College of Arts organizes a visit to the St. Ephrem’s Church

The Department of Information and Libraries in the  College of Arts organized a scientific visit to St. Ephrem's Church. The visiting delegation was headed by assistant lecturer Batoul Hamid Majeed and assistant lecturer Turiq Taha Abboud  and a group of  the second year students for introducing them on the types of specialized libraries about Basra. The bishop Habeeb and the father A’maad  received the warmly the visiting delegation and they both an explained to the students about Christianity as well as the church library that contains forty thousand sources and references between a book , a periodical specialized in Christian religion and its history in addition to a group of books on Islamic religion, philosophy, history of Iraq, literature and languages ​​and nearly 40 periodicals.  Some of them are continuing in publications and the other is discontinued, and only one manuscript has been kept in a special place to be in safe from being damaged. The arrangement method used in the library is the subject arrangement .This method is classified into sections according to the Christian subjects. Regarding the supply process in the library, it is done through purchase, whereby the church allocates a budget for the purchase of books in addition to a few gifts ones that the library gets of about 10% within the collection of the books in the library. The library provides an external loan service to researchers and library beneficiaries. The loan period of a book is only one month, and it is done by giving guarantees for the publications which are loaned out, and that the most used topics are the ones about Christian history in Iraq.

 The library uses a printed index which is arranged thematically according to the arrangement of books on the shelves.