Library for every Jordanian house .. Prices achieve goals and the crisis of teachers reduce turnout

Hadeel Al Rawabdeh - Amman

Under the slogan "Library for every home", the activities of the 13th Reading for All Festival (Jordanian Family Library), organized by the Jordanian Ministry of Culture in all the governorates of the Kingdom, kicked off last Monday and will continue until Thursday.

Over the years, the initiative has allowed readers of various categories and ages to acquire books with different titles and themes, by providing them at very nominal prices, in several selling centers within the governorates.

However, this session witnessed a relatively low turnout compared to previous years, although the prices of books displayed did not exceed 35 piasters (about half a dollar), according to a number of those who visited the exhibitions scattered in the provinces of the island Net.

Journalist Ammar Al-Shukairy expressed his surprise at Al-Jazeera Net from what he described as "the absence of the gathering phenomenon" in front of the door of the family library exhibition in Yarmouk University in anticipation of the depletion of some books like every year, despite the huge and important volume of the titles of the books presented in the current session.

Dr. Alaa Mohammed, one of the pioneers of the event, said that he noted the low turnout at the Zaha Cultural Center Exhibition in Amman, before one of the curators of the exhibition justified that "Zaha" receives the Family House event for the first time, while readers prefer to visit the centers that receive the festival My role, according to what the parties told Al Jazeera Net.

Symbolic prices
The Jordanian Family Library project, launched by the Ministry of Culture since 2007, aims to "include a quality library for every home in the Kingdom and help citizens find books at nominal prices," Minister of Culture and Youth Mohammed Abu Rumman told Al Jazeera Net.

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, the minister believes that the library has achieved an important part of its vision and objectives based on the dissemination of knowledge. Hundreds of titles and tens of thousands of editions have been republished over the past years through the family library.

`` There is a specialized committee comprising intellectuals, writers and writers who take care of the selection of titles and publications for each session to ensure their diversity and quality.This year the festival included about nine fields of knowledge, ranging from Arab and international literature, culture, Islamic thought, human thought, children's books, and others. ''

Different addresses
Abu Rumman explained to Al Jazeera Net that the Ministry has re-formed the committee entrusted with selecting the titles of the books presented, where members are selected in a balanced manner, representing several schools of thought, knowledge, academic and different ideology. In his view, this change actually reflected on the quality of books and titles available this time, especially in terms of Arab philosophy and humanism.

This year, the ministry was keen to improve the artistic output of books in terms of cover, paper quality and page design, to add an added aesthetic dimension to its cognitive and cultural value, and to attract and motivate exhibitors to acquire books, the minister told Al Jazeera Net.

For his part, the project manager Ahmed Rashid told Al Jazeera Net that this session saw the spread of 37 centers in all governorates of the Kingdom, distributed according to the number of population and geographical area of ​​each.

Rashid justified the talk about the low turnout for two reasons: the first that the citizens are busy in their jobs in the morning, stressing that the turnout is increasing in the evening, and the second that the teachers strike reduced the number of trips and school delegations that usually visit these exhibitions, especially that almost 25% of the publications for this session Addressed to children, according to what he told Al Jazeera Net.

Tribute and criticism
The narrator and novelist Faisal Saleem al-Tallawi, who regularly follows the announcement of the event every year to be the first visitor to the library, said that the "almost free" prices motivated citizens from all cities of the Kingdom to buy books, but he criticized what he called "poor promotion" through Local radio and channels.

He told Al Jazeera Net that "the general public did not know about the effectiveness", excluding those who care about it and follow-up.

In the same context, Mohammed Ayoub, one of the visitors, praised the coverage of book titles for various topics and fields, such as politics, economics and geography, and pointed to the importance of this type of initiatives that encourage reading, in the competition of the electronic and virtual world, which now attracts the younger generation and deprives them of reading Oratory and the ability to express themselves in a strong language, as he put it to Al Jazeera Net.

The visitor spoke to Al Jazeera Net of what he called "an urgent need" to include the library in English as well as its Arabic counterpart, on the impact of its recent spread in Jordan, and circulation among citizens and in major markets and curricula, as described.

For his part, the director of the project Ahmed Rashid said that the publications provided by the family library is not specialized, and concluded by saying to Al Jazeera Net "Jordan is an Arab country, and who wanted to get a book in English within certain specialties can be obtained from publishing houses and libraries scattered throughout the Kingdom." .