The Kerala State Central Library or the Thiruvananthapuram Public Library was established during the reign of His Highness Swathi Thirunal Maharaja of Travancore in the year 1829 and is considered as one of the oldest public libraries in India. Today this library is functioning under the administrative control of the Higher Education Department in Government. The Kerala State Central Library is a reservoir of information and knowledge for the entire state.

The Kerala State Central Library owns a rare collection of old and precious documents that are not available anywhere else, and digitization of rare books have been taken up as on ongoing programme and the work that was started in 2005 continues in a phased manner. During the first phase 707 rare documents (644 English and 63 Malayalam books) containing 3,28,268 pages have been digitised and a Digital archive was opened in 2006. 480 English books have been digitised and 1,84,321 pages were added to this Digital Archive during the second phase in 2010.