ST. PETERSBURG, February 4, 2004. /RIA Novosti/. In March the Petersburg Center of Modern Literature and Books plans to send over 5,000 books to the library of the Russian language and literature faculty of the Baghdad University, which suffered from bombardments last year.
In autumn officials of the Center called on the restoration of this library. The books collected for the Iraqi library include dictionaries, text-books, Russian language manuals and books by Russian classics. Most books were given by Petersburg libraries and local residents.
We planned to send the books to Baghdad a month ago but we failed to accomplish the inventory of collected books, Dmitry Karalis, the director of the Center, told RIA Novosti. "We hope the books will go to Iraq in March," he said.
His center has its followers, for instance, the St. Petersburg Library Society. It will continue collecting books for Iraqi students.
