A child reading a fantasy novel.

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F. Brenon / 20Minutes

  • The Douai library offers readings over the phone since the first confinement.

  • A free initiative that works well and should continue after the health crisis.

It is an original gift that was born during the first confinement.

After having to close its doors because of the Covid, the Douai library has found a good idea to maintain the link with its readers: to offer those who wish it a ten-minute reading on the phone.

“Whether they are from Douai or not, people can register on our website and reserve a slot for themselves or for a person of their choice.

They guide us on the tastes of the one who will receive our phone call.

We choose, for example, an extract from a tale, a novel or even a poem that lasts between five and ten minutes.

Everything is completely free.

The idea is really to have a parenthesis in people's daily lives, to be surprised, ”says Pamela Boittiaux, director of the Douai library.

Reading on the phone will continue after confinement

With around fifteen readings per day, the initiative, also set up in a Lille bookstore, was a hit during the first confinement.

So much so that reading on the phone still continues nine months later at the Douai library.

And the followers have lots of different profiles.

"We can have a person teleworking who wants to take a break, a lover who wants to please his girlfriend, an agoraphobic who does not want to leave her home, parents who want a tale for their children or others who wish provide support to a hospitalized person.

Just before the deconfinement.

We had a gentleman who cried because we were the first voice he had heard since March.

It turned us upside down.

We became aware of the role and the social bond that we could play.

When we see the magic that it returns, we say to ourselves that we cannot stop it after confinement, ”admits the director of the library.

Supposed to be temporary, reading on the phone has become permanent at the Douai library.

A good way to give happiness and / or to break loneliness in a gloomy period.

Proof that the Covid has not only brought bad things.

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  • Douai

  • Covid 19

  • Coronavirus

  • Confinement

  • Society

  • Lille

  • Telephony

  • Library

  • Reading