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| Sami Batrawi, whose late father (illustrated on the left) acquired a personal library of 15,000 books, says he still prefers the feel of a real book in his hands but is turning to digital innovation out of necessity. Christa Case Bryant/TCSM |
"Before the 1948 nakba, or catastrophe, in which at least 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their homes amid fighting over Israel’s
declaration of independence, many Palestinians read widely and had
private book collections as well as community libraries. But many of
those books were lost in the nakba; to this day, some 30,000 volumes labeled “abandoned property” are collecting dust in the basement of Israel’s National Library. "
Jerusalem bureau chief
Christa Case Bryant is The Christian Science Monitor's Jerusalem
bureau chief, providing coverage on Israel and the Palestinian
territories as well as regional issues.
Ramallah, West Bank
But after years of trying and failing to establish a Palestinian version of the Library of Congress, he would now content himself with swiping a finger across an iPad if it meant being able to access the wealth of literature about Palestinian national heritage.
“We didn’t succeed to have our traditional national library but I think now we can do something else,” says Mr. Batrawi, the director-general of the intellectual property unit at the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Culture and one of less than a dozen Palestinians with a graduate degree in library science.
So now Batrawi is trying to get the PA to approve an online Palestinian national library, which would provide digitized access not only to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza but also to Palestinian refugees and expats spread out across the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and the US... READ MORE
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