Library Branch no. 2 in Ungheni, part of the «Regina Maria» Multifunctional Cultural Centre, announced that it had received a donation of children’s books from writer Elena Vizir, a member of the Writers’ Union of Moldova. «The greatest reward was to see the children’s enthusiasm», the library said, through the voice of its director, Aliona Leșanu. How many books and which titles entered the collection, the announcement does not say.
Taken alone, the gesture is small. Placed next to the district’s official figures, however, it touches an uncomfortable question: who fills the libraries’ shelves, when budgets can no longer fill them?
Fewer books, more readers
The National Bureau of Statistics’ data show a network that is thinning, but not dying. In 2025, Ungheni district had 56 public libraries — against 58 two decades ago. Their stock of books and periodicals shrank even more visibly: from about 570,000 copies in 2003 to 424,500 in 2025, a drop of more than a quarter. Books age, wear out, and money for new ones comes slowly.
And yet, paradoxically, people use the libraries more than before. The number of annual visits in the district rose from about 173,000 (2008) to over 331,000 (2025), and active users per ten thousand inhabitants climbed from 2,201 to 3,072. With a poorer book stock and a shrinking population, the libraries of Ungheni in fact draw more and more people — the exact opposite of the cliché that «no one reads anymore».
A library is more than a book depot
One explanation lies in what a library has, meanwhile, become. Through the Novateca programme, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID, over a thousand public libraries in Moldova were modernised, and at the Ungheni public library one of the country’s three FabLabs opened — a digital fabrication workshop, alongside those in Cahul and Drochia. Libraries have become community centres, with computers, clubs and activities, not just shelves.
Against this background, the point of a private donation becomes clear too. The «Regina Maria» centre, opened in 2018 with money from Poland and from the Bucharest Sector 5 City Hall, is a young institution, and replenishing the children’s book stock — the category that wears out fastest — often depends on one-off gestures: a publisher, an author, a donor. Elena Vizir, a native of Rezina and author of several children’s books, is one of them.
The stake: who still reads, when the villages empty
The picture gains weight when you lay it over the district’s demography. The number of young people aged 15–34 in Ungheni fell by half — 50.2% — between 2014 and 2025, against a district population falling by nearly a quarter in eleven years. With every family that leaves, tomorrow’s readers diminish too.
In this context, a library hall full of children leafing through books is no longer a courtesy image, but the quiet infrastructure that holds a community together. Reading remains, moreover, a sensitive point: at the 2022 PISA international assessment, Moldova’s 15-year-olds scored, in reading, below the average of developed countries. A new book placed in the hand of a child at a neighbourhood branch does not fix the statistics — but it is exactly the kind of gesture the figures call for.
The book donation and its details come from a post by Library Branch no. 2 in Ungheni and could not be confirmed further; the number of books and the titles have not been made public. The profile of writer Elena Vizir is confirmed from the records of the Writers’ Union of Moldova. The figures on the library network, book stock, visits and users come from the National Bureau of Statistics (primary source — the Ministry of Culture); the depopulation data were previously published by Triunghi.md, based on BNS data. The information on the «Regina Maria» centre and the Novateca programme comes from official sources (Ungheni City Hall, Novateca/Ministry of Education). As of publication, Triunghi.md had not obtained additional confirmation from the institution.