Towards the end of the 2016 school year, the Library Committee, set up to help improve library structure and performance, asked members of the community to review a minimum of five books over the summer break, as part of the maiden edition of the Library reading challenge. The institute-wide initiative is one of the ways the committee is working towards fostering a reading culture within the Ashesi community.
“The idea was to try to get people to read beyond their textbooks,” said Nina Chachu, Head Librarian at Ashesi. “There have been several studies to show that the more you read the more there’s a positive impact on your vocabulary and your writing, so we'd like to encourage more people to read. The Library Committee is also supportive of widening people’s horizons and reading is one of those ways of doing it.”
Over the years, Ashesi has expanded its library, offering a diverse sampling of genres in its collection. In addition to its 27,000 volumes, Ashesi's Todd and Ruth Warren library also subscribes to a variety of international and local magazines, newspapers, and research publications. Recently, Ashesi became a member of AMICAL Consortium, to strengthen research efforts within the institution, and further expand to libraries in other institutions.
For most students, however, reading anything beyond textbooks and assignments is a painful chore – a needless stretch beyond their academic work.
“I know reading is good; it improves my vocabulary, my sentence structure and all that, but I’d rather watch a movie, especially to relax,” explained senior, Youssouf da Silva ‘17. “With a book, it’s impossible to know how long it will take, compared to a movie which usually takes a fixed amount of time. Even if it’s just for fun, regular books sometimes feel academic.”
In this blog post members of Ashesi’s staff discuss benefits of reading and share tips on how students can build good reading habits. Click here to read the post.