The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has unveiled the ‘Smart Library’ initiative which allows customers to review more than 200,000 books, periodicals, magazines and other publications through a number of tablets installed at its Customer Happiness Centers.

The facility enables customers to spend some time reading while waiting to finalize their transactions, further contributing to TRA’s efforts to support the UAE’s ‘Year of Reading.’

Visitors at the Customer Happiness Centers may access the smart library by simply registering their names through the smart device and providing a username and password.

This initiative aims to support 2016 as the Year of Reading as declared by Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, and launched as a national initiative set by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, in order to establish reading as a permanent social habit among present and future generations of Emiratis and UAE residents.

Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, the director general of the TRA, said that it was important to spread the habit of reading in the UAE especially during their free time, in as many places as possible, and highlighted the value of investing people’s spare or transit times in reading and developing knowledge to further enhance their mental development which should be done in areas such as restaurants, gardens, homes or libraries.

To bring about individuals’ intellectual growth using smart technologies is an achievement for the TRA as the initiative promotes the country’s vision of making smart electronics part of the people’s lifestyle in the UAE, stated Al Mansoori.

According to him, the TRA will launch a series of other initiatives especially using smart lifestyle technologies.

"The project will provide reading items through smart media and other channels to reach out to readers wherever they are and whenever they wish to use them with their smart devices," he added.-TradeArabia News Service