No.138 50th Anniversary of Inagi City Library

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of the current Inagi City First Library in 1973.

In city, we expanded public facilities to cope with various inhabitants needs with population rapid increase from before and after the municipal organization enforcement of 1971. Regarding municipal libraries, the second library was opened in 1975, the third library in 1979, the fourth library in 1983, the central library in 2006, and the i-Plaza library in 2009. The library network based on the library system has been completed.

By these facilities maintenance, citizen's everybody came to be able to receive library service in imminent place. Inagi citizens are very passionate about reading, and since its opening it has been used by a large number of people. Ranked first in Japan in terms of number of bookings.

Since then, among municipalities with a population of less than 100,000 people, we have maintained the number one position in the number of personal loans for 15 consecutive years and the number one in the number of reservations.

In particular, the Central Library, which was opened as the first PFI project in eastern Japan, has taken the lead in expanding the number of days and hours it is open, introducing IC tags ahead of other libraries nationwide, and introducing a "reading passbook" that can record the names of borrowed books. We have made every effort to improve our services.

In addition, as a project of the library as a whole, we are striving to expand usage to a wide range of age groups by providing picture books as gifts through the book start project and reading stories for infants.

In April of last year, the Inagi City Library was awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award as a "library for excellent practice of children's reading activities in 2022" in recognition of these various efforts over many years. This award is due to the cooperation of the volunteers who have supported the library, the understanding of the users, and the hard work of the library staff.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the museum's opening this year, a commemorative ceremony and lecture were held on July 1. At the commemorative ceremony, we commended library cooperating organizations, etc., and at the lecture, Dr. Misumi Kubo took the podium.

Mr. Kubo is a writer from Inagi city and won the 167th Naoki Prize last year for his book "Yoru ni Hoshi wo Tsuru".

Regarding this award-winning work, Mariko Hayashi, a committee member of the Naoki Prize selection committee, said, "It was a 'beautiful and pure novel' and was evaluated at the selection meeting for not running away from the difficult theme of corona." It is commented that "The ability to casually use corona and modern day-to-day materials to create a collection of short stories with a strong presence, including writing and composition, is wonderful."

We are also proud that Mr. Kubo, who is from Inagi City and has a connection with the city, won the Naoki Prize, and added flowers to the library's 50th anniversary.

Inagi City Library will continue to provide services with the aim of being a "comfortable place for citizens and a useful place for the city".