Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham is the youngest among educational institutions in India to secure the Deemed University status (2003) and the first with a multi-disciplinary, multi-campus character at the outset. The university is managed by Mata Amritanandamayi Math, with one of the foremost humanitarian and spiritual leaders in the world today, Her Holiness Sadguru Mata Amritanandamayi Devi as the Chancellor. The university, has, in a very short period of time, emerged as a vibrant and value-based inter-disciplinary university offering professional courses in Engineering, Management, Information Technology, Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Ayurveda, Microbiology and Journalism. Headquartered at the 380-acre Ettimadai campus at Coimbatore, the University also has campuses at Kochi, Amritapuri (Kollam, Kerala) and Bangalore. The Varsity has the unique distinction of being the nation’s first of its kind – fully interactive, multi-disciplinary, multi-media, virtual campus without geographical limitations with a satellite network linking all its campuses. In a major thrust towards research, the university is launching international centers for excellence and research in many of the foremost frontiers of science and technology. Another unique feature of all the educational programmes in Amrita University is the training and orientation imparted to all students in Cultural Education, Yoga and Meditation.

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Central Library

The Central Library of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham covers an area of 18,000 sq.ft. It houses more than 30000 books and over 350 journals which includes 181 international journals including IEEE, ASME, ASHRAE, AWS, AIPMA, IEI and IIW. The library also has a vast collection of CD-ROM publications, video cassettes, audio cassettes, technical reports, etc. On-line access of EBSCO and Pro-Quest database and documents residing on the Amrita School of Business Library Servers can be accessed through the network. Document delivery, Reprographic and current awareness are the additional services offered by the Library.

The library is fully computerized which enables users to look up book availability from any computer in the campus connected to the network. The system uses standard barcodes to identify books, and users for day-to-day transactions.

An online knowledge archival system named Amrita Digital Library is available on the campus network. This server hosts a large amount of learning material in various fields of Sciences, Engineering, Management, Humanities etc. Students and staff can access this online resource from any desktop on the campus network. This archive is constantly updated to include material on recent technologies also.