(7 March 2016) The latest statistics from Korea show that an increasing number of university students rely more on the internet than university libraries to do research and access books.
According to a report on students’ usage of libraries by the Korea Education & Research Information Service, students borrowed 7.4 books per person on average in 2015.
This has been dropping for five years. The average number of books per person was 10.3 in 2011, 9.6 in 2012, 8.7 in 2013 and 7.8 in 2014, according to the report.
The state-run KERIS conducted the survey on 409 university libraries across the nation in 2015, involving more than 2 million students.
Among the students, only 57.7 percent said that they have borrowed a hardcopy book from their school libraries.
The Korea Herald has the detailed story in full.
