Indonesian Society of Reading Culture

With the level of visits by our people to libraries that can’t be said to be high, does it mean that Indonesia has a low interest in reading? In fact, if we want to take a deeper look, it turns out that the reading culture in Indonesia is unique. Visiting the library is not our culture, our culture is that we prefer to visit bookstores to buy the books we want to read.

Indonesia is in the second lowest ranking in terms of reading interest

Based on data from Most Littered Nation In the World, a study to find out how high the reading interest of countries in the world was carried out by Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) in March 2016, indeed our beloved country was declared ranked 60th out of 61 countries about reading interest.

For those of you who often go to bookstores or come to book bazaar events, you must always queue up and always be full of buyers, right? This phenomenon may arise because bookstores may be closer and easier to reach than libraries.

The level of interest in reading Indonesian books should be seen from that unique culture, no longer from how high the number of visits to the library is. The more crowded the number of visitors to the bookstore, it means that our people’s interest in eating books cannot be said to be low.

In addition, according to information from Republika.co.id, the National Library which has an online book-lending program is quite attractive to the public. One e-book can even have a queue of up to 500 borrowers. This is enough to show that Indonesians have a high reading culture, but we just don’t want to go to the library.

Conclusion: Is it true that Indonesian people’s reading interest is low?

The point is, from the library criteria alone, it is sufficient to show that CCSU’s research methods are still very open to criticism. CCSU still seems to ignore the differences in the social culture of each research country.