Providing Various Services Including Book Price Refund Program
September 'Reading Month' Event Successfully Concluded
[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongguk Lee] Ulsan Library is establishing itself as a complex cultural space frequently visited by citizens in their daily lives.
Opened in April 2018, Ulsan Library serves as the central hub for the city’s entire library policy, aiming to enhance Ulsan’s reading culture level and leap forward as a refined cultural city by providing various reading promotion events and information services.
Through the ‘Reading Ulsan, Book of the Year’ project, it realizes the value of reading communities and strengthens citizens’ information capabilities by expanding its collection by more than 25,000 volumes annually, currently holding over 300,000 volumes.
In its fifth year since opening, this year the library operates various cultural programs and special exhibitions with citizens as Ulsan’s representative library, actively encouraging citizens to use the library.
As a result, in the first half of this year’s survey of representative libraries in seven metropolitan cities, the number of visitors to the library ranked second with 290,416 visitors, following Gwangju.
The number of book borrowers was also third with 105,256 people, following Incheon and Busan, but when adjusted for population, it effectively ranked first, confirming the high interest and reading rate of citizens toward the library.
This is the result of the library’s efforts to improve Ulsan’s reading culture level and leap forward as a city of reading culture, despite Ulsan’s late establishment of a representative library and smaller collection compared to other cities and provinces.
According to the national reading status survey conducted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2019, right after the library’s opening, the adult reading rate in Ulsan was 58.3%, slightly higher than the national average of 55.7%, but the average annual number of books read was 5.4, lower than the national average of 7.5.
Accordingly, Ulsan Library has been promoting various projects to increase the number of readers and reading volume in daily life and to achieve reading indicators above the national average.
First, it implemented the ‘Book Price Refund Project,’ where books purchased with Ulsan Pay at local bookstores can be read and returned within four weeks for a refund in Ulsan Pay.
Since its full-scale implementation in 2021, this project has served as a good stimulus to expand Ulsan’s reading culture and build a city of readers.
During the COVID-19 period, the library supported citizens’ continuous reading activities by operating drive-thru book lending, issuing online membership cards, providing subscription-based e-book services, running the book price refund project, offering free delivery services for reading-vulnerable groups, and enabling non-face-to-face membership registration services.
As a result, the number of visitors to Ulsan Library decreased from 1,047,424 in 2019 to 401,367 in 2020 and 562,597 in 2021 due to COVID-19, but the number of books borrowed showed little difference with 667,874 in 2019, 459,548 in 2020, and 676,986 in 2021.
Despite the COVID-19 crisis, the library communicated with users and strived to improve citizens’ quality of life, making every effort to be recognized as a valuable space close to citizens, with many continuing to visit Ulsan Library.
After social distancing was lifted in April, the ‘Reading Month’ event, held as the first face-to-face event from September 16 to 28, was successfully concluded.
Under the theme ‘Books, a Walk to Find Myself,’ the event began on September 16 with a planned exhibition titled ‘Walking the Forest Path, Nordic Illustration Exhibition,’ followed by a meeting with author Jaemoon Lee of ‘Monster Child’ and a family musical performance of ‘Pig Book’ on the 24th.
On the 25th, there was a lecture on ‘Creativity and Art’ by author Youngha Kim, and on the 28th, a lecture on ‘Reading Books in the New Media Era’ by author Winter Kim, with about 2,000 Ulsan citizens participating in a total of six events.
The lecture by Youngha Kim, who published the full-length novel ‘Farewell’ for the first time in nine years, attracted much attention from citizens even before it started due to the author’s high recognition.
It received great empathy from attendees through explanations about the essence of ‘creativity,’ which ordinary humans lack in the AI era, and efforts to complement it with ‘art.’
A library official said, “As Ulsan’s representative library, we plan to continuously operate various reading culture promotion events, including follow-up programs for the Book of the Year, to revitalize citizens’ reading culture and establish the library as a complex cultural space in daily life.”
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