Busan Students Anytime, Anywhere: "Nation's First Electronic Library for All Schools"

Busan Office of Education, eBook Purchase Support Project

Starting in April, all students in the Busan area will have an environment where they can read the books they want anytime and anywhere.

The Busan Metropolitan Office of Education announced on the 3rd that it will implement the "2023 School Library e-Book Purchase Support Project" targeting all elementary, middle, high, and special schools.

This project aims to provide students with an online reading system that allows them to read the books they want anytime and anywhere, in line with the rapidly changing reading environment.

Excluding the 40 schools that participated in last year's pilot operation, 587 schools will each receive 5 million KRW, totaling 2.935 billion KRW. With this measure, the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education has established the foundation to build and operate electronic libraries in all schools nationwide for the first time, enabling the expansion of reading media and providing students with diverse reading environments.

After the project is completed, students will be able to access the electronic library site linked to their school homepage via electronic devices such as mobile phones and tablet PCs to read books.

Busan Office of Education.

The Office of Education expects that the use of e-books will improve reading convenience and greatly contribute to creating an environment that fosters habitual reading. It also anticipates that the workload of managing paper books for staff and the shortage of shelves in school libraries will be naturally resolved.

In addition, the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education is preparing a three-year support plan to secure e-books for school electronic libraries, aiming to increase the number of e-books per school to 1,000 during this period.

Ha Yun-su, Superintendent of Busan Metropolitan Office of Education, said, "School electronic libraries will provide students with an online reading environment that will greatly help in forming self-directed reading habits and making reading a part of daily life," adding, "We will spare no support to help students achieve holistic growth through reading."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.