Government Info Pro

Sustainable Library Development Training Resources Address Needs

Thanks to Marcy Carrel, Technical Information Specialist, Peace Corps, for this guest post on sustainable library development training resources.

Read on...

Literacy and access to information are fundamental to individual development as well as the development of society. By providing access to books, information, and lifelong learning environments, libraries enable development to flourish.

Across the developing world, there are myriad examples of innovative libraries that have brought positive contributions and great benefit to individuals and the communities served. Children are introduced to reading for fun; youth receive homework assistance; farmers access information on markets for their products; young adults develop computer skills; and community members have a space to collaborate.

Unfortunately, there are also examples of ‘failed’ library projects – such as the forgotten storage rooms with old textbooks or donated books in non-native languages and content that is inappropriate for the local community. 

The prospective benefits and potential of libraries has driven the development of libraries of various types across the developing world. Any successful library project, however, must address issues of sustainability – cultural, political, economic, managerial, and environmental sustainability. For example, a culturally sustainable library selects books that are appropriate for the local culture and language(s); a managerially sustainable library has trained and supported staff. 

Peace Corps Volunteers have been involved in library development throughout most of the 50-year history of the agency. While many Peace Corps Volunteers engage in library projects around the word, most are not well-trained in library and information science. Volunteers are well-versed in sustainable development, yet translating sustainability to the library context requires more specific consideration and training. 

To address these needs, my colleague Gail Wadsworth and I, with input from Peace Corps field staff, developed a set of resources for training Peace Corps Volunteers in sustainable library development.  The training package is intended to provide Volunteers with standardized training and guidance for library activities and recommendations for other appropriate resources to support library development in their communities. It includes session plans developed by librarians with input from training experts, ensuring that they meet Peace Corps’ interactive and learner-focused training style. We are pleased that we are able to publicly release these materials and share them with the larger library community. As we will continue to develop additional training resources, we welcome feedback on this training package. 

Below is a brief description and links to the resources on the Peace Corps public website: 

Sustainable Library Development Training Package (scroll to alphabetical listing)

The purpose of the Sustainable Library Development Training Package is to support and provide guidance to Peace Corps Volunteers engaged in library projects as both primary work assignments and secondary project activities. Training packages are used at Peace Corps posts worldwide to train and prepare Volunteers for their work in the field. The Sustainable Library Development Training Package can also be used by Volunteers to facilitate workshops on library development in their host country communities. Each session plan is stand-alone and includes all relevant handouts; some handouts are repeated from session to session. Listed below are links to the training package with session plans, PowerPoint materials, and all referenced publications. 

Sustainable Library Development Training Package (includes session plans)  

Accompanying Materials:

• PowerPoint: Session: Peace Corps Resources for Library Projects AND Introduction to Sustainable Library Development; Trainer Material 1: PowerPoint Library Photos
• PowerPoint: Session: Library Supplementary Services; Trainer Material 1: PowerPoint-Library Scene Cartoons A and B
• Libraries for All! (No. RE035)
• Setting Up and Running a School Library (No. ED204)
• Sources of Donated Books for Schools and Libraries (No. RE003)
• PACA Using Participatory Analysis for Community Action: Idea Book (No. M0086)
• New Project Design and Management Workshop Training Manual, The (No. T0107)

National Library Week 2011 Resources

I just want to share a few resources with you to support your National Library Week efforts and the work you do year-round to market your library.

On the LexisNexis Info Pro site you’ll find a page on Promoting Your Library. It includes these sections:

• Creating Your Marketing Plan
• Opening Your Library to Your Patrons and Have Some Fun
• Reaching Your Patrons
• Spreading Your Library's Message

Here are a few other National Library Week planning resources:

• ALA National Library Week page. The theme for 2011 is: Create your own story @ your library.
• AALL Private Law Libraries Section’s National Library Week Resources. This list is a few years old but there are some good ideas here.
• On Twitter, the official hashtag for National Library Week is #nlw11.

Happy National Library Week!

Government Info Pro Podcast: Episode 12

During AALL, this summer, I had a chance to sit down with Andrea Muto, recently back from working on the Afghanistan Rule of Law Project (ARoLP) and interview her for the Government Info Pro Podcast.  

I know that you are going to enjoy hearing about some of Andrea Muto's experiences as an information professional working in Afghanistan.

MP3 File

You can listen to the podcast in three ways:

• right from the embedded player in this post
• download the mp3 from the link right below the player
• subscribe to the Government Info Pro Podcast on iTunes

 

 

SHOW NOTES:

Here is a short description of this project as provided to me by Andrea:

The Afghanistan Rule of Law Project (ARoLP) was funded by USAID, and implemented by Checchi & Company Consulting from 2005-2009. ARoLP was the US presence in the justice sector, first working with the Ministry of Justice (legislative drafting training, organizing and publishing laws), then later tasked with Supreme Court training and administrative reform (developing judges' training curriculum and materials, collaborating on writing the first Judicial Code of Conduct, publishing Supreme Court Cases). The development of the law library at the Independent National Legal Training Center (INLTC) rounded out judicial training and curriculum components.

The INLTC is located on the campus of Kabul University, situated between the Law & Political Science and Shari'a law faculties. It is a quasi-governmental organization, built by the Italian Embassy, administratively staffed by by the NGO International Developmental Law Organization and run by a Board whose representatives include the Supreme Court, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Attorney General's Office. USAID was invited to design and staff the first full-service law library in the country at the INLTC, since its Rule of Law project was heavily involved with both the Supreme Court and MoJ, and because its international staff included a law librarian (myself) who had joined ARoLP in February 2007.

The INLTC Law Library is actually full of firsts. It is the first library to catalog its collection in three languages (Dari, Pashtu and English) using Koha open-source software. It is the first law library to provide patrons legal research training, and a nascent version of first CALR courses. It is the first whose staff wrote the first Dari-Pasto legal research manual in the country in more than 30 years. It is the first to offer its resources via a web site in three languages (www.inltclawlibrary.org).

Here are some additional links of interest:

• The INLTC Law Library's web site (Icon for English is in the upper-left corner of the page) 
• USAID releases regarding the opening of the law library: http://afghanistan.usaid.gov/en/Article.386.aspx and  http://afghanistan.usaid.gov/en/Article.390.aspx
• USAID follow-up release regarding the library's progress
• USAID release describing ARoLP
• FCIL announces Masoud has won its scholarship
• The INLTC Law Library is part of a group of world-wide using Koha open-source cataloging software

Also, take a look at this post out on the Pace Law Library Podcast site: On Law Librarianship in Afghanistan. It has a good summary of the AALL Foreign, Comparative and International Law Special Interest Section (FCIL-SIS) program: The Past, Present, and Future of the Law Library and Librarianship in Afghanistan: The Challenges and Rewards of Building a Library After 30 Years of War. Among the resources listed there is a link to a podcast of the actual program. I attended this session and can tell you that it was one of the standout programs of AALL 2009. and that this podcast will be well worth a listen. Speakers were Mr. Ahmadullah Masoud, Andrea Muto, and Blair Kaufmann.

SLA 2008: A Seattle Public Library Draws Conference-Goers

The Central Library in Seattle was a must-see for many SLA 2008 attendees. I stopped cold in my tracks as I came upon it while walking around Seattle during the conference and snapped this picture of the outside of this sparkling modern structure.

This contemporary public library building has "a capacity for more than 1.45 million books and materials (compared to 900,000 in the old building). Currently there are 1 million items in the collection and 9,906 shelves devoted to books. All of those books move around the building in a high-tech book-handling system that operates for the most part out of public view." [About Central Library]

"Another sign of the building's move to the digital age - Central Library now has more than 400 computers for public use and wireless Internet access as well. The previous building had just 75 public computers." [About Central Library]

To learn more about the Central Library check out About the Central Library, Building Facts, and Computers and Equipment.

*Also posted on the SLA Blog. Marie Kaddell is an SLA 2008 Conference Blogger.

It's National Library Week

Did you know that this is the 50th anniversary of National Library Week? The theme this year is: "Join the circle of knowledge @ your library®". The honorary chair this year is Julie Andrews and she has done a few public service announcements.

I always like to visit the ALA site as we move into National Library Week. Find out more information about advocacy and public awareness for libraries on the Campaign for America’s Libraries Web site.

Maybe you've been meaning the check out Second Life. Well, ALA is celebrating National Library Week on Second Life. Learn more about ALA's National Library Week efforts and Second Life or maybe join up on Second Life and experience it firsthand.

Finally, it's always good to see positive news about libraries.Every year the State of America's Libraries Reports is released as part of National Library Week. Read about the findings in the 2008 State of America's Libraries Report: Libraries play a key role in learning and development or read the report in full.

Procrastinating? Suffering from Information Overload?

Pop over to Impact: SLA Leadership & Management Division Blog. Impact is "SLA LMD's newsletter and blog for sharing leadership and management experience, tips and resources among members". [Impact} There are a couple of recent posts there that just might be of help in considering both topics.

First up: You know...THAT project talks about overcoming the "dark forces" that keep us from making progress on THAT project (and maybe others too). Second, is a call for sharing best practices on managing knowledge worker overload with a link to a recent post on Ulla de Stricker's blog: Precious Time: Managing Information Overload. She references the 2008 Workplace Productivity Survey and states in closing her post that " Information professionals are on it."

Libraries on the High Seas

My daughter has attended many a library conference at my invitation but I recently received an invitation back. She invited me to come along as part of a group on a special cruise. It's called the Rock Boat and it was just as much fun as the name suggests. We were floating around in the ocean for five days with some stellar bands. Artists included: Sister Hazel, Marc Broussard, Josh Kelley, Stephen Kellogg and The Sixers, Heather Luttrell, Jon MacLaughlin, Matt Nathanson, Oakhurst, Pat McGee Band, Glen Phillips, Sons of William, Stoke 9, Toad The Wet Sprocket, The Edison Project, Kate Voegele, and more. Sailing on the Carnival Imagination, we made one port stop in Jamaica. It was five days of great fun.

Before I left, I checked out the ship's virtual tour and was thrilled to see they had a library. In my younger days, I once read an article in Cosmo about being a cruise ship librarian. How cool would that have been? I kept to dry land and became a law librarian instead. Naturally, I was thrilled with the prospect of visiting the sumptuous looking library while on the cruise.

If you guessed that this story doesn't work out exactly the way that a librarian might hope - you are right. The Curiosity Library - the name of the ship's library - had undergone a curious metamorphosis as it rocked on day and night. It took me a day or so but when I finally found my way to the cruise ship library (exotic drink in hand), I discovered that it had been turned into a "merch center". My librarian sensibilities were crushed but always being one to make the best of things, I bought a couple CDs and a t-shirt and finished my drink. Before heading out, I talked to the merchandise manager - Scott - about the fate to which he had consigned the library during the cruise and he pointed out that he had taken care to cover all the beautiful shelving over so it wouldn't be damaged. At least he was trying. Then he noted something very interesting. He said that on the last cruise he had set up the merch center on, the internet cafe was part of the library and because of this, the library could not be considered as usable space for the sale of cool t-shirts, CDs, and other Rock Boat and band branded gear. It was just too crowded. Hmmm.

There's a lesson there. Maybe two.

I wandered into the merch center quite a few times after that, as both my daughter and I have a great love of music and hence succumb quit easily to purchasing more CDs than we perhaps reasonably should. Imagine my surprise during one of these visits to find the merch center manager seating on the only elegant piece of library furniture left available in the midst of boxes of products for sale, reading a book. It just shows you that there is something in the very essence of a library that makes it is a force to be reckoned with even on the high seas in the middle of a five-day rock concert.

There's a lesson there too.

And what about me? I'm a librarian and pack my own books anywhere I go, just in case.

Regulations.gov 2.0, Blog Basics, and Social Networking

Check out the lastest on LLRX.com and you'll be informed on a wide array of topics before you are through. Interested in social networking? Check out this article: Social Networks for Law Librarians and Law Libraries, or How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Friending. Trying to become more blog friendly or know someone who ought to be? Check out this primer by Beverly Butula : Bella Is Bewildered About Blogs. Last but not least, need to get all the details on Regulations.gov? Peggy Garvin has all the answers in her article: The Government Domain: Regulation.gov 2.0. Thanks to LLRX.com's resourceful Sabrina Pacifici for keeping us in the know.

Pew Internet and American Life Project Report

Thanks to James King, Project Manager for Digital Library Innovations, Ruth H. Hooker Research Library, Naval Research Laboratory, for the pointer to the new Pew Internet & American Life Project Report: In Search of Solutions: How People Use the Internet, Libraries and Government to Find Help. The study, done in partnership with the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign was just released at the end of December 2007. According to the study, there's some good news: Americans are still using their libraries and Gen X and Gen Y are doing better than their elders in taking advantage of what their libraries can offer them.

To see the full text of the report in PDF, click here.

A Moving Experience

Bob Farina, Library Director, Trademark Law Library, shares his thoughts on library moves, complete with original illustration, in this guest post: A MOVING EXPERIENCE. Other recent articles by Bob Farina on the Government Info Pro include: But I Don’t Want To Have a Standard Deviation … (an article on using statistics as a librarian) and The Mentor … Who, Me?! (a piece on supporting the professional development of others).

Bob's articles are always informative and entertaining, so read on....

Managing Your Resources – during a Move!

How many of us have been through this before?! It isn’t fun. It is a challenge and it is exciting, but so is running naked through a rain forest in Borneo – snakes, lizards, frogs, squirrels and lemurs, all of which fly by the way, not to mention bats, orangutans, etc. are best left to those Explorer Island folks. Moving a library can be like that; you never quite know what you’re getting into because it isn’t a “normal” occurrence. If you’re lucky, your library is small, electronic or both. I am so blessed, thank God!

Snakes, Monkeys & Other Beasts …

You will find that much planning goes into the move of any large facility’s resources. However, it has often been my observation that the library is typically an afterthought of executive management when it comes to the logistics of moving and the staging required for the efficient breakdown and build-out of the old and new spaces. Are there turf war issues in your organization? Multiply that by 100 or so as soon as the whisper of a physical corporate move are heard. The weasels become wolverines, worms sprout fangs and spit venom – you have enemies you never dreamed of in your worst nightmares, especially if the size of everyone’s space is being reduced.

If you are a resourceful, thinking librarian, your armor, shield and weapons are your internal corporate alliances, statistics proving the essential nature of your existence, and the good will that you and your staff have generated by marketing all that is good and wonderful about the library and its staff. If you are fortunate enough to be involved in the early planning stages of new space, don’t miss any of the meetings, and before those meetings, hold brainstorming sessions with your staff to be prepared for anything. Be ready to interject ideas for uses of space that are not currently feasible in your existing environment. Will you be doing training? Do you have overhead projection equipment, video workstations, etc. for creating streaming videos or webcasts on your users’ workstations? Is there the possibility for a leisure reading area for your users to sit down and peruse a book or newspaper? What internal groups would be interested in that – your clients, the union (if there is one), your HR department or in-house professional association (attorneys, scientists, engineers, etc.)? Those are your natural allies, so work on them early on, but be smart about it – start garnering support with those that have the most clout throughout the organization. That big gorilla carries a lot of weight!

READ MORE OF BOB'S INSIGHTS ON MOVING A LIBRARY...