Dubai Women’s College reaches out to the community with book donations

As part of the Library Week annual event, Dubai Women’s College (DWC) students and staff recently donated 8 sets of Children’s picture books in both, English and Arabic to Dubai Public Libraries. The books were authored by DWC students and were handed over during a visit from Dubai Public Libraries to DWC. With this year’s Library Week theme – “Communities Thrive @ Your Library” the event aimed at encouraging young Emiratis to read.
“Thank you very much for these books and this wonderful effort,” said the director of Dubai Public Libraries, Mohammed Jassim Al Araidi, during the handover ceremony.  “We hope to keep a line of communication active in the future to help in achieving our goal and we wish more success to you.” “This initiative is not unusual to DWC, as it is always contributing to the wider community by influencing people positively, especially when it comes to learning and education,” said Amal Mohammed, one of the student authors whose books were donated.  “Also, DWC is a place where talents do not only appear and are shaped, but also students’ talents are patronized very professionally and donating my storybook to the public libraries is one of these examples,” she continued. Another young author, Sara Karmustaji, reacted to news of the project. “Actually it's a wonderful idea, and this needs to happen so that it encourages other Emirati women to do such things for the country,” she said. “Also, as these books are produced by Emirati women, it's great for them to be donated to our libraries so children and adults can have a look at them and read.”
From his part, Dr. Howard Reed, Director of DWC pointed out that Library week at DWC has been a very exciting opportunity for students to experience many interesting special events in the library and to confirm what an amazing system of libraries the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) has.  “HCT students have access to comprehensive electronic data bases as well as basic resources to help them improve their English.  Library Week also highlighted the fact that librarians are a critical ingredient in the learning process,” he added.
DWC hosted a renowned local author and poet Wael Sayegh during the Library week, who shared stories about literature and writing with DWC students.  The college library expanded the reach of this presentation to students across the UAE by using technology and social networking to stream the presentation live and to take questions via Twitter.
“DWC Students benefit tremendously from the campus library every day,” said library supervisor Robin Bishop. “The HCT Library System offers over 350,000 books, newspapers and magazines, thousands of articles through the online subscription databases, and the services of dozens of highly trained professional librarians who are here to support the students on their academic journey – as well as games, technology, network access and attractive study spaces. All of this provides opportunity for students to form communities and connect with the world around them in profound ways.”
During this years’ Library Week, DWC also hosted representatives from Kinokuniya bookstore to support the theme of connection and community. Staff and faculty visited classrooms to read aloud from the first chapters of several novels to try to get the students hooked on the story – and encourage them to finish reading it on their own. “Libraries are a source of knowledge, independence, and community involvement for so many people around the world,” said DWC faculty librarian Alicia Salaz. “We’re taking this week to celebrate and promote the value of libraries – public, academic, government and special libraries – to building bridges and making connections to the larger community, both locally and globally,” she concluded.