RIYADH: Saudi libraries chiefs have opened a new chapter in their mission to promote reading with the launch of an e-book borrowing initiative in a Riyadh shopping center.
As part of an agreement signed between the Saudi Libraries Commission and specialist company Aswaq Almustaqbal, the Menawel (meaning, the handler) self-library device will be made available to the Panorama Mall.
The project aims to encourage reading in the Kingdom while improving access to information resources in public places, such as shopping centers.
The book borrowing and return scheme was launched by the commission in early June and named after the handler, a position held in Baghdad’s House of Wisdom during the Islamic Golden Age. Also known as the Grand Library, the Abbasid public academy and intellectual center played a major role in spreading science and knowledge.
Mohammed Al-Ruwaili, a member of the Abdulrahman Al-Sudairy Cultural Center, said: “The project aims to promote reading and knowledge as a basis for sustainable development.
“It plays a new role that adds to the learning values and roles of public libraries and improves them by adapting digital technology, e-networks. This will make access to reading educational materials easy.
“Those in charge of the project have hit a modern goal and will pursue it in the airport lounges and major malls in different regions of the Kingdom,” he added.
He noted that the service would probably be most used by young people.
Ibraheem Al-Sinan, head of the editorial team at Raff Publishing house, said: “We, as publishers, believe that libraries are the most important potential for literature and culture, which build the largest readership base in any society.
“If the libraries’ role ceased to reach people, an important chain of knowledge, literary, and cultural communication would be interrupted between the institutions that make content, and the reader.
“Many of the initiatives launched by the organizations under the Ministry of Culture follow a clear strategy intended to support and cooperate with all other bodies and aim to form a network of effective infrastructure that fully serves the cultural sectors,” he added.
