Saraswatha Niketanam library which is situated in the tiny village of Vetapalem which is about 10 km from the town of Chirala was founded by V. Subbaraya Sresti in 1918. The library has as many as 75,000 titles (some volumes date back to 1850), mainly in Telugu, Sanskrit, English and Tamil, along with a rare collection of 1,000-year-old palm leaf manuscripts of the Upanishads (holy scripts of Hindus). The foundation stone for the library's new building was laid by Mahatma Gandhi (Father of the Nation) (whose broken stick still adorns the main hall of the library) in 1929. Dr Rajendra Prasad, the then Congress president, visited this library in the year 1935 and laid a "Dhwaja Sthamba" (Flag post) in the library premises, which symbolizes the library as a temple of learning