ENG-2019 — Page 384

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Recreation, Sport, Culture and the Arts

Cinema: There were also more than 210 screenings, seminars and post-screening talks. The archive received 127,530 visitors.

The archive is duplicating the film scripts and censor documents of Hong Kong films of the early 1960s from the New York State Archives.

In 2019, it acquired 218 film titles and 53,029 film-related materials, including picture negatives, optical soundtracks, subtitles, inter-negatives, inter-positives, film prints, magnetic soundtracks, trailers and digital cinema packages. Major acquisitions included 35mm film prints of 158 titles dating from 1990 to 2004 and donated by the American Genre Film Archive, and 15 titles dating from 1991 to 2009 and donated by My Way Film Company. Applause Pictures donated about 40,000 film-related materials, such as photo negatives, photos and contact prints, while Twinkle donated around 2,400 film-related materials, mostly posters.

Public Libraries

The LCSD operates 70 static and 12 mobile libraries and a books registration office. The libraries hold 13.29 million books and 1.83 million multimedia items, serving 4.68 million book borrowers and lending more than 45 million books and other library materials in 2019.

Hong Kong Central Library

The Hong Kong Central Library in Causeway Bay is a major information and cultural centre, with a reference and lending stock of 2.75 million books and other reading materials, multimedia facilities, a central reference library with six subject departments, an arts resource centre, a Hong Kong literature room, a map library, a language learning centre, a young adult library and a toy library. It offers for hire a 1,540 square metre exhibition gallery, a 290-seat lecture theatre, two activity rooms, a music practice room and eight discussion rooms.

The Central Library organises cultural programmes and public lectures, and promotes a reading culture and information dissemination.

Improvements to Library Services

The Hong Kong Public Libraries is operating a trial scheme to provide self-service library stations, one each on Hong Kong Island, in Kowloon and in the New Territories. Following the launch of the first two stations, in Eastern District and Tsim Sha Tsui in 2017 and 2018 respectively, the third self-service library station, located in Tai Wai, completed its preparations in 2019 and shall be launched in January 2020.

The public libraries work closely with District Councils and local groups to set up community libraries, which are offered block loans of library materials. To strengthen outreach reading programmes, e-book experience areas were set up in 10 shopping centres under the 'Take a Break - eReading Corner' campaign in early 2019, recording over 73,000 downloads of selected e-books during the promotional period. The Thematic Block Loan to Kindergartens, also launched in early 2019, had recorded more than 160 kindergartens using the service by the year end.

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