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6 an American Librarian in the Middle East by Thomas Cetwinski

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6 an American Librarian in the Middle East by Thomas Cetwinski An American librarian in the Middle East By Thomas Cetwinski Consultant, Telemedia, Inc. Cairo, Egypt The challenges faced by a library consultant to the Royal Saudi Naval Forces. I n January 1972 an agreement between the The challenge United States and Saudi Arabia created the Saudi Naval Expansion Program (SNEP). The objective The personal living adjustments for an Ameri­ of SNEP was to assist the Royal Saudi Naval Forces can in Saudi Arabia are challenging, to say the (RSNF) in the establishment of naval bases at Jid- least. Temperatures reaching 125 degrees with dha on the Red Sea, Jubail on the Persian Gulf, 97 % humidity and summer sand storms displaced with headquarters at Riyadh, the capital. The pro­ any lingering romantic notions of the desert. The gram envisioned the construction and delivery of success of our stay in Saudi Arabia was also prede­ various classes of oceangoing vessels as well as termined by an ability to merge professional con­ smaller craft. Construction of the naval bases be­ cepts of time, quality, scheduling, and cost with lo­ gan in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s with actual cal practices common to Middle Eastern business implementation in September 1979. transactions. What was lacking in climate and liv­ A Naval Forces School was established at Jubail ing conditions, however, was compensated for by to provide the RSNF with skilled technicians and the Saudis themselves. Our students and officers officer personnel to direct, operate, maintain, and were cooperative and eager to learn. Their desire support naval ship and required shore activities. to adopt and implement U.S. standards and speci­ Four separate but related schools met this objec­ fications was encouraging and a constant source of tive: a Naval Specialization School, a Technical motivation. Specialization School, a Combat Training School, The professional challenge presented was partic­ and a Naval Tactical School. ularly enlightening in two personal respects. The In January 19801 accepted the position of librar­ first was that in practicing librarianship you are al­ ian for the Naval Forces School with Telemedia, a ways able to rely on professional colleagues for ad­ consulting firm in Chicago. Telemedia shared the vice through formal or informal discussion. If you responsibilities of implementing a training pro­ have a particular idea or problem you can also con­ gram with several U.S. companies in Jubail, and duct a literature search resulting in shared experi­ the library was one of their direct concerns. ences. Rut in a remote fishing village of only several 6 hundred population on the Persian Gulf all you are One central library with three satellite libraries left with is your imagination. had been planned for the school. The satellite li­ This leads to my second point. There has always braries were in different facilities, the distance been much discussion within the profession con­ from the main library being such that it required cerning our “transferable skills.” I have often been documentation readily available for the daily oper­ an outspoken proponent of librarianship’s flexibil­ ation and training on equipment. Other than tech­ ity in this regard. It was not until recently, how­ nical and support documentation the central li­ ever, that I realized my ignorance or naivete about brary was designed to house a general college level what exactly that meant. Here I was a librarian with an undergraduate degree in the humanities and graduate courses in administration and man­ agement of academic and special libraries, on a On a military compound in military compound in the desert, handling techni­ cal material pertaining to sophisticated electronic the desert, without staff or a equipment without an initial staff or an issue of Li­ brary Literature in sight. After first panicking I realized that the packag­ copy of Library Lit in sight. ing and dissemination of information is, in fact, a transferable skill; and that the bringing together of specific information and patron requirements is reading collection, selected microform material, not necessarily brought about by subject expertise, and a walk-in vault in order that required classified but rather understanding search strategies and in­ material could be properly housed and controlled. formation organization. The subject expertise was The collection consisted of technical documents, present in my engineering and military colleagues support material for research and development, a at the worksite. I needed to draw from my knowl­ general reference section, school archives, and cur­ edge and experience in conducting appropriate ref­ ricula master reproducibles. erence interviews to determine the nature of the lit­ Training devices in the school were actual ship­ erature leading toward the identification of board equipment. As a training device was deliv­ specific information requirements. Of particular ered to the school, the accompanying documenta­ value was the professional respect shared on the tion fell into three categories: technical manuals project and our willingness to cooperate in reach­ which were primarily shipboard applicable, cur­ ing common educational objectives. riculum for operation and maintenance training, By the time our contract reached its conclusion a and manufacturer’s manuals. It was the library’s super-highway between Jubail and Dhahran re­ initial responsibility to verify contract deliverables, placed the existing primitive road. This increased identify discrepancies, distribute material, and our accessibility to the airport and a large city. maintain master copies. Other responsibilities in­ Along with that milestone came the availability of cluded appropriate managerial tasks: reports, resources at the University of Petroleum and Min­ planning, evaluations, administrative duties, com­ erals, convenient international telephone and telex mittee assignments, etc. The most challenging as­ service, and a Safeway supermarket. pects of the work of the librarian, however, were The library those areas requiring a comprehensive knowledge of librarianship and a familiarity with educational The library at the Naval Forces School had to environments. combine the best elements of an engineering and an There were plans for the eventual introduction academic library to offer independent research ca­ of an automated cataloging system which would pability for all concerned. A collection of approxi­ bring together all document repositories of the mately 6,000 titles with a maximum growth of Royal Saudi Navy in Saudi Arabia and abroad. The 12,000 had to be cataloged and classified in a man­ initial logistical problems of the remote site, how­ ner in which the student, instructor, and engineer ever, precluded such plans. A manual system could make effective use of the collection. It was would have to be implemented and maintained for the library’s objective that a patron be able to approximately five years. search the card catalog, retrieve a document, and Publications arriving were placed in one of two accomplish a task independent of a librarian’s as­ categories by the NFS library staff: “training” ma­ sistance. terials or “technical” documents. All library material was in English. The first stu­ Training materials were contractor furnished dents acquired their technical knowledge and En­ commercial publications in support of the training glish language ability at schools in the United effort. These materials were added to the collection States. Subsequent students, however, would not using the LC cataloging and classification system. have the U.S. experience. Therefore the primary They represented approximately 10 % of the collec­ concern in developing library services was the stu­ tion and were processed using cataloging-in-print dent’s ability to comprehend directions and con­ data. cepts presented in English. Technical documents were government or man­ 7 ufacturer’s published material and accounted for nical librarian would begin the search with the stu­ 90% of the collection. After initial contract deliv­ dent by keywords, or in this case key letters. Under erables were accomplished these percentages KSR there would be a see reference card to the en­ would eventually reverse themselves. try “teletypewriter sets.” Documents published specifically for the Saudi The card catalog was divided into two parts. Naval Expansion Program were assigned an RSN First, there was a standard shelflist of all docu­ (Royal Saudi Navy) cataloging and classification ments held by the library in call number order, re­ number. This identification number consisted of a flecting shelf location; it also functioned as an in­ five-digit code indicating a general commodity or ventory record. Second, there was the traditional subject matter. It was followed by a chronological author/title/subject card catalog in dictionary for­ three-digit serial number and a three-letter code mat. indicating document type. For example, RSN- Students were trained in the proper use of the li­ 09234-001-TMM began with the country code, brary by a series of printed handouts dealing with Royal Saudi Navy; followed by a subject identifier various policies and procedures. These were sim­ 09234, gas turbines; a chronological serial number, ple, direct, to-the-point instructions,“since English 001; and a document type, TMM, technical man­ was their second language. These were more suc­ ual. cessful than an all-inclusive, widely distributed The NFS Library created an in-house subject “user’s guide.” Guides were
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