A new Institute came up at Guwahati in July 1983.The North Eastern Regional Centre of NIRD started functioning in a modest way from rented house utilizing the facilities of the Assam Administrative Staff College and regulated training programmes from September 1983. In March 1984 the centre hired some more accommodation and started functioning independently. Director's room, faculty room, few tables were there in the office room of the centre, one each for Accounts, Establishment, Hostel care taker, P.A to the Director and the Library almirahs all around the tables.

The Library of the centre started with some publications from the main office at Hyderabad, some newsmagazines and newspapers. The first Accession Register was brought from CORD, the library at NIRD, Hyderabad. Accessioning of books in the Accession Register started in August, 1983. Subscription to journals started in January 1985.

The centre has a state-of-the-art Library for the information & academic needs of staff, faculties, participants, researchers, academicians and other scholars of the north eastern region. The NIRD-NERC Library has a collection of books, periodicals (National & International), bound journals, Govt. Reports, Research Project Reports, Statistical hand books, guidelines of RD schemes, demographics profiles and maps etc. on various socio-economic parameters like politics, history, women studies, information technology, GIS, management studies, earth sciences, law, agriculture, forestry and environmental studies. The major theme of the library collection is on Rural Development & Panchayat Raj. It has a limited collection of information in digital media like CDs, DVDs too. At present the library has the following collections:

• Books : 10,000
• Periodicals : 37
• Bound volumes : 1284
• Newspapers (local & National) : 13

The library has implemented the digital information management through e-Granthalaya package developed by NIC. The data entry in regards to books has already been completed and library circulations are now being done through the systems.