The public library in the Tavoush border village of Dovegh has been closed to residents since 2007.

The reason is that the library has no librarian. In Armenia, the vast majority of librarians are women.  The last librarian in Dovegh got married and the job title was deleted from the budget.

The library’s remaining books have been transferred to a room in the village municipality building. Some are classified alphabetically and the rest are just tied up in bundles in another room.

Manya Saroukhanyan, the mayor’s treasurer, does double duty as a librarian, helping residents who come to read a book. According to the last Soviet era inventory, the library once housed 4,200 titles, of which 2,700 were fiction. The number has decreased over the years due to non-returns.

Saroukhanyan confesses that the library only gets a trickle of visitors, mostly schoolchildren looking for textbooks for course work.

Many students make the trip to the library in the town of Noyemberyan given the much wider selection of titles.

Armineh Navasardyan, Director of the Noyemberyan Public Library, says that readers from Dovegh especially like the Russian literature section.

Back in Dovegh, Manya Saroukhanyan says that while the issue of reopening the library has been debated several times, the reality is that the village budget just doesn’t have the funds. There are much more pressing issues facing the village, she adds.