Government, through the Ministry of Education has supported Ghana Library Authority’s Endowment Fund with seed money of GHS 3 million as a gesture of it’s commitment to the authority.
The support to the fund will help promote reading and literacy and ultimately improve learning outcomes to the public library service
Speaking at the GhLA 70th Anniversary today in Accra, the Minister of Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh, today, the GhLA is the only public library in West Africa to develop and run a digital branch of it’s services.
“During this Covid-19 period, government supported GhLA to expand its infrastructure to host video tutorials being shown on the Ghana Learning TV” he said.
He added that, “these investments and reforms by government have led to an increase in library visits from 393,430 in 2016 to 1,074,275 at the end of 2019”
Meanwhile, the Executive Director for Ghana Library Authority, Mr. Hayford Kwabena Siaw also hinted major improvements ever since he assumed position that, “before 2017, senior staff had not been promoted, with some delayed as long as 10 years but this was immediately corrected” he said.
He therefore used the occasion to thank the Governing Board and Management and Staff for their unflinching support to the Ghana Library Authority since the assumption as Executive Director.
“We are also grateful to the corporate and development partners that have supported us in diverse ways over the last 70 years” he added.
Government, through GhLA, has automated the issuance of International Standard Book Number as a unique international identification system for each product or edition of a separately available monographic publication published or produced by a specific publisher that is available to the public. This means that unlike previously, you do not need travel from any corner of this country to apply for an ISBN for your works.
At the beginning of this year, the Ghana Library Authority with support of the Ministry of Education partnered with Commonwealth of Learning to introduce the Read2Skill and Workforce Recovery Programme to offer Ghanaians the opportunity to study on Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) platforms, Udemy and Coursera.
Today, over 20,000 Ghanaians are benefiting from these opportunities to acquire new skills through this initiative.