CAIRO: The director of the British Council Cultural Center in Egypt said on Sunday that the council will close its library, which has been lending books for more than seven decades, citing a weakness of Egyptians' tendency toward reading books. The move has been met with widespread sadness by expatriate communities, who had long looked to the British center as a focal point of their Cairo experience. “It has always been part of my weekly routine,” said 55-year-old Sarah, a British mother of two, who has lived in Egypt for 20 years. Paul Smith said in an interview with Reuters news agency on Sunday that “the management of the library is beautiful idea,” but council officials claim it is no longer beneficial because limited numbers of people take advantage of the approximately 5,000 books. The British Council is the largest educational and cultural organization in the world, opened its first office outside the United Kingdom in Egypt in 1938, the same year in which they began work to develop the library. Smith, who was previously a professor of literature said that “Egyptians are not big fans of books.” He argued that the number of library members is about 2800 per year, while the cost of management runs around three million Egyptian pounds ($542,000) annually, which he considered “not as ideal for spending the money of the British taxpayer.” In a letter published in the Times of London last month, Martin Davidson, Executive Director of the British Council said “The truth is that the next generation (in Egypt) shows a lack of support (for the library) and chooses to communicate with the United Kingdom in new ways.” Smith acknowledged that the abandonment of managed lending library of books means “raise the white flag in front of the Internet.” But Smith, who is also the cultural advisor at the British Embassy in Cairo said that the closure of the Library Board does not mean giving up its role in supporting British culture, but means it will expand its activities in other ways “to build a great partnership between the two peoples, the British, and the Egyptian, and not just the promotion of British culture.” He pointed out that 27 thousand people studying the English language at the British Council in Cairo a year. A number of Egyptians believe the library closure is not being done properly. Hani Moustapha, a 27-year-old Internet Web designer said he recently took an English course at the council in order to improve his English and said almost all the time there were people at the library. “When I saw the library, there were people there,” he begins, “so I don't think it is because nobody is coming. It is just that they don't want to spend the money and pay people too much,” he argued. Smith said that the council will be expanded to provide educational services through the Internet and the establishment of a partnership to “support the educational and vocational skills and to bring experts in management” and the dissemination of information technology tools in schools and the promotion of dialogue between the two peoples. The idea that Egyptians do not read has not sat well. An official at the country's Culture Ministry told Bikya Masr that “people read a lot in this country. Every street corner you see someone with a newspaper reading. This idea that Egyptians don't read is ridiculous,” the official argued. “If the British Council wanted to get people there reading, they should have promoted it better. How many people didn't even know it existed? In places like India, they promote reading and this kind of thing, but here, they just claim ‘Egyptians don't read' and close the doors. What is this? It is laziness,” added the official. The Library stopped lending books on Saturday in preparation for closing its doors on Thursday. **reporting by Mohamed Abdel Salam BM
