April 23 every year is the World Book and Copyright Day and this year it falls on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The day falls on the annual calendar of the Book Publishers Association of Malawi (Bpam) which has since indicated that it will commemorate the day next month.<\/p>\n
Bpam President Alfred Msadala said on Wednesday that they would have loved to join the rest of the world in commemorating the day on Sunday but they are not done with their preparations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not doing anything on the day as Bpam. We would have loved to do so but we need to prepare well as regards the focus on theme,\u201d Msadala said.<\/p>\n
He said this year\u2019s commemoration will be through a symposium to be held on May 19 at Malawi Sun in Blantyre.<\/p>\n
According to Msadala, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has set this year\u2019s focus on the accessibility of books and other reading materials by the visually impaired persons.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at the focus area we thought it wise as Bpam to do more and this is why we shifted our commemoration to May so that we involve them. This will be a special feature at the symposium,\u201d said the Bpam leader.<\/p>\n
Msadala also revealed that Bpam has this year embarked on a project that is being supported by Hivos under the title Taking the Book Back to the Society \u2014 Women Empowerment from Grassroots. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe want to do more on this project and the World Book and Copyright Day commemoration this year is within this programme,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Msadala described the World Book and Copyright Day as important adding that it gives them a chance to commune with stakeholders.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the activities we have during this day is the exchange of book gifts with our friends and relatives. We also use the day to add book stocks to our Reading Circle centres through donations from member publishing houses and other stakeholders,\u201d Msadala said.<\/p>\n Some of the Reading Circle centres that Bpam has created include Mlonda Primary School in Nsanje; Mphande Primary School in Mwanza; Lisungwi Primary School in Neno; and Jalo Primary School in Nkhotakota.<\/p>\n The World Book and Copyright Day was designated by Unesco in 1995 as a day on which publishers associations, libraries, cultural organisations, authors associations, booksellers and the public at large mobilise themselves to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property.<\/p>\n According to available information, the choice of the day, April 23, has its own legend behind it.<\/p>\n It was first celebrated by Spanish booksellers in 1923 as a way of honouring the Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes, whose death anniversary falls on the day.<\/p>\n By coincidence, the day marks the birth and death anniversaries for William Shakespeare, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla, Manuel Mejia Vallejo and Maurice Druon and it is for this that Unesco adopted it for the course.<\/p>\n Meanwhile Unesco Director- General, Irina Bokova, in her message for this year, has reminded the world community that the World Book and Copyright Day is an opportunity for highlighting the power of books in the promotion of our vision of knowledge societies that are inclusive, pluralistic, equitable, open and participatory for us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April 23 every year is the World Book and Copyright Day and this year it falls on Sunday. The day falls on the annual calendar of the Book Publishers Association of Malawi (Bpam) which has since indicated that it will commemorate the day next month. Bpam President Alfred Msadala said on Wednesday that they would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44749,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44718\/revisions\/44749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}