According to recent survey by Global View Magazine on 25 cities and counties governments' performance to promote reading among its residents, public libraries in Taipei city have the most active borrowers. However, the survey also shows that public library's budget on purchasing new books is very tight.

The Taipei city municipal library would be packed even on weekdays, which goes to show why Taipei city ranked first on the Global Views Monthly magazines recent survey of all 25 cities and counties in Taiwan in public library book checking out rate, librarian professionalism and expansion of services to different ethnic groups.

The second place went to Penghu County and Lien Jiang County, namely Kinmen and Matzu. Kaohsiung city places fourth and Hualien county places fifth.

The reading competitiveness ranking last place went to Keelung with Yunling and Chianyi slightly better.

In addition, all counties and cities spend considerably less money on books last year with Lien Jiang county only had the budget of NT$213.9 per person, which is the top of all counties and cities.

Taipei city only had the budget of NT$35.87 per person and NT$24.73 per person in Kaohsiung.

Tainan city offers the least to its resident with NT$6.6 per person on book budget, which is even less than a tea egg from convenient store.

In the survey, it showed that, on the average, Taiwanese would spend 2.7 hours on watching TV, 1.3 hours is spent on surfing the net while only 26 minutes on reading books, which is only 3 minutes more than 3 years ago.

It seems that there are still lots to be done on promoting reading in the future.