The Book Bank

I love books! Not because they are hard covered or paperbacks but because the quality of discourse these bounded prints provide which include opinionated, context-oriented or summarized collections serve my hunger for an unexplainable desire. I have always made an inert distinction among people who read books and who don't and it isn't much difficult to split the two. However, there are many people who have the desire to venture over the territory of ideas but can't either because of a lack of public libraries, or lack of money or lack of an environment where book readers are cherished. From the afsaanas of ibn-e-safi to the passionate semi-historical accounts of ibn-e-insha, to the philosophical discourse of bano qudsia-ishfaq ahmed couple, to the romanticized religious self-discoveries by umera ahmed, to the political insight like those of the politicians, the faujis, the x-faujis, the analysts etc, the religious books which made this quote real that the Quran was revealed to the Arabs, recited by the Egyptians and understood by us Pakistanis and Indians, a vast amount of readership is unaware of even their existence.

Inspired recently by an article in the news and a followup blog by Dr. Adil Najam, I am proposing my little idea to solve some of the challenges mentioned to some extent. take it or throw it, but i'd love it if you grow it. lets have this combined brainstorming on how to setup a public library by people's funding, a rather book bank based on accounts where investments is not just in terms of money but also in terms of books lent to the bank. The more books you lent (probably out of your private libraries) to the central pool, the more privileges you can get, like for instance the ability to borrow more books at time, or maybe even home delivery.

The funds can be managed by advertising on the back of the front covers of each book. Imagine mehran masaala advertisement in a book Cooking for Dummies, or an advertisement of Askari Bank behind In the Line of Fire, for instance. Or Techlogix behind Data Warehousing, or Arif Habib Investments behind a book on Portfolio Management.

Books can be increased by merging many university libraries. I have seen most private university libraries in Karachi and they are mostly substandard, exceptions are there. Having a combined library where each university buys a corporate account membership for its students can help the universities in getting rid of maintaining their library and its staff while providing students a much wider array of books. Ofcourse, such a library can be distributed in which case universities can borrow books from one another.

Many companies would also be interested in forming such a joint library for its employees as most companies in Pakistan are in the need of libraries especially in the technology sector but can't afford to have one.

Ironically all this fuzz and I am assuming there will be a huge crowd rush to join in the bandwagon but it probably won't be so. So for crowd pulling, special incentives for schools...

Allowing space for book readers clubs to meet and socialize.....

more to come but first lets hear your say....