‘Establishing a Community Reading Network’ Hanam City Library Awarded Director of National Library of Korea Prize

Hanam City is taking a commemorative photo after receiving the Director of the National Library of Korea Award in recognition of its efforts to establish an organic reading network through cooperation with related organizations such as the Dementia Safety Center.

Hanam City, Gyeonggi Province (Mayor Lee Hyun-jae) has achieved the great honor of receiving the Director of the National Library of Korea Award in recognition of its efforts to establish an organic reading network through cooperation with related organizations such as the Dementia Safety Center.

According to Hanam City on the 16th, the Hanam City Library received the Director of the National Library of Korea Award in the library cooperation excellence group category at the commendation ceremony held on the 14th at the National Library of Korea International Conference Hall, commemorating the 79th anniversary of the National Library of Korea's opening.

The library cooperation excellence award has been presented annually by the National Library of Korea since 2007 to organizations and individuals who have contributed to the development of libraries and the improvement of user services through cooperation with libraries and local community institutions.

This year, Hanam City Library was recognized in the library cooperation excellence group category for its contribution to establishing a sustainable cooperation foundation centered on the library.

One of the key examples is that Hanam City Library successfully operated a dementia prevention-type reading culture and arts program in collaboration with the nation's first living area Dementia Safety Center.

The library and the Dementia Safety Center conducted cultural and artistic programs combining art and play for elderly people at high risk of dementia, and the results showed improvements in participants' depression levels and cognitive indicators.

Additionally, the library received high praise for directly visiting elementary, middle, and high schools in the district to provide customized reading programs.

From 2020 to 2024, Hanam City Library carried out projects such as ▲(Elementary) 'Visiting Library' (character education reading program) ▲(Elementary and Middle) 'Dreaming Library School' (regular class replacement program) ▲(Elementary, Middle, and High) 'Temperature of Books' (visiting author lectures), achieving participation from a total of approximately 33,000 students.

Moreover, the library was highly commended for projects such as the ‘History Written by Memory’ project, which collaborated with nine local veterans organizations to orally record the life stories of national defense heroes and their families who devoted themselves to the country, thereby building new history, and the ‘Gyeonggi Silver Reading Sharing Dispatch’ project, which trained elderly reading coaches and dispatched them to local school care classrooms and small libraries to conduct reading culture programs.

Mayor Lee Hyun-jae stated, “The award was a great honor, reflecting the high evaluation of our efforts to promote multifaceted cooperation with related organizations to expand the base of reading culture services. Going forward, Hanam City will continue to do its best to promote citizens’ reading culture and create libraries close to daily life based on active cooperation with the local community.”