Vice President’s Office Sponsoring International BookTubers Gathering at Children’s Library 

Santo Domingo, February 2, 2018.

The office of the Vice President and Children’s Library of the Dominican Republic (BIJRD in Spanish) are hosting the First International Gathering of BookTubers on February 7-8, 2018. The meeting aims to promote and encourage reading by linking it to information technology and communication (ITC). Popular Spanish writer, journalist and speaker, Sebastián García Mouret, will participate in this unique event.     

Mr. García, at the age of 22, is one of the most important young BookTubers from Spain. He works as an editorial reader for Penguin Random House and creates audiovisual content on four channels: SebasGMouret, ConSebas, Rocho das ideas and El coleccionista de Mundos. The latter is one of the most influential videoblogs on children’s literature. He also collaborates with the literary magazine The Temple of A Thousand Doors and directs the Spanish magazine Culturetas.
On Wednesday February 7th at 10:30 am, García will offer a lecture entitled: “BookTuber as an Animation Resource for Reading” at the Instituto Superior de Formación Docente Salomé Ureña (Isfodosu). Later that same day the formal inauguration of the BookTuber’s gathering will be held in La Trinitaria Auditorium of the Children’s Library at 4:00 pm.

On Thursday February 8th García will visit the Centro Tecnológico Comunitario (CTC) of Villa Mella, where he will talk about his experience as a digital reader to a hundred children who are involved in the new phenomenon of BookTubing. A 5:00 pm, he will participate in a panel at the Children’s Library with Amalfis Disla, Melissa Lovera, Ángela Leonardo and Carolina Pichardo. They will discuss the topic: “BookTubers: Technology and Reading.”

BookTubers emerged as a new interactive resource that guides and shares tastes, opinions, and recommendations about books and literature. Young people are coming up with new uses for social networks by creatively and humorously sharing what they read. Their YouTube channels get thousands of hits with millions of followers. They are successfully achieving what has long seemed a difficult task: getting young people to read.

The Vice President’s Office through BIJRD has incorporated this social phenomenon into its activities to promote reading through technology; they are using contests and competitions to draw in even more young people.

The BIJRD is the first public library in the Dominican Republic directed and equipped specifically for children, teens and young adults. It also seeks to involve their families in an atmosphere of culture and technology in its ongoing effort to create sustainable reading and lifelong habits. The library has a collection of more than 20,000 books and hosts at least 100,000 visitors per year.