MOBILE LIBRAY SERVICE TO BE INTRODUCED SOON

STORY: Nana Konadu Agyeman, Koforidua

THE Ghana Library Board (GLB) will soon implement a nation-wide mobile library service to enable people living in deprived areas to have easy access to information and various reading materials.
The programme, dubbed Mobile Library Services (MLS), is aimed at bridging the information gap between people living in the urban areas and those in the rural areas, as well as offering lifelong education to promote literacy among those in the rural areas who lack access to libraries in their respective communities.
The programme will be carried out on a pilot basis in two deprived communities in each district for a period of three months.
The acting Executive Director of the GLB, Mr O.M. Tenkorang, who made this known at the opening of a two-day workshop at Mpraeso in the Kwahu South District on Thursday, said the programme would help to address the information, educational and recreational needs of the beneficiary communities, irrespective of their location in the country.
The workshop, on the theme, "Ensuring a Satisfactory Mobile Service Delivery: The Need for a Responsive Policy", was attended by regional librarians and their staff to draw up policy guidelines to ensure effective and efficient operation and sustenance of the MLS.
According to the Executive Director of the GLB, the re-introduction of the MLS in the country had become necessary to close the yawning information gap between people living in urban settlements and those in rural areas.
To that end, he said the government had donated 10 mobile library vans to the GLB to boost its public library services in rural communities where there were no libraries, a situation which he said had compelled the people to travel long distances to access such facilities in other towns.
A four-member committee, with Mr Frederick Noble as its chairman, has, therefore, been set up at the national level charged with the responsibility to plan, budget for and draw up policy guidelines to ensure the effective and efficient operations of the service.
The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Kwadwo Affram Asiedu, noted that public libraries played a vital role in the emotional, psychological, educational, socio-economic, political and cultural development of the people.