Expanding libraries to develop “reading culture” in the community

Since its establishment (April 1992), the Provincial Library has been increasingly consolidated and developed, attracting a large number of readers. The library has met the learning, research and entertainment needs of all classes of people, cadres, civil servants, public employees, students, contributing to improving people's knowledge; developing science, technology, economy and culture.

Currently, the Provincial Library has 5 functional rooms; the reader service system is organized with many types and many objects, such as: Reading on the spot, borrowing at home, newspaper - magazine reading room, children's reading room, searching and exploiting digital documents online... Information technology is applied to all professional fields, digitizing documents, enhancing information resources, expanding reader service outside the library. From the initial book fund of only 11,472 copies supported by Tuyen Quang Provincial Library, up to now, the book fund and other documents have increased to 314,000 copies covering all fields of natural sciences and social sciences, of which nearly 2,000 are geographical documents; 7,015 foreign language books; over 28,000 digitized documents. The library has built an integrated database: Book, newspaper and reader management; deploying the construction of an electronic information portal, establishing a website, organizing information search and exploitation services inside and outside the library. Documents are gradually digitized to diversify information resources, moving towards building a digital library in parallel with traditional libraries. Therefore, readers everywhere, at any time can search for information and exploit the library's digital documents via the internet. The number of people registering for cards is from 2,000 to 2,500 people/year, increasing by 10-15% each year, of which students account for 70-80%. The number of people coming to the library to read books and use the library's information search and exploitation services is more than 2 million people/year.

New provincial library project built with lottery funds.

With the increasing number of readers and the great demand for applying modern information technology to exploit readers' documents, the existing facilities cannot meet the needs of readers and library operations. Therefore, in 2020, the Department of Planning and Investment approved the investment project to build the expansion project of Binh Thuan Library. The project has an investment scale including the following items: Building a new library (1 ground floor, 6 floors) with a construction area of 555.57 m2; building a water supply and drainage system, electrical system and other equipment. The Library expansion project has a total investment of 29,480 million VND from lottery funds. In June 2023, the project was completed and put into use. At the end of 2023, the Department of Planning and Investment continued to approve the project to repair the old building of the Provincial Library with a total investment of 6,125.96 million VND from lottery funds. The investment scale includes: Repairing the current library (1 ground floor, 2 floors) and auxiliary items such as: Renovating the gate, fence, guard house, 4-wheel garage, yard, roads - trees. The repair project is expected to be completed by April 2024.

The investment in building new and repairing existing libraries aims to expand the scale to match a class III library (according to Decision No. 576/QD-UBND), meeting the needs of readers for information searching and searching, improving people's knowledge and strongly developing a "reading culture" in the community.

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