Every second resident of the Vitebsk region is a reader of public libraries

August 27, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. Every second resident of the region is a library user, reported today at a meeting of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee the head of the regional executive committee's culture department, Nikolai Pashinsky. More than 600,000 people are library users. At the same time, if a rural library has about 10 readers per day on average, then the regional library has over 1,000. The unified library collection in the region totals 8.5 million items and includes books, magazines, newspapers, CDs, audio and video cassettes. Br3.3 billion has been allocated for replenishing the collections this year, or 16% of the budget funds from the amount spent on the current maintenance of libraries. At the same time, these funds are insufficient, stated Nikolai Pashinsky. The largest part of the budget funds (53%) goes to subscribing to periodicals. Libraries lack fiction, popular science, and children's literature. The acquisition of computers remains a problem for libraries. Only 30% of libraries in the region are computerized. Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee Alexander Kosinets demanded that the regional executive committee's finance department, when forming the budget for 2010, provide substantial support not only to the culture sector but also to education and healthcare. In addition, work on the reconstruction project of the Vitebsk Regional Library named after Lenin will begin in the near future. -0-