Pay Library fines on 22nd November and help support Book Aid International
Library fines paid on Thursday 22 November (online through your library record or at the Main Library Service Desk by card) – up to a total for the day of £1,000 – will go to the charity Book Aid International.
Information from the charity:
This year, we have asked St Andrews to support a very special campaign we are running – to help restock the main library of Mosul University, destroyed by ISIS in 2015.
Mosul University once boasted a world-leading research library, the largest in northern Iraq and one of the largest in the Middle East. It housed more than one million books for 150 university departments, covering diverse fields of knowledge. The collection also included periodicals dating back to 1700 CE, government publications from the founding of the modern Iraqi state in 1921, and versions of the Quran from the 19th century. Foreign culture corners gave students and researchers the chance to explore diverse literary traditions and ways of life in other countries.
As a place of learning at the centre of the university, the library was among the first institutions targeted by ISIS after their occupation of Mosul in 2014. They would later burn it completely, destroying nearly all of its contents and the building’s structure. Following the liberation of Mosul from ISIS, some 50,000 students and university staff are now struggling to complete their academic work, not to mention other independent researchers from Mosul, nearby cities and other parts of Iraq.
Book Aid International is helping to change this. Working closely with the director of Mosul University’s Central Library, we have used our contacts with major publishing companies to source brand new, up-to-date books specific to Mosul University’s immediate needs, for distribution via their temporary library facility. After months of planning, the first shipment of 3700 books arrived on 12th March 2018, and another is departing this month. Transport and security challenges mean that the cost of these shipments is very high, which is why we have launched a specific appeal to raise new funds for this ongoing project.
This year, money raised by the University of St Andrews Library fines donation day (up to a maximum of £1000) will go directly to BAI’s Mosul University Library project.
If you’d like to know more, please contact: [email protected]