Books are our closest friends. Most of you probably have bookshelves full of yellow paged books that smell like soviet times at your houses. But the technological advancement is having an influence on our books and libraries, as well as everything else. Books that once were very valuable are becoming irrelevant today. The reason for this is the rise of electronic books and libraries. In many countries, electronic books libraries have become quite advanced. Nowadays, youngsters download the electronic versions of the books to their cell phones and tablets and read them. A lot of money is being invested in this industry all over the world and a lot of profit is made. But even though government agencies have done certain things for the development of virtual libraries in Azerbaijan, the state of this sector is still not considered to be satisfactory.
In his interview with our newspapers, the of chairman of New Writers and Artists Association Aydinkhan Abilov talked about the current state of electronic books in Azerbaijan and the factors that delay the growth of the industry. " Many innovations, as well as the new developments in the field of Information Communication Technology, impacts us as well. ICT is one of the well developed industries in the 21st century. The rise of electronic books and libraries are also a part of this progress. If we look at the neighboring countries, as well as the European countries such as France, Russia and England, we can see that they have about 30-40 thousands only in English and up to 100 thousand e-book recourses in general.
But the surveys conducted on the subject have found that, not including the university libraries, there are less than 10 virtual libraries in our country. Although there are very good resources in our virtual libraries, unfortunately, many electronic versions of books and publications are only intended for local use only. I think this problem is related to copyrights laws. Private and public organizations have their own electronic libraries but they often upload the old editions of the books on their website without changing anything. This is why the number of e-books is not growing. Generally speaking, while the state of the virtual libraries in Azerbaijan is not all that satisfactory, the progress has been made and this problem will be solved in the near future. It is crucial to prepare and store the electronic versions of texts, books, articles and archives about our country online in order to spread Azerbaijan's realities in the world."
Our respondent also told us about the shortcomings of "kitabxana.net", the national virtual library which he is the head of: " Kitabxana.net national virtual library was founded in 2009. A lot of government organizations have contributed to the development of this library. With the financial support of Azerbaijan Writers Union, Azerbaijan Youth Fund, The Council of State Support to Non-Governmental Organizations and Youth and Sports Ministry, we have stored the electronic versions of books on many topics online. With the help of aforementioned government bodies, we are preparing the electronic versions of 200-500 books and majority of these will be the newly made electronic publications. We have received about 5 million views on our library from all over the world. Our online resources have around 2300 e-books. This includes the examples of the world literature, Azerbaijani literature, classic, modern, scientific books, encyclopedias, children's' literature and translated works. Most of these books are uploaded to our library with the permission of their authors and based on texts they have provided. "
He also added that, they are also running another website called "elml?r.net". This is also considered to be the "e-education" section of the library. The section was created as a part of a project that is funded by Youth Fund under Azerbaijani President. Up to a hundred textbooks have been prepared and stored there: " Access to our library is free of charge and our books can downloaded and used offline. Of course, we would want to add even more resources and more capital invested in this in sector. Because this industry is ever growing and new materials are being published and we still do not have the electronic versions of many old publications.
Our respondent noted that they added to their library the books that they consider to be in contrast to our national and moral values: "There are two principles behind it. Firstly, we want to create the online versions of every books published so far and store it online and secondly, it is intended for everyone, regardless of their language, religion, race, ethnicity or political views. Of course, we are also abiding by the copyright laws of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Our biggest goal is not to make money off of books but rather to increase the level of book reading."
Zahir Azamat, the founder of the website Alokitab.az complained about the general state of virtual libraries in the country: "Sadly, this industry is not well developed. I would even say that, professional electronic libraries are non-existent. It is true that certain books are made into electronic versions and are published on online blogs but these books often do not meet the international standards. In reality, e-books are one of the most profitable businesses these days. Big companies in the world such as Amazon makes a lot of money by selling e-books. Recently, Azercell launched a project that would let the mobile phone users read the electronic versions of thousands of books. But unfortunately, those books are often in different languages. Creating the electronic versions of Azerbaijani language books should be done on the state level. Despite The Council of State Support to Non-Governmental Organization's efforts, we still can't talk about serious growth in this sector. In this regard, the work of kitabxana.net could be considered very important. It's more common to see educational materials on the virtual version of the national library. But at the moment, a project that will appeal to a larger audience does not exit. This process may be long, but I think it is also interesting."
Zahir Azamat named a few advantages of e-book and e-libraries too: " The classic method of publishing books requires additional paper and expenses. In electronic version, these expenses are largely reduced. This in turn affects the prices and ensures customer satisfaction. E-book have great advantage in this regard. Electronic books also do not have a circulation problem. The market itself regulates the circulation of the books. E-books also substantially helps the improvement of education. For instance, a scientific research done by a student living in a foreign country can be obtained with the help of e-books. Thus e-books become easily accessible for everyone. If we are complaining about young people not reading books, we should also take into account that they like innovations and this is another reason why we should improve the business of electronic books. The age factor is very important in this regard. While the middle aged generation prefer the conventional method of reading books, the youth considers e-books to be a lot more advantageous. This is a matter of age and taste."
We also contacted some of the universities in order to find out about the situation there. We were told by the library of Baku State University that the university has an active virtual library. The authors provide the library with the printed version of their work and the library turns them into e-books. There are currently more than 5 hundred e-book at the library. But majority of students prefer the print version to electronic ones. This is because many old textbooks that they need do not have electronic versions.
The head of press service of Baku Slavic University Adil Aliyev told our newspaper that they don't have an online library yet but they are working on it. Azerbaijan University of Languages has also started the same process. They have acquired a new system for the university library. Administrative staff and computer experts at the virtual library are working on developing the library. Before the system was purchased, the electronic versions of books were placed on the university website with the permission of author. This database will be added to the new system. Virtual library has been enriched with the e-books that were uploaded to the e-libraries of President's library, Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences and the National Library. Ceyhun Valiyev, the head of press department at the Caucasus University told us that the university's virtual library sufficiently met students' needs: " Our university has a rich collection of both print and electronic books and
we are constantly adding educational books to our library. We have close to 100 000 non-fiction and fiction books, as well as over 3 million electronic books and magazines."
Shabnam Mehtizade
