Travelling with the Freedom Forum

Information Outlook, June, 1997 by Barbara Semonche

In 1996, The Freedom Forum International Division, in partnership with the Special Libraries Association, offered me the opportunity to venture to Bucharest, Romania and Warsaw, Hungary. Working at Freedom Forum Libraries at the Center for Independent Journalism in Bucharest and the Warsaw Journalism Center in warsaw, my assignment was to help The Freedom Forum librarians in these cities create and develop their World Wide Web search skills and home pages. Simultaneously reaching journalism students and working journalists was an added feature. The tour of duty was two weeks, one in each of the cities.

The extraordinary contributions of The Freedom Forum International Library Network to an emerging East European free press are just beginning to be known. The Freedom Forum librarians are bilingual and provide excellent assistance to journalists, students, and researchers on a walk-in, call-in, or e-mail basis. Perhaps most importantly, all this is done without charge and without fanfare. It is noteworthy that the American concept of news librarians and media researchers working side-by-side with journalists as an investigative team is unknown in East European newspapers. In time, this will change. Active cooperation with our international news library colleagues offers promise for expanding the image and the role of news researchers.

Romania is just beginning to emerge from catastrophic economic depravation resulting in sliding standards of living. The Ceausescu regime, though overthrown in December 1989, continues to burden the entire country with crushing debt, poor transportation, and a weak telecommunication infrastructure.

Armed with my laptop loaded with seven multimedia Internet and WWW instructional computer presentation programs in Astound! a special computer cable and adapter designed for use in Romania and Poland, additional disks with such unique applications at the Raleigh News & Observer NeRD (News Research Directory), and back-up disks of all my programs and Web files, I met The Freedom Forum librarian, Tiberiu Cazacioc, to begin my training programs.

Tiberiu has developed close ties with the libraries and schools of journalism and library science in Romania, so we made visits to Bucharest University, Central University, and Hyperion University, a private university in Bucharest. I relied on my computerized presentations, handouts and Tiberiu's wonderful translation skills. I consulted with Tiberiu about which of my programs would be best suited for particular audiences. Following my opening presentations were questions from the groups, then some hands-on training experience. By the end of the week, Tiberiu and I were sharing the instructional program. It was "team-teaching" at its best. The sessions would have been even more successful if the live demonstrations on the Web were not so slow, due to the lack of a direct link to the Internet. I had to remind myself that this was just the beginning. More sophisticated technology and telecommunications are to come to Bucharest and the whole of Romania.

Most of our sessions were for librarians and journalism students in groups ranging in size from six or seven to 15 or 16 students. Although no large screen projection equipment was available, the groups were still small enough to see what was projected.

Everyone was interested in the Internet. Most had never seen a computer access the Internet. Only a few had actually worked with computer word processing programs. An even smaller number had e-mail addresses and Web experience. Few Romanian universities offer Internet access, although some have servers. However, an increasing number of Romanian newspapers, radio, TV, and wire services are developing Web sites.

Surprisingly, the phrase "news librarian" or "news researcher" is completely unknown among journalists, journalism educators, and library science faculty in Romania. (The term "special librarian" is a bit of a mystery to them as well). That does not mean that investigative reporting is not done there, but when it is, it lacks the critical element of carefully balanced news research for accuracy and comprehensiveness. It may be a long time before news librarians are part of Romania's news organizations. Then again, it might happen faster with proper working models such as The Freedom Forum News Library.

The Freedom Forum News Library at the Warsaw Journalism Center, a training program for young student journalists, was the next stop. Maria Roszkowska, the librarian there, had planned a busy training program, but allowed me some time to see some of Warsaw's unforgettable sites.

Poland is farther down the road to democracy than most of its neighbors. However, this does not mean that there was less need for the type of training I had come to provide.

Essentially, my training methods in Warsaw were similar to what I had done in Bucharest. The only significant difference was that most of the students and instructors at the center spoke English. Only one class of students required the services of an interpreter. (FYI - WWW is pronounced VU-VU-VU in Polish!) Typically, I would meet with groups each morning and afternoon for three hours each. I made a 30-40 minute presentation and then began to demonstrate online, which was often a slow process. Telecommunication services are making progress in Poland, but there is still a long way to go - even for colleges and universities. However, while Poland does not yet have the telecommunications infrastructure to accommodate high-speed digital lines, that is not stopping the development of commercial, academic, and personal Web sites.