Shen Hongmei, director of the Jiaxing Library, receives an award at the IFLA International Marketing Awards 2023 and talks about the library's "Listen Within" project. [Photo/jiaxingren.com]

The Jiaxing Library's "Listen Within" project was shortlisted for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) International Marketing Award at the Ahoy Exhibition Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on Aug 22.

The project provides audio reading resources for people who cannot read normal text.

Today, there are about 100 million people in China who cannot read normal text, including the blind, elderly, children and illiterate people.

The project was launched in 2022 and is the first of its kind in China. It offers more than 100 types of audio boxes for different types of people, such as infants, toddlers, students and the elderly.

Each box contains 32G of professionally selected audio content, such as audio books, storytelling collections, radio dramas, classical operas, local stories and chronicles. The boxes are small and light, easy to carry around, and support AI interaction and SOS emergency functions without an internet connection.

The project has so far been adopted by 72 public libraries in Jiaxing, which support inter-library borrowing and returning. For people without access to a library, free home delivery is available.

In the past year, 12,000 audio boxes in total were lent out through the project, equivalent to more than 480,000 books.

Audio boxes provided by the Jiaxing Library. [Photo/jiaxingren.com]