Nine-year-old Fajar loves to read almost anything. Every week, the third grader visits a library at the West Java Library and Archive Agency'€™s headquarters in Bandung several times to read new books and magazines or browse the library'€™s 400,000-title collection.

'€œI visit the library almost every day. If my school starts in the afternoon, I will spend some time in the morning here. If it starts in the morning, then I will come here after school,'€ Fajar, who lives near the headquarters, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Fajar said his favorite place was the library'€™s reading room for children, where he could read storybooks, comics and children'€™s magazines. As a regular visitor to the library, Fajar said he got himself a membership card.

'€œEverything is free. I only needed to bring a copy of my fathers'€™ ID card and a photo to register as a library member,'€ he said.

'€œHowever, I prefer to read books in the library instead of bringing them home since I sometimes forget to bring the membership card.'€

In this high-tech, information age, when many children are easily distracted by gadgets and computers, there are now fewer children who are willing to read books, let alone visit a library.

Culture and Primary and Secondary Education Minister Anies Baswedan also openly shared his concern about the problem. '€œOnly one out of 10,000 [Indonesian] people has an interest in reading,'€ he recently said, referring to data from the United Nations'€™ cultural agency UNESCO.

While most people are likely to blame parents and the technology factor for children'€™s low interest in reading, not many of them are aware of the potential role of librarians in nurturing children'€™s love of books.

Librarian Ine Wijaksa, who participated in a series of workshops organized by volunteers from the Singapore National Library Board and facilitated by the Singapore International Foundation (SIF) over the past three years, said the training taught her that side activities in libraries, like storytelling or making origami art, helped stimulate children'€™s interest in reading.

'€œStorytelling, for example, should not only be a reading activity. We, for example, should stimulate children to interact by, for instance, drawing the characters in the story or making objects that help the storyteller explain the story,'€ said Ine, who is responsible for managing the children'€™s reading room at the agency'€™s library.

Learning from the same workshops, librarian Teti Suryati, who manages the library'€™s reading room for youth, said librarians must also be creative in developing new strategies.

'€œThe [storytelling] strategy is hard to implement for children in junior high schools or high schools, as they will come to a library to look for books that they are interested in,'€ she said.

Apart from the training, the SIF had also supported the agency in initiating a mobile library program under the name of Words on Wheels (WOW).

Since 2012, the mobile library, which brings a collection of thousands of books, has made regular visits to children in 15 different locations in Bandung in a bid to introduce them to libraries and improve their reading habits.

Apart from accessing the mobile library'€™s collection, children can also participate in various English workshops organized by SIF volunteers.

Speaking at a ceremony to conclude the SIF'€™s three-year program in Bandung on Saturday, SIF volunteer co-operation assistant director at WOW Bandung Keith Koh said the WOW program had made almost 500 trips over the past three years to reach around 13,000 Bandung students.

'€œWe have bridged communities by bringing the joy of learning and reading right into the schools and libraries of West Java,'€ he said.

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