The life of books in Agres
We all know the importance of books and how they can positively affect our lives. From entertainment to education, you can basically find any kind of books! And nothing beats beginning an interesting book and being completely engulfed in its story. Or, better yet, liking the same book as your friend and enjoying the never ending discussions about the plot, the characters, the sequel…
There is no doubt that books can connect people and provide enrichment to the community.
But the question is, what can the community do to bring books closer to the people? Well, Amics and the people of Agres are doing a lot!
During these past months we managed to organize various projects that would make access to books easier for everybody and insure books will reach the hands of excited readers at any time of day!
Our first project is our Bookcrossing stand. This is a bookshelf that is located in the central plaza of the village – an open public place that makes the books available all the time. People can leave or take any book that they would like from the bookshelf without any obligation of needing to return it.
The concept of Bookcrossing is a global project spread through 10 countries and the aim is to simply connect people with books!
But, how does bookcrossing work? After people leave a book on the shelf, that book will later be registered in the official website (http://bookcrossing.com/). After the registration, each book gets its own identification number (BCID) which allows anyone to track it all around the world. This means that you can see where the book has been, where was it found, you can read peoples comments, reviews and more. Pretty cool huh? Talk about a bookworm’s paradise!
We also decided to open the library during the afterschool hours. Our goal is to provide a space where parents can come and spend time with their children, as well as a place where the young people of Agres can study, do their homework and work on group projects.
In order to promote the use of the library, we also started organizing weekly workshops inspired by the library’s book collection.
We are happy to say that some people took up initiatives on their own and we received a large donation of children’s books in English! We used these books in our first activity in the library. Then we donated one part of the books to the school in Agres and another part to the Agres library.
A big thank you to Jan and Rita for their amazing gift!
