According to Hye-young Yang, a librarian of the Central Library, this annual book fair provides an opportunity for school members to look through and choose foreign books from various fields for the collection of the Central Library.
At the fair, students and faculty can choose books they wish our library to possess. Then, the librarians will select and buy books from this list of recommendations. Every year, about 400 to 500 students and 30 to 40 professors participate in this event, and the library ends up purchasing approximately 50 percent of original-recommended books from the fair.
Yang worries that today’s university libraries, including ours, are experiencing a reduction in visitors because people now have access to information whenever and wherever they are. However, Yang believes that when students visit the library and look around the bookshelves in person, they might be able to see the bigger world. So, as a part of this expedition, she wishes more students would come to the Book Fair and recommend good books for the library.
By Jeong-ho Shin