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The UOC Library signs an agreement with the Catalan Ministry of Justice to donate 100 e-readers to Catalonia's prisons

Subject:  Multidisciplinary
A person reading a digital book
Author: Sandra Pérez (foto: Thomas Lefebvre - unsplash.com)
28/03/23

The e-readers will be offered to users of prison libraries

Inmates enrolled with the UOC have access to hundreds of e-books in the Library

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) Library has made a donation of 100 e-readers to the Government of Catalonia's Ministry of Justice to distribute among Catalan prisons. These e-readers are compatible with the most common e-book formats, such as PDF, EPUB and HTML, and will be available from prison libraries. 

The main goal of this initiative is to encourage reading habits and digital literacy amongst the inmate population. The devices will also be made available to inmates enrolled in the UOC's distance learning programmes. This means they will be able to use them to access some classroom education materials, in addition to the more than 300,000 e-books offered by the university library.

The UOC has been partnering with the Government of Catalonia's Ministries of Justice and of Education since 2019 to foster the distance education provided in Catalan prisons. With this donation, it continues to promote training and education and, at the same time, helps encourage reading habits amongst inmates.

This is not the first initiative carried out by the UOC Library to incentivize reading. Back in 2013, it took part in a pilot test involving inmates belonging to the Can Brians 1 Prison reading club, with the donation of six e-readers. 

The UOC Library has given a second lease of life to the e-readers it previously provided on loan, donating them to prison libraries. Members of the university community wishing to access an e-reader may continue to do so, by requesting one on loan using the Library search engine

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