Taiwanese visited public libraries more than 100 million times last year, an increase of 22.06 million from 2022, the National Central Library said in a report yesterday.
National Central Library Director-General Wang Han-ching (王涵青) at a news conference in Taipei presented the findings of the Annual Report on Reading Atmosphere and Reading Engagement in Taiwan.
In addition to the rise in visits to public libraries, the number of books loaned last year surpassed 100 million, reaching about 127.9 million, an increase of 37.63 percent compared with 2022, the report said.
Photo: CNA
The number of borrowers rose to 35.28 million, an increase of about 5.3 million, or 17.67 percent, it said.
People borrowed more books last year than the previous year, with the average number of books borrowed per person rising to 5.43, up from 1.43.
The average number of visits per person to libraries last year was 4.62, while library card applications rose to 21 million, it said.
E-book borrowing increased to 9.91 million volumes, an increase of 6.21 percent, while e-resource use rose by 136 million items accessed to 841.4 million, it said.
A Chinese-language version of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear was the most borrowed book, while a Chinese translation of the King of Science Experiments manga series was the most popular among borrowers aged six to 11 for the eighth consecutive year, it said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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