Time flies as if it had been stolen from us, we are already in the midsummer of 2020; but the memories are imprinted in our hearts, be they as profound as the restless, silent battle against the pandemic that wages around the clock in hospitals, or as mild as the social distancing enacted out of people’s sense of self-protection and mild fear amid the pandemic. Fortunately, all such troubles will pass in the end. Although face masks are still a daily necessity for us at the moment, the smile behind them is particularly warm-hearted in the bright sun.

The development towards a smart city has undergone challenges from time to time amid the pandemic, to which the Macao SAR Government’s prompt response is largely attributable to the big data of the smart city development and information management, and ‘Smart City 2.0’ has become extensively applicable as a result. The Macao Public Library is also undergoing an ‘intelligence revolution’. This issue summarizes the various smart services and facilities introduced in the Public Library in recent years, and figures out how reading smartly plays its role in the central system of the ‘city’s brain’.

In ‘Author’s Say’, Ye Nong, Dean of Department of Macau Studies at Jinan University, has been invited to share the stories behind his latest work, European-Style Relics – St. Joseph’s Seminary and Church. The ‘Library Portrait’ column features an interview with Wong Sio Mui, a library staff of the Reading Room of the Macau Chamber of Commerce, which is a library people usually pass by. If you are curious about the new Central Book Stack, do not forget to take a look at this issue’s ‘Reading Landscape’ in which you will gain an overview of the bookstack from the images. 

This extraordinary summer of 2020 is worth being remembered. As the slogan of the Books and the City goes, please keep exploring the ‘art of urban reading’ anytime and anywhere.