The Ministry of Culture purchases books for libraries in Romania

Reading is a problem in our country. The problem is that fewer and fewer people are reading anymore. The authorities make various attempts to thaw the relationship between people and books.

The Minister of Culture, Raluca Turcan, announced that the institution he leads will make a new book purchase for Romanian libraries next year: "I have already penciled in, starting from January next year, when we enter a new financial year, to make a new book acquisition for the libraries in Romania. In the rules that we are preparing these books, I believe that they must be more and more adapted to the youngest, children and teenagers, because they are the ones who have the greatest availability to go to libraries. I'm talking about libraries in the national network, but also libraries in the local network". Raluca Turcan emphasized that it is the duty of the Ministry of Culture to make this new book acquisition "because it has not been done for years": "And what is heritage in Romanian libraries is currently in a big suffering. It may not be for nothing that the consumption of books in the library and the desire to go to the library for cultural activities have decreased. I'm not just saying reading or borrowing books, because some libraries knew how to modernize and transform into a hub cultural events. And here I want to mention that the involvement and projects of the Ministry of Research complement exceptionally well a necessity in Romania, namely the fact that you use European money for the digitization of the library heritage". Raluca Turcan showed that, although there is a decrease in the consumption of books in printed format, at the same time there is an increase in the consumption of books in digital format: "The good news is that almost 99% of the young generation use the Internet and, in at the same time, that the young generation uses the Internet more and more to use digital books. Indeed, the access for digital books is lower than the access for viewing cultural events or museum exhibitions, it is lower than buying tickets online for shows or museums is even lower than watching movies online. But this should somehow motivate us. And I think this discussion is ultimately about it motivates us to see how we, as decision-makers, can determine especially young people to access more and more books, whether we are talking about books in printed format or whether we are talking about books in digital format".

The Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization, Bogdan Gruia Ivan, declared that from 2019 until today, the increase "as digital book consumption somewhere from 27% to 47% ": "We are at a stage where through the Ministry Research, Innovation and Digitization, in a very good partnership with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, with the local public administration, we have a project through which we want to bring digital hubs to a thousand libraries in the rural area, 37 million euros, now the call is open. We have already been to several counties where part of this project has been implemented, and next year we will take them to a thousand localities. (...) I am very glad that we have the opportunity to this project, which is complementary to what we say - bringing the internet to the last village in Romania. Because maybe you are asking yourself "well, how do we make a digital hub in a locality if they don't have internet there' and here I tell you that we have another project, worth 96 million euros, through which in 950 localities in Romania we will bring the Internet to a fixed point where it does not exist today. We are ready, we are launching the call in January 2024. So from this point of view we are creating infrastructure for what it means to be innovative, digital, including in the cultural area and in the book segment". For young people, the book represents a chance for a better future , and for adults and seniors a chance not to forget the past.