Hoping to meet the needs of Taipa residents and readers, the Macao Central Library, under the auspices of the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC from the Portuguese acronym), opened the Taipa Library on 15 April, on an experimental basis, allowing the public to experience, first hand, its facilities. IC specially organized, on 9 April, a media tour of the Taipa Library, counting with the presence of the President of IC, Ung Vai Meng; the Acting Vice-President of IC, Chan Peng Fai; the Director of the Macao Central Library, Tang Mei Lin; the head of the Chinese Libraries Department of the Macao Central Library, Lo Chi Keong and the staff member of the Macao Central Library, Lam Io Hou.
The Taipa Library is located in the Basement 1 of the Taipa Central Park, occupying an area of nearly 2.200m2, featuring 450 reading seats and a storage capacity up to 150.000 volumes, thereby currently becoming the largest public library. Aside from a reading area, a periodical reading section and a multimedia room, the Taipa Library also offers a children’s library, a children’s theatre room, a film-projection room and an exhibition area, among others. The children’s library, specially designed for parents and children, is one of the Taipa Library highlights, occupying a third of the Library’s total area, offering 80 reading seats and close to 20.000 children’s volumes, comprising the most significant collection of the libraries. The children’s library also features a bathroom specially designed for the younger ones, a nursery, a pram storage area as well as children’s theatre room. In conjunction with the Library Week activities, this children’s theatre room hosted, at the end of April, a series of dramatized stories under the theme “Thematic Libraries”, among other activities. The film-projection room has 50 seats and, following the opening of the Library, plans include the screening of all kinds of films at different hours, the organization of regular workshops, lectures and artistic training activities, etc.; on the other hand, the exhibition area will be a space arranged through the use of walls and will host temporary thematic exhibitions.
Other areas of the Taipa Library were also designed with residents’ needs in mind. The adults’ reading area offers 150 seats, over 50.000 volumes in Chinese, Portuguese and foreign languages and Macao-related materials, comprising an important part of the library’s collection of foreign-language books. A comic book area and a local publications area are also planned. The periodicals’ reading zone offers 80 newspaper titles from several countries and over 750 titles of current magazines. The characteristics of the Taipa resident population were taken into account and the number of periodicals from Southeast Asia and in English was increased accordingly. The multimedia room is the biggest of its kind of all the Macao Central Library dependencies, offering for loan or on site research over 10.000 multimedia materials and featuring 54 computers with internet access, ten of which are equipped with Microsoft Windows’ English version, for the convenience of foreign users. The Library further offers other self-service equipment, such as a book sterilizer, a font-increase device and book scanners, among others. The Taipa Library can be accessed through the first basement parking lot or through the garden, via an elevator or the spiral steps. During the experimental period the Taipa Library will be open from 1pm to 8pm, closing on Sundays and public holidays. For more information, please contact Mr. Chan, staff member of the Macao Central Library, through tel. number 2884 3105, during office hours.
