The Municipal Library of Arrecife, located in the Plaza de la Constitución, will be temporarily closed from this Monday, August 16, due to its relocation to another location. Although the book lending service will not be available, borrowed books can be returned.
Due to the termination of the agreement signed between the César Manrique Foundation and the City Council for the transfer of two premises, where the Department of Culture and the Municipal Library were located, the relocation of the 14,000 volumes, which the Library has, has been forced.
Lorenzo Lemaur, Councilor for Culture of the Arrecife City Council, has announced that the library will remain closed until its reopening in a new location. "We want to open a library in Argana Alta, which will allow greater diversification and cultural revitalization of the city," explained the councilor.
According to the Department of Culture, the Municipal Library Network of Arrecife would be expanded, "thereby reaching the neighborhoods", in addition to fulfilling the aim of "specializing its service and cataloging center in the House of Culture, with the creation of a thematic library", through the BICA project.
If it is not possible to find a place appropriate to the conditions of the BICA Cataloging Project before September 30, the day on which the agreement signed with the FCM ends, municipal technicians recommend the immediate transfer of the books to different warehouses for monitoring.
BICA Project
The General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries is the driving force behind BICA (Canary Islands Library Network), a project that makes the creation of a single library network for the entire archipelago a reality. BICA would mean establishing a single catalog that would bring together all the premises, streamlining the activity of both librarians and users, who will be able to renew loans or reserve books via the Internet.
In addition, the creation of a single card will be possible, valid for any library that is part of the integrated network of public libraries, documentation centers, administrative libraries and private libraries of special interest. It is planned that in 2011 the entire libraries will be integrated into the new network, which represents a figure close to three million documents.
