British Council closes its last remaining library in Israel
Haaretz
December 8, 2006
By Charlotte Halle

The British Council is shutting the doors of its only remaining library in Israel, two years after moving it to state-of-the art premises in the Malcha neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The decision, which follows the closure of the organization's English teaching center in Tel Aviv in September, is part of an ongoing reorganization of British Council services in Israel and worldwide. Three staff members will lose their jobs as a result of the latest closure.

"Israelis have voted with their feet," said Jim Buttery, director of the British Council in Israel this week, attributing the closure to the low numbers using the library.

"The reason we originally moved [from the library's former site in Jerusalem's Baka quarter to renovated premises in Malcha] was to refresh and modernize our services to our public and to attract more young people and native Hebrew-speakers to the library.

"The increased numbers we'd hoped for have not materialized despite the promotion and advertising of the service, and investment in it," he said. The library, which lends out British books, videos, DVDs, music CDs and magazines and provides information about educational opportunities in the United Kingdom, has been open to the public since the early 1950s. According to Buttery, numbers using the library have been gradually slipping since its membership peaked at 1,300 in the mid-1990s.

The move to Malcha's commercial zone two years ago, which involved an investment of close to NIS 1 million including renovations, constituted an effort to reverse that decline and attract young native Israelis, rather the crowd of established Anglo immigrants who have traditionally accessed British Council library services. '(Buttery emphasized that updating the former premises to an acceptably modern standard would have cost a lot more than the move and refurbishment did.')

Currently the Jerusalem library has just 690 members; only 380 of them are regular borrowers and the large majority of them are native English-speakers.

Buttery attributed the drop in usage primarily to changes in the way people access literature, film and music using new technologies and other commercial and educational suppliers, noting that this was part of a worldwide trend. The British Council, which is the official cultural and educational relations arm of the British government, has in recent years closed its library services in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Turkey. Its library services in Tel Aviv were shut down in 2001, in East Jerusalem in 1998 and in Ramallah and Gaza earlier this year.

Buttery said the British Council's annual budget in Israel of over NIS 8 million was not being cut but rather "rejigged" so that resources could be redirected toward "large-scale projects and high profile events" aimed at attracting large numbers of young Israelis, in line with its policy internationally.

Buttery added: "We have to be accountable for how we spend our money in Israel. The choice was between a project that reaches one or two thousand people in a short space of time or a library service reaching a handful of people. It's clear where we should be investing our time and money in the future," he said.

He mentioned the British Council's annual British film festival, its science education work and its youth and sport work as endeavors that have succeeded in reaching its target audience of young Israelis. But the decision to redirect the library's annual budget of NIS 800,000 had still been a tough decision, he emphasized. "We don't want to belittle the disappointment and hurt some of our audience who are very disappointed and upset [by the library's closure]," he said.

The handling of the closure of British Council's Ramat Gan English teaching center in September was criticized as "shambolic" by disgruntled staff members who lost their jobs, while some students complained about the short notice given for the termination of their language courses.

This time round, the local management appears to have made an effort to address these grievances by placing a notice in the English-language press last Thursday explaining the reasons behind the closure and informing current library members that they could still take out books and DVDs until the end of the year. A press conference was also held at the end of last week to explain the thinking behind changes.

Buttery said the British Council will continue to manage its cultural and educational work in Jerusalem and beyond from a small office in the capital. There are plans to donate its library collection to a local institution that is open to the general public, although details have yet to be announced.