BY MULUGETA GUDETA
It may sound ambitious but it can be done. Turning a modern library into a center of African and global learning is not only something out of a dream. Even if it sounds like a dream, it is a realizable dream. When some of the biggest libraries in the world were built book publishing was at its earliest stage. Gutenberg had barely started to run his printing machines. “Gutenberg was a goldsmith and inventor when he started experimenting with printing in Strasbourg, France in 1440. He returned to Mainz several years later and by 1450, had a printing machine perfected and ready to use commercially, which is called the Gutenberg press.”
There could be no books without Gutenberg’s invention and no libraries without books. Libraries were places where books were kept together at one place with archaic methods of indexing, cataloguing or reference system. The very work of collecting books was laborious and time consuming while readers were not sitting in comfortable and well-lighted rooms, with readily available reference or reading materials in front of them.
In its broadest modern sense, a library “is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a virtual space, or both. A library’s collection can include printed materials and other physical resources in many formats such as DVD, CD and cassette as well as access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases.”
Nowadays, things have changed for good in the world of book collection and book reading. Although the digital printing has changed the way we are printing and reading books they have not yet managed to diminish the traditional library where you can see, touch and smell print paper with books in your hands. Even the most ardent technology savvy reader in the world would not deny the fact that reading books is among other things, physically being with paper and ink that has a magical attraction.
More than one hundred years ago, Emperor Menelik built his palace atop the hills overlooking his future capital city and permanent seat of power. His palace has outlived two emperors, a military dictator, and a lot of history. Now it is still sitting atop overseeing one of the most modern libraries in Ethiopia if not in Africa. In the past, Arat Kilo was famous for hosting the parliament, the famous statue of independence, the Ministry of Education and a host of other public buildings and facilities.
Now, Arat Kilo has added another landmark to its historic record. The recent inauguration of Abrehot Library in this historic area, right at the foot of the palace, has more than symbolic significance. Abrehot Library fits in very well in a place where politics was the dominant passion in the past, struggling to replace it with the passion for reading and for knowledge.
According to the library’s website, “The construction of the 19,000-square-meter facility took almost two years and cost more than 1.1 billion Birr. The library will serve as a key to unlock the immense potential of Ethiopians. The 4-storey facility, the biggest public library in the country, is equipped with 1.5km long shelves that are capable of holding 1.4 million books. It also has 8 bookstores, a meeting room, a cafeteria, children’s reading area and parking that can accommodate 115 vehicles at a time. Apart from books, Abrehot Library currently houses more than 300,000 local and 120,000 international research papers.”
Since its opening a few months back, Abrehot Library is continuing to attract not only readers but also book donors following the recent call to collect million books for the millennium generation. Individuals, organizations and other donors are daily bringing books to the library in the spirit of helping Ethiopia read.
Abrehot is a very ambitious project that aims to collect a million copies and turn the library as the biggest and most important place where the collective wisdom, knowledge and heritage of the Ethiopian people is found in one place for people to read and use in many ways and for many purposes. Abrehot is big, modern, attractive and even impressive. As such, it needs a grand vision of becoming an African and even a world-class library. All big libraries started small and modest.
In the United States, The Library of Congress is the biggest and “the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. The Library preserves and provides access to a rich, diverse and enduring source of knowledge to inform, inspire and engage you in your intellectual and creative endeavors.”
The Library of Congress boasts of a collection that fills about 838 miles (1,349 km) of bookshelves and holds more than 167 million items with over 39 million books and other print materials. The oldest written material in the Library is a cuneiform tablet dating from 2040 B.C. One major objective of the Library is “to support the Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people.”
However, the United States is not the country with most libraries in the world. It is rather China, followed by Russia that claims this prestige. “Currently, China has the largest number of public libraries in the world. According to an OCLC data updated in 2016, there are 51,311 public libraries in China. Coming at the second place is Russia with 46,000 public libraries, while India stands third with 29,800 libraries spread across the entire country.”
As a rule, countries that have the greatest numbers of libraries are the most developed ones economically. The above figures bear witness to this fact. The reverse is also true. Countries with little literary development or fewer numbers are also less developed. Most African countries fall in the latter category, including Ethiopia. Ethiopia boasts of centuries-old tradition of written literature, whether religious or secular. But its literature and its public institutions like libraries remain underdeveloped. Abrehot seems to have taken the initiative to change the situation in a relatively shorter time. As indicated above, it has taken centuries for advanced countries to reach their present status as far as the number of collections or libraries are concerned.
It will not however take Ethiopia such a long time to catch up with them. Ever growing modern technology has made it easier to live in Addis and access library collections in Washington. Online collections from libraries anywhere in the world can be connected with Abrehot or any other new public library in Ethiopia and allow its readers to use them.
The other possibility is that Abrehot can branch out into other regions of Ethiopia and open similar libraries there in order to allow and encourage the new generations of readers get a kind of “on hand” knowledge of Ethiopia via the Internet or any other modern device. Using libraries has its own advantages and limitations. It can shorten the time of search and access at relatively low cost or for free. But this requires having internet connection and computers on the par of users and this is not easy for everyone given the low level of economic status of most people in Ethiopia.
Public libraries have clear advantage because they are built to collect books in one place and allow their readers use them freely. They can also help members get access to internet access to foreign libraries for free. Abrehot’s vision of building its branches in the regions can start here in Addis Ababa. Every sub-city in Addis deserves to have a smaller public library that can be built with money earmarked by the local administration or through donations and contributions by residents of sub-cities.
Many neighborhood committees allocate substantial budgets to run their restaurants and beer joints but not a penny is budgeted to develop the minds of their residents. And this is sad to contemplate and needs to be changed through concerted efforts by the relevant authorities.
By the same token, a few sub-city administrations run youth centers or sports fields but they do little or nothing to develop the minds of the young generation. Money may important to build and run public libraries. Yet, there are many public libraries in the world whose success does not necessarily come from money. As one British observer of the library world once noted, “despite having a budget that’s only about a third of the Library of Congress, the British Library clocks in as the world’s biggest library. It has between 170 million and 200 million items, squeezed onto 388 miles of shelves.”
Abrehot as a national institution needs to learn relevant lessons from similar institutions to attain its stated objectives and go even beyond to become an African-wide institution. It has now taken the first steps. The journey will no doubt be long and the destination can only be attained through the efforts of succeeding generations of librarians and all those men and women who share Abrehot’s dreams.
The Ethiopian Herald June 4/2022
