Dagupan City advocates love of reading

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines – A state- of- the- art library hub will soon rise in this city after the local government and the Department of Education (DepEd) signed a memorandum of agreement to build the project during the 2014 Children’s Congress last Oct. 15.

 Beverly Berame, National Library hub project officer of DepEd, said the project involves building warehouses of supplementary reading materials in each school division nationwide to help develop love for books and the habit of reading in public schools.

 Unlike standard school libraries, the library hub will be bigger in area to house the more than 50,000 books that DepEd will provide in addition to a computer and speech laboratory. Some 200 library hubs have already been put up around the country, half of which are sponsored by local government units.

The hubs seek to provide greater access to reading materials to all pupils and students, provide quality and appropriate books to public schools nationwide, aim to make every Filipino child a book lover, and support the development of reading and comprehension skills of public school students.

 Construction of the first library hub in the city to be located behind the DepEd division office is slated to begin in the first quarter of 2015.

 The move is part of the initiative of Mayor Belen Fernandez to boost the facilities of the education sector in the city in order to enhance school-based reading programs. The mayor expressed hope that with the new library hub, children can now have easier access to books while creating pervasive reading culture inside schools.

 “It has always been my dream to bring a library hub to students which will encourage them to read more books and enjoy learning,” said Fernandez, who had been promoting the reading habit since she was councilor of Dagupan.