To enhance reading culture among workers

For a long time, libraries in companies have become a familiar destination for workers who love books. With a small space, enterprises set up libraries, reading rooms to help their employees to improve knowledge through books and newspapers. This is also a good model to enhance reading culture among workers.

Phan Manh Hung, a worker of Scancom Company, read a good book at his company's library.

A destination for knowledge

Scancom Vietnam Company (Song Than 1 Industrial Park) has a library for their employees. The room is not too large but has many bookshelves with various book titles and tables. Within 30 minutes, there were 3 - 4 readers, who are workers, came and borrowed books. They borrowed mostly comics, novels. Librarian Bui Thi Huong said this library had been set up in July 2017. Currently the library has more than 2,500 book titles of all kinds for adults, children, entertainment, research... Most workers borrowed books to read at home. Time limit for borrowing was 1 week, or could be extended.

Reading novel "Gone with the Wind" by writer Margaret Mitchell, Phan Manh Hung, a worker of the company, said: "I love reading books. This passion has spread to my wife and children. So I often borrow books here for them and I”. Hung emphasized that reading has many good and useful things for himself. Reading a book and thinking is more interesting than holding a mobile phone and surfing Facebook, Zalo, playing games...

Not only Scancom, but also many businesses in the province have a reading room, or even larger, a library, to serve the needs for reading and researching of their workers, for example, Protrade Garment JSC, Yazaki EDS Company... Books to serve workers, included: Cookbook, beauty, family, parenting; or some popular law books such as: Road Traffic Law, Marriage - Family Law, Labor Law. Newspapers and magazines were also updated regularly to provide useful and necessary information to help workers have an overall view of the socio-economic development situation. It was these activities that contributed to promoting and developing reading culture in the province, building a healthy cultural life, helping people become more aware in life; building useful habits for workers.

Besides crowded libraries, there were also libraries, where fewer readers came to reading culture. According to librarians, the technology era is growing, just having a smartphone with Internet connection, everyone can know the whole world. However, in order to enhance reading culture, trade unions at companies propagated benefits of book reading; encourage workers to borrow books for their children to read and have more knowledge.

Bringing books closer to labor force

The establishment of libraries in businesses is a very timely and creative action in accordance with the policy of building a cultural life. This model needs to be expanded in order to develop reading culture among officials and workers. In addition to improving professional qualifications, reading books practically contributes to building cadres and workers with good ideology, morality, and civilized lifestyle; improving the cultural and spiritual life of labor force in accordance with the 12th National Party Resolution.

In order to bring books closer to workers, provincial public library system joined hands to do many good ways. Di An town library cooperated and supported businesses to set up libraries in companies. Many businesses registered to set up libraries with the support of Di An town library to provide and rotate annually book titles for company libraries. Provincial library, in recent years, has also well implemented the transfer of books to accommodation zones for workers. Provincial library selected lodging houses with a large number of workers, and proposed to open a bookcase. As a result, many lodging house’s owners were willing to help and save  space for a reading room. “I love reading books and newspapers but cannot afford to buy many books. Since Provincial library brought books to lodging houses, I’m able to borrow many books to read in my free time”, said Nguyen Thi Ngoc, a worker of Phat Trien Company (Thu Dau Mot City).

Nguyen Van Hue, Director of Provincial library, said Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism had signed with Provincial Labor Federation to take good care of workers such as organizing sports and arts activities, providing books... Therefore, Provincial library directed public libraries to perform this task in many different ways to bring books closer to labor force. In order for this activity to be more effective, it is necessary to have more attention from Provincial Labor Federation, trade unions of enterprises, lodging house’s owners, and Youth Unions to bring books to workers. The library will cooperate to organize contests related to reading culture to attract the participation of more and more workers.

Reported by Thien Ly – Translated by Ngoc Huynh