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Announcing the World's First BookCrossing Country: Singapore

July 3, 2007
If all the world's a stage, then all the country's a BookCrossing Zone. That's true if you're in Singapore! On July 3, 2007, BookCrossing and The National Library Board of Singapore announced the public launch of community based initiative to encourage reading and sharing books. We weren't kidding when we said the entire country is now an Official BookCrossing Zone! As part of the initial launch, thousands of books were released in over 2,000 SMRT Taxis, all Café Galilee and Café Cartel outlets and other various public locations in Singapore. The initial group of books released were English language books and included mostly fiction titles, some story-based non-fiction books, motivational and inspirational biographies and memoirs. BookCross@SG (BCSG), a joint initiative to promote literacy that also makes Singapore the first country to support a country-wide, The second wave of books to be released will include other world languages. The general public can also donate books to be shared in the project by dropping them at any of the 23 NLB public libraries. “Through the partnership with BookCrossing and the book sharing program...we are striving to provide an ongoing conduit for the people of Singapore to share their passion for books with others locally and on a global basis,” said Dr. N Varaprasad, Chief Executive of NLB. “There are already over 1,500 BookCrossers in Singapore today and we hope to dramatically increase that number as a direct result of this joint initiative.” Scott Sorochak, BookCrossing's CEO was on hand at the The Plaza of the National Library building for the program launch. There also is a new BookCrossing Singapore mirror site up and running. Today, Singapore. Tomorrow, the world!


Thanks to ramblinglibrarian for the pictures from the big event.

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