North- East Archive.
• Some of the other features of the portal include – the availability of portal in English and Hindi; can be accessed through an App called Indian Culture, available on both Android phones and iPhones. Further, it is also available through the Umang App.