Construction of the southern branch of the National Central Library is to begin in September, after a bid of NT$5.7 billion (US$190.3 million) was accepted for the project, the library said at a contract-signing ceremony in Taipei yesterday.
Work on the new branch, which was initially approved by the Executive Yuan on Dec. 28, 2017, had been stalled due to the tender being abandoned 14 times, the library said.
The new branch is to be built in Tainan’s Sinying District (新營) and aims to make the library’s services available to a younger audience and those in southern Taiwan, as well as to provide more space for the library’s collections, a Ministry of Education news release said on Dec. 14 last year.
Image provided by the National Central Library
Among the facilities at the new branch would be a children’s and adolescents’ literary works data center that would store historical data about children’s works in Taiwan and aid research into the evolution of children’s publications.
Deputy Minister of Education Lin Teng-chiao (林騰蛟) said that digital resources are lost faster than printed resources, so the museum felt it was prudent to establish a digital resource preservation center.
“This is a project that the Ministry of Education and the Tainan City Government are greatly anticipating,” Lin said. “It is symbolic of what we can achieve by combining our efforts and it is symbolizes the value we place on our nation’s culture.”
Citing Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che’s (黃偉哲) response to news of the successful bid, Tainan Cultural Affairs Bureau Director-General Yeh Tse-shan (葉澤山) said the mayor described it as “the greatest new development” affecting the city in years.
The new branch is to cover an area of roughly 51,000m*2*, with the main facility housing collections and services across five floors and a basement, the library said.
The campus is to have 80 percent tree coverage and a park for reading outdoors, as well as an incubation center for start-ups, it said.
The branch was designed by architect Chang Ching-hua (張清華), who is best known for her emphasis on green spaces. Her works include the Beitou branch of Taipei Public Library and the Taipei Expo Park’s Xinsheng Area.
Construction was originally estimated to take 820 days, but that has been increased to 1,200 days.
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