Whirlwind Day!

We had a very quick tour throughout the Hong Kong Central Library (pictured) this morning, a traditional Chinese banquet for lunch (9 courses), and a ride out to the New Territories for a quick tour of a district library (serving a population of about 200,000). Let me just say that when we talk about our libraries being busy, we don't even know the meaning of the word. The Central library circulates 10,000 items per day and sees 14,000 people a day! Even their smaller libraries have much higher statistics than we have. Their numbers are staggering, as were Singapore's. The importance of libraries is so ingrained in the culture over here; both governments give strong support to libraries and emphasize lifelong learning.

The library we visited in the afternoon was probably about the size of one of our area branches; there were probably at least 2oo customers in there. The reading room was packed and so was their student study room. The study room is a room filled with cubicles for single student study; it had about 140 seats. From March-May, these rooms are in such demand that students have to sign up for 4 hr blocks of time to use them. At that time of year, they also extend the hours of the study rooms beyond the library's normal hours. We were told that these are so popular because people here live in small apartments in high rise buildings (25-30 stories high) and they don't have good study space at home. Also Hong Kong doesn't have the number of book stores that we saw in Singapore so people are more likely to come to the library.

Hong Kong also uses the postal system as their delivery system, but it takes 3-5 days for material to get between locations. The road and street traffic here reminds us of New York but with narrower streets.

The senior staff with whom we spoke all indicated that they work very long hours. They start at 7am and often work until 7 or 8pm. One of them said she worked from 7am-midnight! Jim, will you, Debbie & Lynn be trying that?

The Hong Kong library staff made it clear that they felt extremely honored for us to be here. We got the sense that they feel kind of ignored, that Singapore libraries get all the attention. There is some tension between the two areas. As one of our hosts said, "If you want to breathe clean air, go to Singapore. If you want to breathe free air, go to Hong Kong." It's interesting to me that they feel more free in their Communist controlled country than people in Singapore. The Hong Kong librarians were constantly mentioning that there are certain things they can't do because of customer privacy issues or copyright concerns--things that would infringe on someone's personal rights. (In fact, we couldn't take pictures after they opened because of privacy issues for their customers.) In Singapore, everything is about the common good--forget personal rights.