New Taipei City Library Bridges Pacific with U.S. Bay Area Libraries for Digital Resource Sharing

New Taipei City Library is extending its reach across the Pacific, forging a significant international partnership with three prominent public library systems in the U.S. San Francisco Bay Area. This collaboration marks a new chapter in cross-border library cooperation, aiming to enhance digital reading access for citizens in both regions.

Under the agreement, New Taipei City Library will collaborate with the San Francisco Public Library, Alameda County Library, and Santa Clara County Library. The partnership, formalized through Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) signed by New Taipei City Library Director Wu Jia-shan and her counterparts, will enable reciprocal borrowing privileges. Readers from New Taipei City and the Bay Area will be able to obtain borrowing cards for the partner libraries, granting them access to a wider array of digital collections and online resources.

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New Taipei City and the San Francisco Bay Area are both international metropolises where diverse cultures converge, with rich immigrant cultures and diverse ethnic groups.

Wu Jia-shan highlighted the shared characteristics of New Taipei City and the San Francisco Bay Area as international metropolises with diverse cultures and immigrant populations. She emphasized New Taipei City Library's commitment to providing multilingual collections, promoting multicultural understanding, and fostering an inclusive reading environment. This collaboration is expected to deepen reading equity, facilitate resource exchange, and enable the sharing of professional expertise, ultimately contributing to more inclusive and sustainable public library services.

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Through this cooperation, we hope to deepen reading equity, exchange collection resources, and share professional experience, working together to create public library services with greater inclusivity and a spirit of sustainable development.

The initiative is particularly noteworthy given the extensive reach of the New Taipei City Library system, which comprises 107 branches serving millions of patrons annually. The three partner libraries in the Bay Area each bring unique strengths: the historic San Francisco Public Library, known for its early adoption of a full Chinese-language website, and the Alameda County Library and Santa Clara County Library, recognized for their community-focused reading programs, multicultural services, and digital initiatives.

This cross-Pacific partnership signifies a major expansion for New Taipei City's reading services onto the international stage. It underscores the power of public libraries to connect the world through reading, knowledge, and cultural exchange, promoting diversity and inclusion. The collaboration is set to open new avenues for Taiwanese and American public libraries to work together, enriching the reading landscape for all involved.

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This cooperation symbolizes that New Taipei's reading services have officially crossed the Pacific and expanded its international cooperation map.