Abstract: Describes the American Library Association program, established in 1987, that has sent U.S. librarians to libraries around the world to carry out special projects. The program is funded by the United States Information Agency (USIA). Each year, eight to 10 individuals are selected, based upon requests from libraries (or other educational or cultural institutions) in other countries for assistance in particular activities. Individuals of the first three groups of Fellows are identified, and their projects summarized. The proposal and selection process is outlined.
“In a world divided by ideology, by trade barriers, by military threats and nuclear fears, we librarians are not powerless. We are the ambassadors of an indivisible world — of culture and books and ideas. Unfortunately, we are not plenipotentiary. But there is no country in the world where librarians cannot make some small progress toward removing the boundaries and lowering the barriers which separate cultures and which are sponsored by citizens or by governments. Every librarian, regardless of his government’s policy, has the opportunity, if he has the courage, to open the avenues of books and ideas a little wider. … We must try to make the world of books more open — so that men and women everywhere may breathe freely the uncensored open air of ideas.” [1]
Since 1987 the Library/Book Fellows Program has enabled more than 35 U.S. librarians to be information ambassadors by working in libraries and other educational and cultural institutions around the world. Funded by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and administered by the American Library Association (ALA), the program sends eight to ten fellows abroad each year for periods ranging from three months to one year.
Fellows carry out projects proposed by overseas institutions with the assistance of the USIA, the agency responsible for U.S. overseas and cultural programs, among them the Fulbright Scholarship program, the Voice of America, and 160 libraries and reading rooms in 80 countries. (Information on the proposal process appears later in this article.) Fellows are selected after a three–level review conducted by ALA, an independent, nongovernmental, educational organization. Only U.S. citizens are eligible, but citizens who have lived abroad for a ten–year continuous period (e.g., 1981–91) preceding application are excluded.
The aims of the Library/Book Fellows Program are threefold:
The diverse projects undertaken by fellows during the past five years have included designing automated library systems, developing and organizing American studies and U.S. government document collections, establishing graduate programs in library science, training host–country librarians in online information retrieval, and documenting U.S. books translated into foreign languages.
The first group of eight Library/Book Fellows, chosen from more than 200 applicants, set off during 1987–88 for Chile, Mauritius, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Jordan, Turkey, and Finland. In this group was Meryle A. Gaston, Near East librarian and assistant curator at New York University, who journeyed to Amman, Jordan, for a project at the American Center of Oriental Research, a nucleus for Jordanian–Palestinian and biblical archaeology and history. Gaston developed a collection policy for the center, standardized its cataloging to prepare for future automation, and acquired research materials to fill gaps in the collection.
Another fellow in the inaugural group was Eloise S. Pettus, professor in the University of Arizona Graduate Library School. Pettus helped establish a Master of Library and Information Science program at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, the culmination of a dream fostered by the country’s leaders for 27 years. In 1987–88, fellow Richard Greenfield, a law information specialist at the Library of Congress, offered seminars on CD–ROM applications for libraries and helped develop cooperative library automation projects throughout India. Elspeth Pope, a cataloger at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, laid the groundwork for a national union catalog and helped establish a centralized library processing operation in Mauritius.
Nine fellows were chosen from among 300 applicants for assignments during 1988–89 in Argentina, Liberia, Malawi, Uganda, Yemen, Egypt, France, Sweden, and Thailand. In Malawi, Catherine Collins, librarian at the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University, developed computer literacy courses for staff at the University of Malawi Library and cataloged several thousand items in the library’s Malawiana collection. Donna Taxco Tang, director of the Pima Community College Library in Tucson, Arizona, went to Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities to discuss the role of public libraries and advise educators who were considering a national community college system. Cornell University law librarian and professor Jane L. Hammond was assigned to Monrovia, Liberia, where she worked with the Liberian National Bar Association to acquire materials, train staff, and organize the operations of the new National Law Library.
The eight librarians selected as 1989–90 Library/Book Fellows traveled to such far–flung places as New Zealand, Taiwan, India, Norway, Ireland, Jamaica, Syria, and Swaziland. Dorothy C. Woodson, a social sciences specialist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, helped the University of Swaziland find and copy thousands of pre–independence Swazi historical documents held in libraries around the world, and acquire the priceless papers of a classical anthropologist whose life’s work was done in Swaziland. At the National Library of New Zealand, Henry F. Raine’s experience as a rare books cataloger at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., helped him teach New Zealand catalogers how to catalog rare books and add the records to the New Zealand Bibliographic Network. Alicia Sabatine spent 15 months in Jamaica after her one–year fellowship was extended for the final part of her project. Sabatine, a library information specialist for Jefferson County Public Schools, Golden, Colorado, taught library automation at the library school of the University of the West Indies and also developed a microcomputer teaching laboratory and a Local Area Network for the school.
The 1990–91 class of Library/Book Fellows are now carrying out a variety of assignments in Hong Kong, Haiti, Pakistan, Greece, Barbados, Botswana, Lesotho, Venezuela, and Spain.
Overseas institutions wishing to host a Library/Book Fellow should submit proposals for fellowship projects by November 1 of each year. They should first contact, as early in the year as possible, the Public Affairs Officer or Cultural Affairs Officer at the United States Embassy or Consulate in their country with the proposed project. The officer will discuss the project as part of the Library/Book Fellows Program and help the institution to describe it in terms that will help ALA recruit a fellow with the appropriate background and experience. In most cases, fellows begin their assignments abroad in September of the year following the project proposal.
The following information is required of all institutions seeking to host a fellow: the country and city of the fellowship; the desired length of the fellowship and its approximate dates; the host institution and the name of the person administratively responsible for the fellow (with title, address, and telephone, telex, and fax numbers); qualifications desired of the fellow, e.g., degrees, specialized experience, and subject expertise; language requirements; and background information on the host institution (data on library collections, staff, audiences, etc.).
In addition to providing a full description of the project, including specific and realistic goals attainable during the fellowship period, institutions should be prepared to comment on the potential value of the project to the host country, and on the probability of lasting benefits and continuing institutional support for projects or programs initiated by the fellow.
For teaching and training projects involving a Library/Book Fellow, institutions should designate course titles, level of instruction, the extent of students’ previous instruction or staff’s experience in the subject, and the availability of teaching materials and equipment. Proposals for library automation projects should indicate the level of development of automated functions and services in the host institution, and computer hardware and software available, as well as the computer expertise of the staff. Proposals should also specify the type of staff training desired for automated library functions (individual or group training).
The Library/Book Fellows Program also asks institutions to provide information on the availability and cost of housing for the fellow and on local medical services and commissary or APO privileges, as well as any other data pertinent to living and working conditions in the host city and institution.
The first five years of the Library/Book Fellows Program have shown that the most successful projects occur when the host institution or organization has made a firm and active commitment to the project and to the fellow selected for it. This involves a willingness to supply the resources necessary for a fellow to accomplish the project goals, and to aid the fellow’s adjustment to a different culture by assuring adequate housing, work space, and social support. The host institution’s conviction that the project is of continuing value and will produce long–term benefits is also a factor in its success.
The program is, to date, a successful experiment in cross–cultural understanding. Its success depends on solid proposals and cooperative attitudes. For the host institutions, the benefits are numerous, ranging from specific advice and consultation on a particular problem to boosting the host institution’s staff morale. For the fellows, working in another country can provide exotic ambience, fascinating acquaintances, new challenges, and sometimes even glamour. It can also be a confusing, complicated, and confounding experience. Only an extraordinary individual will consider leaving the comforts of home and the security of employment to travel thousands of miles to another country. It takes commitment and courage. The fellows’ universal reaction, however, is probably best summed up by former fellow Faye Powell when she said of her experiences, “Whatever I am able to contribute here is being more than returned to me in the expansion of my own knowledge and appreciation of this part of the world and the library profession in India.”
1. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Indivisible World: Libraries and the Myth of Cultural Exchange (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1985), p. 14.
Robert P. Doyle has been Director, Library/Book Fellows Program, American Library Association, since the program began in October 1986. He had worked previously for A.L.A., in the Office for Intellectual Freedom, and was a frequent speaker on censorship issues as well as the editor of Freedom to Read Foundation News. Mr. Doyle coordinated the IFLA conference in Chicago, 1984. A graduate of the university of Notre Dame, he went on to take his M.L.S. a the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from UWM in 1989. His library experience includes positions at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and at the Oak Lawn (Illinois) Public Library. He has published in American Libraries, Nation, Index on Censorship, Principal, and Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, and has contributed to the ALA Yearbook and the Bowker Annual.
The Proposal Process