Why Libraries Are Everywhere in the Czech Republic
PRAGUE — In the age of
Amazon and the internet, the idea of going to a public library to borrow a book
may seem ever more quaint and old-fashioned in many parts of the world, but one
country, at least, is clinging to it tenaciously: the Czech Republic.
There are libraries everywhere you look in the country —
it has the densest library network in the world, according to a survey
conducted for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There are more libraries
than grammar schools. In fact, there is one library for every 1,971 Czech
citizens, the survey found — four times as many, relative to population, as the
average European country, and 10 times as many as the United States, which has
one for every 19,583 people.
Why so many Czech libraries? Well, for decades they were
mandatory — every community, from a big city down to a tiny village, was
required by law to have one.
The law was enacted in 1919, soon after Czechoslovakia
emerged as an independent country. The idea was to promote universal literacy
and education after the country was free of the German-speaking
Austro-Hungarian Empire. And it worked.
“Czechs developed a strong reading habit, and
even today, those who visit libraries buy more books — 11 a year, on average —
than others,” said Vit Richter, director of the Librarianship Institute of the
Czech National Library.
The library law survived the German occupation, the
communist era and even the breakup with Slovakia in the early 1990s. What it
couldn’t survive, in the end, was budgetary pressure. To save money, the
requirement was dropped in 2001, when there were about 6,019 libraries in the
country; since then, about 11 percent have merged or closed.
Rather than just linger on as an eccentricity from a
bygone age, though, the surviving Czech libraries are doing what they can to
stay vibrant and relevant. They serve as polling places for elections and as
local meeting venues. They organize reading clubs and art exhibits and offer
computer literacy courses, and they welcome droves of schoolchildren and
retirees during the day.
But mostly, they do what 92 percent of Czechs
still want them to go on doing, according to the Gates Foundation survey: They
lend books.
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
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