UAE | Heritage and Culture

Used Book Festival visitors snap up more than 70,000 volumes

More than 70,000 books were sold during the week-long Used Book Festival, held under the patronage of Shaikh Mayed Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

  • By Siham Al Najami, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 00:08 March 2, 2008
  • Gulf News

  • More than 6,000 visitors made use of the week-long Used Book Festival with more than 70,000 books being sold. Organisers managed to collect more than 110,000 books prior to the exhibition.
  • Image Credit: Ahmed Ramzan/Gulf News

Dubai: More than 70,000 books were sold during the week-long Used Book Festival, held under the patronage of Shaikh Mayed Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The event ended on Saturday with more than 6,000 visitors, including students from more than 50 schools and academic institutions, participating in the festival. In fact, more than 15,000 books were sold in just the first day.

The festival was conducted by the Science and Culture Forum, which was organised by the Ministry of Education, Juma Al Majid Heritage and Culture Centre and the Dubai Land and Properties Department.

Throughout the festival the large tent was packed with visitors buying books as well as donating used volumes. The total reached about 110,000 books by the time the festival ended.

In just a month they were able to collect more than half the figure, around 80,000 books. By then they were engaging the entire community in reviving the culture of circulating used books.

"Around 350 private and public schools across the UAE donated to this festival. We even dedicated sections solely for schools donating more than 1,000 books. This activity brought a lot of awareness to the schoolchildren and involved them in an activity for the betterment of the society as well as to encourage them to read more," said Dr Mohammad Yasir Amro, Director-General of the Juma Al Majid Heritage and Culture Centre and head of the organising committee.

Suggestions

The organising committee has yet to decide on what to do with the remaining books, most of which are on academic and scientific subjects.

Gulf News learnt that the books may be given to public schools in rural areas a or they may be kept for next year's festival.

According to Dr Amro, the committee is considering conducting the event annually. The committee received several suggestions from visitors.

Among the requests received by the organising committee was a system to help visitors find specific books and their locations based on the author or subject.

The tent was merely composed of 33 sections with books organised according to subject such as history and geography, Islamic sciences, technology and pure sciences, school books, children's books, social sciences and humanities as well as medical and linguistic books in both Arabic and English. Revenues went entirely to the Beit Al Khair Society.

Many of the academic and scientific books had a price when new of more than Dh100, but were sold for not more than Dh10, which was a strong incentive for visitors to collect a wide array of beneficial books, said an organiser.

The organising committee will award individuals, schools, institutions and organisations who supported the festival through their donations at an event which will be announced soon.

Contact: Donate books

Anyone who wants to donate used books can contact Juma Al Majid Heritage and Culture Centre at 04-2665210.

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