Charity Campaign Continues

July 3, 2013

On June 28, 2013, Isken Baibosunov, the director of the “Orphans Protection and Support” center, collected 151 books and 14 DVDs from AUCA Library, which will be distributed to orphanages in Issyk Kul.

The “Orphans Protection and Support” center‘s mission is to finance and help orphanages in the Kyrgyz Republic. AUCA is planning to cooperate with the center and help it fulfill its mission.

The “AUCA Rural Library Support Program” campaign is over, but AUCA is still receiving different books from faculty and students and from people outside the university. In the framework of the “Give a book to a rural library” two campaigns, which took place at AUCA from November to December and from April to May, 3,474 books, 135 magazines, 65 DVDs, and one video tape recorder were collected. The goal of the campaigns was to attract the attention of society to the problem of rural libraries, which do not have a wide range of books and are not funded.

According to Safiya Rafikova, director of AUCA Library, there are 928 rural libraries in Kyrgyzstan, and only 1 to 5 new books are delivered to these libraries every year. Rural libraries do not have enough money to buy new books and run activities, but can benefit from Bishkek-based libraries’ support.

“Unlike Bishkek students, who can find a particular book or periodical from internet resources, students from rural areas do not have an access to Internet, and most use libraries, where they have to use completely destroyed materials,” Ms. Rafikova said.

There are 17 libraries in Bishkek, the biggest being the National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic, where you can find a collection of more than 6 million. Almost all libraries use the Soviet library system, but nowadays this system is changing. There are different campaigns and projects on library improvement, like regional library support, electronic library resources development, access to world scientific periodicals, etc. Some of these projects were implemented by Sania Battalova, the former director of AUCA library.

At the same time, the AUCA library is one of the leading University libraries in Kyrgyzstan on library funds acquisition and implementation and development of new library-informational technologies. The AUCA library workers do special courses and excursions for rural libraries, where they share their experience with them. 

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