The Republic of Moldova is marking the National Reading Day on February 14, starting from 2023. The decision regarding the National Reading Day was voted at the beginning of 2022 by an overwhelming majority of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova.
Deciding on the National Reading Day was very inspiring and was welcomed by the politicians, decision-makers of various levels of responsibility, but also by all professionals for whom the book is the main working tool.
The President of the country Maia Sandu mentioned on the occasion, that: “…It is important to understand that reading is essential in the grounding every human being, even from the birth…”
The author of the parliamentary initiative, Angela Munteanu-Pojoga, said that: “…the purpose of the National Reading Day is to encourage reading. A society with a high level of intellectual health is one in which books have a honorable place…”.
The people need some role models, and a role model celebrating reading will highlight the benefits of an important human intellectual ability that it is considered to be.
The National Reading Day is a call to focus on what really matters and it is truly important to citizens. Along with other activities in this segment, which have already become traditional, the National Reading Day will contribute to the consolidation of the contributions of the family, educational environment, cultural institutions, info-documentary structures, social and economic environment, community, decision factors, mass media, etc. – all of this resulting in the optimization the interest for reading, the amplification of reading, the development of the reading culture.
Marked at the beginning of the year, the National Reading Day will set the tone for development in the field of reading and will open the doors for the amplification of traditional methods, but also the experimentation of new, innovative methods.
The first edition that took place on February 14, 2023 can be considered a real success.
During the Reading Day the activities were held to honor the book, authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and, implicitly, the readers. Book exhibitions, public readings, contests and all kinds of other events were organized to encourage and promote reading in all localities.
(The program of activities of the National Library of Republic Moldova Reading Day can be viewed on the link provided at the end of the article).
As the initiative came from the Parliament, it is hoped that libraries, local public administration, educational institutions, representatives of the book industry and other interested factors will contribute to support this initiative at the national level by centralizing and cooperating efforts regarding the promotion of the book and reading, skills development, implementation of unique training experiences and development of reading culture. Actors from the reading segment will contribute with all their intellect, ingenuity and creativity to propose solutions, methods, innovative techniques, aimed to new dimension of the awareness of the importance of the reading among decision-makers and citizens.
The authorities, including the institutions with responsibilities in the field of culture and education, will be able to grant logistical and financial support, within the limits of available budgetary resources, to libraries, museums, educational institutions, non-governmental organizations, publishing houses, etc., for the organization of events to promote reading.
During the recent years, it has become more and more obvious that the path of books and reading is increasingly difficult and complicated to traverse. There are many reasons. Part of this is due to the ever-higher prices of editorial production, part is due to the many opportunities for organizing free time, but no less important is the false perception that the Internet, technologies, gadgets solve everything.
To improve the situation, several programs, projects, etc. were initiated. Among the large national programs to promote reading, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova, the following can be mentioned: the National Book Publishing Program, the Grant program for Cultural Projects, the Year of Reading 2008, the Year of Reading 2020 and all other large-scale projects aimed to promoting reading, carried out by the institutions under the guardianship of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova.
Over the time, the National Library of the Republic of Moldova has experimented with various ways of approaching the book to readers, many of which have turned into traditions that are successfully continued. Among the activities with great national impact it is worth to mention the “Miorița” Literary-Artistic Club, (which lasted almost five decades), the International Book Fair / Chisinau Bookfest; the literary club “Homo Aestheticus” and “Homo Aestheticus Junior” ; Bibliophile Values Symposium; The National Book and Reading Festival, LecturaCentral National Program, etc.
On February 14, 2023 there was also launched the 6th edition of the LecturaCentral National Program, which runs from February to November. It should be noted that four editions of the Program out of six were supported by the Ministry of Culture within the Grant program for Cultural Projects.
Promoting books and reading is a complex activity that requires the involvement of several actors. As in other projects of reading promotion, the National Library of the Republic of Moldova assumes the coordination of activities at the level of the National Library System and disseminates all experiences and new initiatives with high interest through all available tools – first of all, through the NLRM website, the LecturaCentral Facebook page, the LecturaCentral National Program FB account, the Library and Information Sciences Blog.
In its capacity of a national librarianship center, the National Library of the Republic of Moldova has developed, over the years, and made available to the libraries several methodological documentary supports necessary for the successful organization of activities, correlation and consolidation of the efforts of the interested factors.
The papers developed on the occasion of the first edition of the National Reading Day represent a new turn of the spiral of development and come to complete the list of previously developed papers. This time, the NLRM team also turned to well-known personalities, who know the power of reading from their own experiences in order to convince, to inspire, to interest and, perhaps, – to open doors and roads to understanding the importance of reading.
The electronic version of the papers can be downloaded from the MoldLIS National Topic Repository.
Available resources:
Program of the activities dedicated to the Reading Day 2023 at the NLRM: https://www.facebook.com/events/504944714912901/?ref=newsfeed