The Mahatma Gandhi University Library is situated on the University’s main campus at Athirampuzha, 13 km away from Kottayam town, on the top of the Priyadarshini hills. The University Library was started in 1989 under the supervision of a Special Officer, Prof. K A Isaac, former University Librarian and Prof. & Head, Dept of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala. The Library, from its infancy, has taken keen initiatives and attention to develop in modern lines, including the application of ICT in its activities and services. MGU Library and Information System consist of the University Central Library and the libraries of 21 schools/ departments.
The Library is a member of the INFLIBNET Centre, Ahmedabad (INFormation and LIBrary NETwork), an Inter-University Centre of the University Grants Commission. INFLIBNET Centre support has improved the quality and relevance of University Information Services. The University Library is a fully automated system using the Open Source Software Koha for in-house Management. It is also an Institutional member of the DELNET (Developing Library Network, New Delhi). As a member of these networks, the library provides access to the resources of other major libraries in the nation to its users.
The Mahatma Gandhi University was one of the first fifty Universities under the UGC-Infonet Programme. Through the e-ShodhSindhu consortium for higher education electronic resources of the INFLIBNET, the library has access to more than 3500+ e-journals, JSTOR and databases, including Web of Science and ISID. The library is also a member of the Kerala State Higher Education Council consortium, through which access is available to major databases like ScienceDirect and Scopus and the KALNET catalogue. The library also has subscriptions to online databases such as EBSCO – Academic Search Premier, Empire Online, EPWRF India Time Series, India Business Insight, Indiastat, Manupatra, Prowess IQ, Scifinder-n-CAS, SCC Online etc., e-Journals collection of ACS Core Plus, IEEE Xplore etc. and back volumes of the journals published by major publishers like Sage Online, Wiley International, Cambridge online and Springer online.
The Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU) won the State IT award in 2009 in the e-learning category for its University Online Theses Digital Library. With the launching of the Mahatma Gandhi University Online Theses Digital Library, it has become the first Indian university to adopt open access to its doctoral research theses to academics worldwide through www.mgutheses.in. The university library also bagged the Library Technology Conclave (LTC) 2019 Koha Library Award for the best Koha implementation at the national level.
The University Library has a collection of 1,34,313 books, 8076 e-books, 3852 theses and 9356 bound volumes of journals. In addition, the library subscribes to 96 journals, of which 29 are foreign journals of international standard, and has access to 15 online databases and four online journal archives collections.