Selected as an Excellent Metropolitan Local Government in Four Indicators Related to the Population Served in the 'Public Library Policy Area'
[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] Seoul City announced on the 13th that it was selected as an excellent metropolitan local government in the 2021 National Library Operation Evaluation and received the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Award.
The award ceremony was held at the opening ceremony of the 58th National Library Conference at the National Library of Korea International Conference Hall on the same day. The "National Library Operation Evaluation," which began in 2008, is a project jointly hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Presidential Library and Information Policy Committee to innovate public library services and provide citizens with quality cultural life conditions by annually evaluating and diagnosing the quality of library services.
Seoul City was recognized last year for excellence in citizen reading environment sectors such as public library construction, librarian recruitment, and resource expansion and usage. Seoul City has 188 public libraries (2nd nationwide), with a service population per library of 51,428 people (national average 44,223), and 6.8 librarians per library (1st nationwide), serving 7,613 people per librarian (national average 9,794). Additionally, last year the number of loans per library was 260,613 (national average 100,449), ranking first nationwide.
Seoul City has significantly expanded the number of book loans and improved services by enhancing accessibility through non-face-to-face services even during the COVID-19 situation. Representative examples include safe book loan services in Guro-gu, Nowon-gu, Seocho-gu, book drive-thru, delivery services for reading-vulnerable groups, and non-face-to-face services through smart libraries.
Furthermore, Seoul City and its 25 autonomous districts have been steadily constructing public libraries every year on a scale significantly larger than other cities and provinces, and Seoul City has supported the construction of district libraries through city subsidies. Last year, it supported 1.895 billion KRW for construction and remodeling of 20 locations and 12.554 billion KRW for operating expenses such as resource purchase costs for 174 public libraries.
Moreover, Seoul Library was selected as an excellent library for its achievements in policy research and investigation, publishing and bookstore cooperation projects, and securing a resource purchase budget commensurate with the scale of the municipal library as a representative library. Seoul Library was selected as an excellent library in an evaluation covering 12 indicators across three areas: library management, human resources, and information resources. It ranked first in its group with a score of 230 points in the qualitative evaluation of the autonomous theme section assessing public library policy tasks in the national plan and received excellent scores in the information resources and human resources areas.
For the first time, Seoul Library formed and operated the ‘Librarian Rights Improvement TF’ to prepare the ‘Labor Condition Protection and Wage Guidelines for Librarians in Private Consigned Public Libraries in Seoul’ and the ‘Manual/Guidelines for Protecting Emotional Laborers such as Librarians in Seoul’ and contributed to improving the public library operating environment through the pilot implementation of ‘Visiting Rights Protection Education.’
Subsequently, Seoul Library conducted policy research and surveys such as ‘Development of Public Library Services for the Disabled’ to expand accessibility and services of public libraries and developed performance evaluation indicators as a guide for library operations to increase citizen benefits. The ‘National Library Operation Evaluation’ was conducted on 15,277 libraries across five types: public, school, military, prison, and specialized libraries, undergoing strict review procedures including quantitative and qualitative evaluations, on-site inspections, and evaluation committee deliberations.
Joo Yong-tae, Head of Seoul City’s Culture Headquarters, said, “In the National Library Operation Evaluation, Seoul City and Seoul Library will create public library policies to serve as exemplary models for regional representative libraries and city and provincial library policies nationwide,” adding, “Seoul City will consider ways to cooperate and support local libraries.”
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