The British Council recently held a ‘POP-UP’ library at Dolmen City Mall, Karachi. The event kicked off from Wednesday, 7th October 2015 till Sunday 11th October 2015. The ‘POP-UP’ library at Dolmen Mall was a small prototype or taste of what was to come. The British Council had announced their plans to re-open two state-of-the-art libraries in Karachi and Lahore (one in each city).
The library was situated right next to Sindbad’s at Dolmen City Mall- and it did look promising enough. An array of stacked books were lined up on shelves at either side of the ‘POP-UP’ library. Denizens were on the round, inspecting each book carefully and fooling around with the ‘Digital Table’ as it was referred to. The ‘Digital Table’ contained iPads, tablets and laptops from which you could access information and research basically everything. It was a prelude to what the latest, fully equipped British Council libraries would offer for Pakistanis.
I had a chance to speak with British Council’s Director of Sindh, Balochistan Robin Davies, who elaborated in detail as to what would be the purposes of the library, when it re-opens in Karachi and Lahore.
“It’s nice to be back,” began Davies. “Basically, we want to open two libraries, one each in the cities of Karachi and Lahore. So far, we have been accorded a warm welcome here at Dolmen Mall and we welcome the chance to host interact with Pakistani people. We look forward to having Pakistanis over for discussions and all, when the libraries open.”
British Council to open a library each in… by arynews
“Our digital library feature might sound complex to you, but really it’s not,” said Robin. “You won’t necessarily need to come all the way to our libraries. You can access them from all over Pakistan, digitally. Hence, a whole world of culture, literature, art, education and research will be open to you like nothing before.”
Regarding the purpose of the libraries, Robin Davies also said,”There are a couple of purposes for opening up a library. We want to advertise the activities that British Council does in Pakistan. Secondly, we are also highlighting the fact that these are latest, unconventional libraries. Over here, we will be having a digital set-up and you will also witness events, discussions and debates. Also, it’s going to be a sort of cafe for you to hang-out at.”
Regarding as to why only Lahore and Karachi, this is what Davies said:-
“We have been here for a long time. We have offices established here through which we can carry out our programs. Hence, it is important and imperative that we increase our interaction with the people of Pakistan in these cities.”
