Library

Chinese Hyread eBooks Libraries in Taiwan 台灣 Hyread 線上圖書館

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This is part of my series on Building Your Chinese Library.  It is not an exhaustive list of Hyread libraries in Taiwan because I ran out of energy half way through. (You’ll notice how the info got shorter and shorter the longer we go.) But I tried to at least put in the Hyread Library link for my own easy reference.

I know I wrote about Taipei Public Library account quite a few years ago. One of its features is being able to check out 6 ebooks a month. Sadly, I seldom used these elibraries, partly because my kids reading level weren’t there yet, partly because there weren’t that many good books available, and partly because the loan period was so short.

That has all changed these last few years as the ebook market matured in Taiwan. Heck, even Amazon is selling Traditional Chinese ebooks! And in the meantime, I bought a Hyread Gaze to be able to borrow these books.

The kids have a reading program this summer, so I’m now finally finally researching all the public libraries available for me to check out ebooks. I need a bunch of ebooks! Traditionally they only allow you to check out 6 books (10 during pandemic) at a time. That’s not enough books!

So the way around that is to just apply for multiple library cards, one for you, one each for your kids.

TLDR on Applying for Library Cards

The best way is still going into a library in person. Your online library cards will eventually ‘expire’ when you cannot verify your identity by going into a library. You bypass this problem when you go in.

Just get it done during one of your Taiwan trips. Foreigners can get one. Remember to bring your Passports and of course, have a local address. It’s okay if the address is temporary. If you have it set up so that all notices are electronic, it won’t matter.

Some libraries allow you to have both a Family account and an Individual account.

To make your life easier, you can even tie your library card to an Easy Card instead.

So How Many Total Books Can You Borrow?

Some of these library also have a ONE CARD service. Basically, you apply for one card in one city, and it allows you to borrow books in the other cities! All you need to do is log in, look under your account info, and activate that service.

OMG, Think about this. Just for one person, if I had a Taipei Library card, as well as New Taipei library card, I get access to the following libraries’ Hyread ebooks. That’s 6×5=30 books per person! (well, 29 cuz Keelung is 5). With 2 kids, that’s 90 books a month.

  • Taipei
  • New Taipei
  • Taoyuan
  • Keelung
  • HsinChu County

Another note about collections. When you read the loan policy for each library, you’ll see that there are often 4 kinds:

  • Library Collection
  • Hyread Share
  • Regional Collection
  • 計次服務 (book count)

Look at 計次服務 for the number of books you can borrow. I think the way this works is that each hyread ebook belongs to one of these 4 “collections”. Most of them are in the book count category. Some books belong in the other collections. I’ve seen the books from Library and Regional Collection.

What is Regional Collection? For example, Taipei library has a floor dedicated to books that are specific to Northern Taiwan.

I’m guessing that the difference is in how they’re acquired, who they belong to, and limit on how many times a book can be borrowed per year per library.

Okay, enough introduction, here are all the public Hyread libraries in Taiwan.

Taipei Library 台北市立圖書館

New Taipei Library 新北市立圖書館

Taoyuan City Library 桃園市立圖書館

Keelung Library 基隆圖書館

Hsinchu City Library 新竹市文化局圖書館

Hsinchu County Library 新竹縣政府文化局圖書館

National Taiwan Library 國立台灣圖書館

National Library of Public Information 國立公共資訊圖書館

This library is a little bit different in that their online eResources are the same as the National Taiwan Library, but their Hyread websites are different.

Also, when you have a library card in any local library, it supposedly allows you to automatically have an account in this library. I couldn’t quite verify because I somehow made such an account years ago.

Being a member of this library gives you access to Taoyuan, HsinChu County, and Zhanghua County Library

Taichung City 台中圖書館

Miaoli County Library 苗栗縣圖書館

Yunlin County Library 雲林縣政府文化觀光處

  • Loan Period:
  • Hyread:

Tainan City Library 台南市立圖書館

Kaohsiung City Library 高雄圖書館

Penghu County Library 澎湖縣圖書館

Yilan County Library 宜蘭縣政府文化局

Hualian County Library 花蓮縣文化局公共圖書館

Taidong 台東縣政府文化處圖書館

Others – Hyread Search All-In-One

This website allows you to add all the libraries you have account with, to find out which library has it.

Link: https://one.ebook.hyread.com.tw/

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