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n cooperation with local publishers, digital publishing startup Buqu has launched a digital library app, BuquLib, to boost the reading habits of people in this fast-paced technological era.

Buqu president director Erlan Primansyah said on Wednesday that the digital library app would allow users to rent a book at a price of Rp 3,000 (US$0.21) for seven days.

'€œThe Rp 3,000 fee is far cheaper than the hundreds of thousands of rupiah people can spend on a single book,'€ Erlan said during the app'€™s launch at the Indonesia International Book Fair at the Jakarta Convention Center in Senayan, South Jakarta, on Wednesday.

The BuquLib app is the company'€™s second app, as it has previously launched the BuquStore app where people can purchase its book collection. BuquStore has a collection of approximately 7,000 books, while BuquLib has 4,000 books that are available for rent.

Besides book publishers, BuquLib app has also collaborated with a number of universities in the country to contribute to its book collection and is currently discussing the opportunity to cooperate with foreign book publishers.

Erlan said he had identified a number of problems that meant the reading habits of people in Indonesia were not as developed as in other countries.

He added that book distribution was not as widespread as in other countries, which meant people in rural areas did not have similar access to new books as those living in cities. '€œThe other problem is the high level of book piracy that can damage writers'€™ creativity,'€ he said.

Indonesia ranks among the world'€™s worst violators of intellectual property rights. The US Trade Representative, for example, has placed Indonesia among 13 countries on its '€œPriority Watch List'€ for the country'€™s '€œrampant piracy and counterfeiting'€ in recent years.

The BuquLib app, Erlan said, offered protection to writers as it had obtained licenses to sell and rent their books, emphasizing that the app provided protection for its uploaded books from digital piracy.

'€œFurthermore, schools can also use the apps to provide selected books for their students and make use of them as they would a school library anywhere,'€ Erlan said.

Under Law No. 43/2007 on libraries, each school must have a library that meets national standards.

Schools must allocate at least 5 percent of their operational budgets to meet this requirement. However, based on the National Library data in 2012, there are 76,748 schools that are not equipped with libraries.

Separately, Rifqiel Asyiq, principal of the Madrasah Tsanawiyah (MTS) Dar Alquran in Cirebon, West Java, said around 80 percent of his students had smartphones and thus digital library apps could contribute to improving their reading habits.

Rifqiel said he had applied a number of measures to attract students to the library including making it the only room that had air conditioning and a music player in the school.

'€œWe are struggling to maintain children'€™s reading habits, after making our library as comfortable as possible, I might look into the possibility of using digital library apps,'€ he said.