You can send your questions to us by email. All answered questions will also be added to this Frequently Asked Questions list.
No, the British Council is as dedicated as ever to support Bosnia and Herzegovina on its road to European integration and it plans to do so through series of carefully developed programmes.
Our office in Bosnia and Herzegovina will stay at the same location in Ljubljanska 9 in Sarajevo. Our existing premises are, however, undergoing minor reconstruction in order to respond to the needs of our new offer.
From 31st December 2008 our public library services will be closed and replaced by resource and networking services to support our projects in Governance, Culture and Education.
The resource and networking services will support activities linked to key communities such as informal community based organizations, registered NGOs and those institutions building their capacity in the face of the EU accession agenda with whom the British Council has developed common projects.
Our centre will continue to promote and provide information on UK education and examination opportunities and respond to general enquiries through our reception, telephone and on line enquiry handling services.
Elements of our general library collection unrelated to our projects will be transferred to the library of our local partner, Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo.
The British Council works in 110 countries to raise awareness of UK education and culture and to create relationships for Britain – with people, organisations and countries. We are constantly reassessing our work to ensure that we are responding to demand in each country and getting the best value for money.
Responding to differing needs in different countries means that in North and Central Europe, for example, we invest in partner libraries by training staff, renewing stocks and improving standards. Similarly, in India and Sri Lanka membership numbers are strong and our libraries are thriving.
On the other hand, there are a number of reasons for the closures. The first is that that the uniqueness of the offer has gone: the British Council has used libraries to good effect for much of its 73 year history. There was a time when a library provided a unique offer in almost any location – even in Western Europe. Even now our libraries reach 318k members – but this is down from 401k in 2000/01.
We constantly monitor the cost of running libraries against the impact achieved – or the expectation that higher impact could be obtained by investing the money in other activities. Our main target audience are 18-35 year olds, and this group are much more effectively reached by a whole host of other activities both face-to-face and online. Some examples, like Learn English Online and Learn English for Kids can be found here:
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/
http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids/
We chose a partner institution that has a capacity to handle this donation in materials and that has agreed to make them available to as large audience as possible, in accordance with the institution’s profile.
Yes, we will continue to offer a range of UK English language, professional and academic exams at our premises in Sarajevo. Find out more about our offer here.
You can also visit our Centre and use computer-based materials to prepare yourself for these exams.
Yes, we will continue to provide this type of information via our information desk +387 33 250 220 and our country website.
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