Dubai Public Libraries celebrate World Book and Copyright Day

The ceremony, organised under the banner, "With Books We Prosper", will be held at Dubai Municipality Staff Club in Jaddaf and will involve honouring winners of an innovation contest organised by the Public Libraries Department late last year. Winners of the 10th cycle of Sheikh Hamdan Educational Excellence Award will also be felicitated during the ceremony.

Mohammed Jassim Al Eraidi, Director of Public Libraries Department, said the department's participation in this international event shows the concern it assumes for books given its significance in shaping the personality of every individual.

It's worth mentioning that the General Conference of UNESCO in 1995 decided to celebrate April 23 as the World Book and Copyright Day. It was a natural choice for UNESCO's General Conference to pay a world-wide tribute to reading and its role in spreading knowledge as books are considered to be the strongest medium that helps the spreading of knowledge, heritage and intellectual and cultural ideas. The book continues to be the basic medium for spreading knowledge through generations... it is the main passage to history... the real conveyor of knowledge.

However, today, the book is in a phase, where it is facing competition from technology in fields of preserving, circulating and publishing knowledge. There is a hue and cry that the book's traditional printed form has come to an end and the readers are looking towards technology and the computers. It is not a small thing that we are joining the rest of the world in celebrating this day to glorify this model medium in preserving the knowledge of humanity, its culture, experience and history. Hence, we assure the world that the modern media will not finish book and its importance and its usage. Whatever progress man achieves, he cannot get rid of books because man's connection with books is eternal.

The book continues to be the best of companions, it still gets respect from the reader, whatever the progress is achieved by man, whatever media, communication tools are spread in the modern day, because all these things go together and they are complimenting the book.