Used books festival
"Please look after the books. They are more precious to me than my own children," were the words inscribed in Arabic on a book donated by an individual to the Used Book Festival.
More than 15,000 books were sold in just the first day of the event held under the patronage of Shaikh Mayed Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
The festival is hosted by the Science and Culture Forum, which was organised by the Ministry of Education, Juma Al Majid Heritage and Culture Centre, Dubai Land and Properties Department.
In just an hour the large tent was fully occupied with visitors, mainly students from across the emirates. In fact, the first day of the event registered more than 2,000 visitors, said Dr Mohammad Yasir Amro, Director General of the Juma Al Majid Heritage and Culture Centre and Head of the Organising committee of the event.
The tent is composed of 33 sections with books organised according to subject such as history and geography, Islamic sciences, technology and pure sciences, school books, kids' books, social sciences and humanities as well as medical and linguistic books in both Arabic and English with revenues going entirely to the Beit Al Khair Society.
"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 school children and involved them in an activity for the betterment of society as well as to encourage them to read more," said Dr Amro.
The festival engaged the public in reviving the culture of used books since the books were donated by organisations, schools and individuals. They now exceed 110,000 and are still increasing. In less than a month they were able to collect more than 80,000 books, said one of the organisers.
However, some of the books were not displayed as they had religiously sensitive contents, he said. "It's an amazing event that has a wide variety of very reasonable and affordable books.
It helps people with very low incomes and also the vast amount of knowledge in these books is circulated rather than collecting dust on the shelves," said Reem Abdullah, a student from Dubai.
Another knowledge seeker with an interest in books on the Gulf region said, "This event is an ocean of knowledge of books on the history of the Gulf and the UAE.
These books are probably out of print now. I found books that I couldn't find anywhere else," said Juma Al Dumarqi, UAE researcher.
Many of the academic and scientific books cost over Dh100, but are only sold for not more than Dh10, which is a strong incentive for the visitors to collect a wide array of beneficial books, said an organiser.
"I found a lot of old math books that I was looking for. I actually bought more than 11 books for less than Dh70 but thought the whole event could have been better organised. The tent is very small and dimly-lit and the organisers were not as friendly," said Mousa Salim, IT manager.
This event will be organised annually since it received positive responses from the public and it revives an important culture in the UAE: circulating used books, said Dr Amro.
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