/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-COLOMBIA: Multi-Pronged Efforts to Stimulate Reading

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, Nov 13 2001 (IPS) - Public libraries are receiving a boost from the government and civil society in joint efforts to establish them as democratic and participatory cultural centres and to encourage the population to develop the habit of reading.

A campaign launched earlier this month is aimed at expanding the public libraries’ holdings by at least 10 percent, so that there is an average of one book per inhabitant, says the Foundation to Foment Reading (Fundalectura), one of the organisations spearheading the project.

The campaign also seeks to build the role of the libraries, beyond reading, to turn them into the axis of culture in each town and city. To that end, financial aid has been earmarked for 100 municipal libraries in cities with fewer than 50,000 residents.

The project organisers have already sent a message to the mayors outlining a programme of how each municipality can set up its own library, underscoring that major investments in infrastructure are not required. Local political leaders are being called upon to include reading programmes in their cultural development plans.

“The idea is to adapt an existing space for a library and to involve the population in the process. The focus of the campaign is to connect the reading material with the reading public,” Alberto Sanabria, with Fundalectura, told IPS.

People must realise that libraries are not maintained through donations, but rather “are constructed based on putting the library service into practice. and on the fact that the population has the right to be informed,” added Sanabria.

Colombia currently has 1,154 public libraries in 750 municipalities. But there are 326 municipalities do not have any sort of library or reading room.

Furthermore, the holdings of the libraries – four million volumes for Colombia’s 42 million inhabitants – are suffering from lack of quality and obsolescence.

Another major problem is that the libraries are concentrated in the big cities. Bogotá, for example, has 62 libraries. The capital and Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, together hold 50 percent of the country’s library book collection.

“These figures are cause for Colombians to worry. There is a big problem here,” commented Sanabria.

For a 10-year period, there was a law in force stipulating that a portion of the national budget had to be set aside for libraries and public reading rooms.

“Now that the law was changed, and now that we are living in lean years, we have to be creative in searching for resources. Development plans must make libraries a priority,” said one of the organisers of the reading campaign.

The first official efforts to promote municipal libraries took place in 1934. Under that framework, the Samper Ortega collection was founded, a basic library series containing Colombian literature and culture.

The public libraries in Colombia today hold a combined total that would provide less than one book for every 10 people. The average number of library visits is 0.5 per inhabitant each year. Nationwide, more than 20 million books are sold, and libraries lend some three million books annually.

The minimum standard, according to international library associations, is for each public library is to possess two books per local resident, with four visits and three loans per person each year.

The people of Britain, for example, borrow an average of 100 times more library books than the people of Bogotá, and visit their libraries 12 times more often.

According to figures from the Regional Centre for Fomenting Reading in Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC), Argentina’s libraries report the healthiest figures, with holdings of 0.4 books per inhabitant.

The Colombian Network of Public Libraries, founded in 1978 and coordinated by the Ministry of Culture, is entrusted with providing the libraries with books, but it faces an uphill battle. The book deficit is so great that 800 million dollars would be needed to achieve the international standards of two books per capita.

The practice of reading for pleasure has hit alarmingly low levels in Colombia. According to a study by the Colombian Chamber of Books published earlier this year, 32 percent of the working-age population are not regular readers.

Colombians do not even average a book a year, and just 21 percent of those surveyed said they had purchased at least one book in the previous year.

The fact that most people do not read is attributed – in order of importance – to the lack of habit, lack of reading role models, lack of time, and lack of money. Experts, however, add to this list the poor distribution of books, as libraries and bookstores are heavily concentrated in the big cities.

The Ministry of Culture, National Library and Association of Friends of the Libraries are implementing the “Mosaic Project”, with help from the existing public libraries and from the publishing industry, in order to provide books for residents of the more isolated towns.

Within the otherwise discouraging panorama of budget and book deficits, Bogotá is considered a model for efforts to encourage reading.

In 1998, the city established a network of public libraries in neighbourhood locales, as well as four “mega-libraries”, designed by well-known Colombian architects, situated in strategic locations throughout the capital.

The sites include reading rooms that can hold more than 500 people, children’s libraries and facilities, and halls for art expositions, music and multimedia installations. The goal is to serve three million people annually.

“In a public library, there must be an inclination to wander, to meander, which favours the desire to acquire the cultural good known as reading. While wandering, one encounters a series of activities, and among them, the possibility of sitting down with a book,” said Robelio Salmona, creator of the Simón Bolívar library.

This library is situated in a 14-hectare space, surrounded by water, integrated into the master plan of the Simón Bolívar Park, in western Bogotá.