To satisfy the needs of
the public and to provide a more diverse range of reading matter,
the Macao Central Library has actively sought, since 2000, to
establish an English language collection. During a short period of
five years, the Library's English collection has grown to 40,000
volumes, which are available in the Macao Central Library (Main
Library) and the Sir Robert Ho Tung Library.
The Macao Central Library English collection (Main Library) is
essentially composed of books on social topics, religion, sciences,
natural sciences, applied sciences and literature, while the English
collection at Sir Robert Ho Tung Library contains more books on
philosophy, art, history and geography.
The English books are obtained in three ways:
1. International interchange
Three percent of English books are sent from the Library of Congress
of the U.S.A. Annually this Library supplies a book list to the
Macao Central Library which contains, in general, books related to
Asia or studies on China.
2.
Donations
Two percent of English books and periodicals are donated by
readers and institutions such as the US Consulate of Hong Kong, the
European Union, UNESCO, and others.
3. Acquisition
The overseas publications are acquired principally from book fairs
in Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and furthermore from the Hong Kong
English bookstores. In addition, Library staff browses the book
review and new books catalogues on the Internet weekly in order to
acquire the best quality books for the Macao citizens. Children’s
books, as part of the Library collection, are very attractive and
outstanding. Some children’s books have music, games or three
dimensional features which were acquired in Taipei Eslite Bookshop
and Hong Kong Page One.
Despite the fact that our Library does not yet have a great number
of English books, the ones collected are of good quality. They
include many works that have won awards in England and the United
States and a great number of books that cannot be found in local
markets. For this reason more and more readers are taking advantage
of the Macao Central Library services.
