Simmons, Harvard team to train Iraqi librarians

Information Outlook, April, 2004

Responding to the devastating effects of war on Iraqi libraries, the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) and the Harvard University library system are launching a joint program to train Iraqi librarians and archivists.

The program will help modernize Iraqi libraries and address Iraq's serious shortage of professional librarians. The program links the Simmons GSLIS with the library and information science professionals of Harvard University, which is home to the world's largest academic library.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded Simmons and Harvard $100,000 for the two-year project. The grant is part of the NEH program "Recovering Iraq's Past," which funds projects to help rebuild Iraq's cultural heritage.

The program will begin in May, when a team of Simmons faculty and Harvard librarians meet with Iraqi librarians in Amman, Jordan, for a curriculum-planning retreat. The Iraqis will identify their training needs for rebuilding collections and modernizing their library systems. Training areas may include preservation, cataloging, collection development and management, and automation and online information systems.

Once training needs are identified, Simmons faculty will teach graduate library courses for Iraqi librarians. In collaboration with Harvard librarians, Simmons faculty will oversee a series of special projects and serve as long-term mentors via the Internet.

Michele Cloonan, dean of the Simmons GSLIS and principal investigator for the NEH grant, noted that more than two decades of war and economic sanctions, as well as the chaos of the recent regime change, have left the centuries-old Iraqi book and manuscript collections with a "vast array of problems" and few librarians with contemporary professional training and expertise.

"For years, resources were withheld from cultural institutions in Iraq," Cloonan said, "and the recent war has resulted in widespread destruction. Librarians were cut off from technological and professional development. The United States has some of the best library and information science programs in the world, and we're pleased to be able to bring our training to the Iraqis. So much has changed in library and information science since the Iran/Iraq war two decades ago. The Internet wasn't even in use."

In addition to taking library and archival courses, the Iraqis will work with Simmons and Harvard library specialists on special projects that the Iraqis identify as most needed to rebuild their contemporary and historic collections and to modernize their library systems.

The Simmons and Harvard organizers hope that some Iraqi librarians will rejoin their international colleagues at the 2005 International Federation of Librarians and Archivists conference in Oslo, Norway.

The Simmons GSLIS directed a similar library-rebuilding program (begun in association with the Harvard-Yenching Institute) in Vietnam, through which Vietnamese students earn their master's degrees in library and information science at Simmons. Today, the Vietnamese graduates of the Simmons program are library leaders in Vietnam.

In addition, the ongoing Bosnia Library Project, based at and supported by Harvard University, has helped rebuild destroyed and damaged Bosnian library collections since early 1996.

For further information about the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, go to http://www.simmons.edu/gslis. For information about the Harvard library system, go to http://lib.harvard.edu.