Tehran, YJC. Secretary General of Iran’s Public Libraries Alireza Mokhtarpour says different indices give pessimistic indications of how much Iranians read books.
Mokhtarpour who was speaking at a press conference in Tehran
on Saturday evening, said "Recently, when they ask me about how the country’s
per capita reading looks, in response I say bad, low, and sad.”
"When they ask me do I have a reason to believe so,” he
added "I say that there is no scientific, documented research which is based on
scientific methods to tell us anything. That is why in the past years, the reading
per capita has been estimated by different officials at something between 5 to
more than 70 minutes.”
"But I believe that if reading is in a good shape in a
country one can see it through 3 indicators. One is the number of books
published, the other how often people go to libraries, and most importantly,
book and book reading discourse in the country’s cultural and social arena.”
As for circulation, while the population has grown bigger,
the number of books published has diminished, he said.
Mokhtarpour then provided comments on the average library
registration numbers and said "Right now there are only 2.5 million people
going to libraries, whereas judging by standards, we must have had 15 million people
going to libraries.”