Taipei Public Library

Between 1930-1947, four libraries were established in the Sungshan (Songshan), Chenbei, Kuting (Guting) and Chenxi districts. After the establishment of the Nationalist Government in Taipei, the abovementioned four libraries were merged into the Taipei Municipal Library, according to the regulations of The Organizational Rules of Taiwan Provincial Xien and City Libraries in 1952. In 1967, as Taipei City was upgraded to the status of Subordinate Metropolis to the Executive Yuan, the Library thus received great support to provide its services. In 1978, under the Government Cultural Construction Planning, the Library made a big stride forward, reaching a new milestone. Especially important was the opening of the new main library building in 1990; it provides the citizens of Taipei with a rapidly developing library and information service. At present, the Library has one Main Library, 43 branches, 12 neighborhood reading rooms, 7 intelligent libraries, and 10 FastBook - automatic book stops located in metropolitan Taipei.
 

Future Outlook

We follow the motto of "Schooling for youth, university for young people and a self-education center for adults", which was the goal in the founding of our public library. The Taipei Public Library continually endeavors to offer better services to our readers, in the hope of meeting the new era of changing technology, and to make the Library and people's lives as closely interwoven as possible, in order to become a valuable social learning institution, a "social university."
For the future, the Library has the following plans:
To comply with the administrative planning of the City of Taipei, to promote the spirit of teamwork, to play the role of enhancing communication between the Taipei City Government and the citizens;
To enrich the functions of our Branch Libraries across metropolitan Taipei, to provide diverse, specialized, computerized yet human services, to satisfy the information needs of the community;
To set up special service departments, to develop a vast collection of Chinese and foreign languages materials, to invite specialists to provide, elite and specialized information consultant services;
To provide active, vivid, diverse services for children, youth, the elderly, handicapped people, and foreigners to meet their special demands;
To raise the functions of the information and networking system, to build an electronic and digital library, to welcome the 2lst Century era of a networked and computerized society;
To increase service quality and change the whole image of the Library for the better, to examine the Library's organizational structure and human resources with the aim of expanding the Library's services.