Thursday, 28 March

One Constituency-One Library in the offing – GHLA

Education
Executive Director of the Ghana Library Authority, Mr Hayford Siaw

The Ghana Library Authority (GHLA) has set a target of establishing fully furbished reading centres in all 275 constituencies as the state agency charged with the responsibility of improving literacy in Ghana prepares for its 70th-anniversary celebration in 2020.

Already, the Authority says it has rolled out a number of key interventions which have significantly boosted the patronage of public libraries from 393,430 in 2016 to a record 1,074,275 in 2019, representing a 173.1% increase in the use of public libraries across the country. 

Also, the country’s book stock has increased by 255,887, representing a 159.8% upsurge at GHLA centres since 2016. 

At a media briefing in Accra, the Executive Director of the Ghana Library Authority, Mr Hayford Siaw, explained that the strides made can be attributed to the ‘Year of Reading Campaign’ launched in 2019 which was targeted at improving access points to libraries and also incorporating technology to improve accessibility to reading materials in Ghana. 

Touching on plans to introduce new access points, Mr Siaw noted that although the Authority has increased the network of libraries by 9 from 61 to 70, there is a need for wider national coverage, hence the decision to commence the One Constituency-One Library project in 2020, which has been dubbed the ‘Year of Learning” by GHLA.

“We actually have a One-Library-One-Constituency [programme]. That is the plan that, at least, every constituency should have a library and also a mobile van attached to it because there’s a lot of communities in this country, a lot of schools and the resource will not allow us to probably have a presence in all communities across the country. However, if we have each constituency with a nice static library structure and attached to that is a mobile van, the mobile van can service all the schools. Our strategic plan is over a 5-year period… So, for us, within the medium-term, we believe we can work around the One-Constituency-One-Library [programme],” Mr Siaw stated.

Source: ClassFMOnline.com