KARACHI, April 20: Over 1000 valuable books are missing from the city’s oldest library, situated in Frere Hall. It came to light during computerisation of the library record, sources said, adding people belonging to various walks of life, including some senior officials of the defunct KMC, had borrowed books, but did not return them.

According to an official of the city government’s cultural wing, there were in all 54,000 books in the library, but when computerisation began about a fortnight back, it was found out that over thousand books on various topics are missing.

An initial inquiry showed that such books were issued to personalities belonging to different walks of life and to some senior officials of the defunct KMC over a period of 20 years.

Around 70 persons who had deposited their original national identity cards (NIDs) a long time ago for borrowing books did not even bother to get back their cards, the sources said, adding notices are being issued to those who had borrowed these books.