MADINAH — The Ministry of Culture and Information is looking for a new building for its public library in Madinah, which is slated for demolition just 20 months after the inauguration of the facility in Al-Bahr district of the holy city. The existing building will be removed for the Darb Al-Sunnah project next month. "The ministry has announced its plan to rent a new building for the library," said Dr. Salah Al-Radadi, director general of the ministry's branch office in Madinah. "We have already handed over the existing library building for demolition." Many people have expressed their concern over the shifting of the library to a new place. Aisha Haja, a researcher and historian, said the shifting would affect the library's priceless books and manuscripts like what had happened to King Abdulaziz Library in the past. She emphasized the need for more libraries. "We have to establish more public libraries in the city and keep them open 24 hours for the benefit of readers and researchers," Haja said. The existing public library building, which was opened on Jan. 20, 2014, was designed to meet the requirements of the reading public. The three-story facility has a special section for women and a multipurpose conference hall that can accommodate 315 people. It also comprises a children's section, a periodicals section, a department for binding and preserving books, a large reading room for men, two rooms for research, an electronic library and a bookstore. The library has to its credit more than 31,000 books. The King Abdulaziz Library in the central region of Madinah was closed in August for the ongoing Prophet's Mosque expansion project and its books were shifted to Madinah Islamic University's library. During the process of shifting many of its books were either lost or destroyed. The Darb Al-Sunnah project, a 3-km stretch between the Prophet's Mosque and the Quba Mosque, is expected to change the face of Madinah. It includes a university, a green and renewable energy project and a specialty hospital. It will have five cultural centers and each of them will be designed to reflect the city's history and each of them will have a historical gate like Bab Quba, Bab Al-Anbariya and Bab Al-Shami. The project will accommodate the King Abdulaziz Complex for Endowment Libraries, which will preserve a large number of books, rare manuscripts and Madinah's antiquities.
