Apostolos Kouroupakis
Once again, the Cypriot Library, like most municipal libraries, is back in the headlines. And where are we? At square one. And do you know why? Quite simply, because nobody cares. Yes, I am being blunt, but I have reached my limit. Thousands of words have been written on this issue, yet the result is the same. We have no coherent national policy on books, no vision for a state, national, Cypriot Library, call it what you will, the kind of library we should have.
Of course, we have committees, directors, and plenty of fine-sounding words. Studies and counter-studies, plans and schedules, even the plot at the Archival Secretariat, but no library we can truly be proud of. Does anyone remember what happened with the Paphos Municipal Library? No one. Now the Achillios Municipal Library is back in the spotlight, renovated a year ago and left to gather dust. Soon it will be handed over to the Kapodistrian University, along with the Reading Room of Faneromeni, and watch as the swords are drawn from their scabbards.
Honestly, I marvel at the courage of the Cypriot Association of Librarians and Information Scientists, or of any of us, really, engaging in this Sisyphean task: throwing eggs at the wall, watching them bounce back unbroken, and doing it again and again until we finally end up banging our heads.
There is no political will. There never has been. And perhaps there never will be. Unless, of course, a billionaire philanthropist, on a whim, buys a warehouse, turns it into a library, donates it to us, and calls it the Library of Cyprus, then and only then will we have a Library. Otherwise, we wait for committees, the Ministry of Finance, and the Deputy Ministry of Culture to deign to act. By the time they draw up a plan, it will already be outdated, needing yet another update. See, for example, the Strategic Development Plan of the Cypriot Library 2010–2014, drafted by Philippos Tsimpoglou and Andreas K. Andreou.
In March 2025, a new Strategic Plan was presented to Deputy Minister of Culture Ms. Kassianidou by the Advisory Committee of the Cypriot Library. It outlined, among other things, the vision, mission, and importance of the Library for the state and its citizens. Pardon my bluntness, but it was essentially all talk. The current building is unsuitable, no temporary space is available, funds for a new one do not exist, and yet we keep talking about libraries and the reading room we are losing, badly, terribly. I even wonder where all the books and materials currently housed there will end up.
Unless, perhaps, the University of Cyprus Library wants to take some, or the Cypriot Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts, now establishing its own library, which recently received over a thousand titles from Vassos Karayiorgis’s collection in May 2025, aiming to incorporate them. By the way, where will this new library actually be housed? Meanwhile, we are still waiting for any news about the Library of the Center for Scientific Research.
And I will close with a quote from a 1902 Argos report: “Before my eyes is a record of all the libraries of the world, and when I read the names of the cities and their libraries, and the gigantic number of books and manuscripts they contain, I shudder at our own microscopic existence.” More than a century later, and nothing has changed.
