According to the decision of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, more than 20 libraries will be opened in Turkish shopping centers by the end of this year.
According to Hamdi Torsoku, Director General of Libraries and Publications at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, they intend to help spread the culture of reading.
According to the same source, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism will launch the project in places such as overcrowded shopping centers in order to promote the culture of reading books and providing books to citizens.
In this regard, meetings were held with the management of 30 different malls, to which he indicated: “We tried to build libraries of shopping centers as places where not only books can be borrowed and studied, but also participated in cultural, artistic and literary activities.” From now on, with the help of such Places, we can have a greater share in the cultural, artistic and literary life of Turkey. “
Expanding the project of such libraries in 500 commercial centers in Turkey
Hamdi Torsoku thanked the managers of shopping centers for their assistance, noting: “During the last month, we were able to open a library in the Ankara Shopping Center and two other libraries in Eskişehir.
In fact, it is planned that our project will expand to include 500 other shopping centers in the country.”
He added, “We are in talks with many other cities, including Izmir, Konya, Istanbul, Yalova, and …
We intend to set up more than 20 libraries in malls by the end of the year; In this way, we can continue our current public library services through these sites.
Last year we implemented this project for the first time in the airport library, in addition to the Konya building library.
We also opened children’s libraries. In this regard, we have modernized more than 300 libraries in recent years.
The implementation of this program also caused the number of library members, which was less than a million 6 years ago, to 4 million last year, while the number of borrowed books reached 3,600,000, at the same time.
“For this reason, we are very proud of our ability to serve our people through activities other than book lending.”
