ISSN: 1548-4343 AAMES Newsletter Vol. 5 No. 2 Spring 2008 A biannual publication of the Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Section of ACRL/ALA Inside this issue: Message from Vice Chair Message from Vice-Chair 1 Dear AAMES members: volunteering to serve on an AAMES committee. Look at the Committee Charges to familiarize Digital Divine 1 With the support of its members and volunteers, AAMES is growing and we need yourself with the goals of each committee. http:// www.ala.org/ala/acrl/aboutacrl/acrlsections/aames/ to continue in moving forward. As you are Librarianship Endeavors 2 aameshomepage.cfm in Kenya aware, without your active involvement, AAMES would not go far. It is your profes- I sincerely suggest you to please fill in the volun- A Bibliography of Afghan 2 sional organization and all of us have to teer form specifying the committee (s) you are Librarianship take active and constructive participation interested in serving, and send forms/interest to in it. me at your earliest. The volunteer form is available From the Editor 6 at: http://www.acrl.org/volunteer ACRL has asked me to start the process of AAMES Annual Program 8 appointing members (and chairs where Please let me know if you have any questions or needed) to various committees like Consti- concerns. tution and Bylaws Committee, Conference Thanks for your kind cooperation. Program Planning, Membership Committee, Nominating Committee, and Publications Best wishes Committee. Rajwant Chilana As the Vice-Chair/ Chair-Elect of Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect ACRL/AAMES 2008-09. AAMES, I invite you to participate in the work and collegiality of the Section by %~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!%~!% The Digital Divine An unparalleled, priceless, genesis of a core collection of German bib- projects undertaken in Armenia, China, open repository of ancient, classical, liographic donations more than 150 years Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Israel, Leba- medieval, and Renaissance era manu- ago, Hill Manuscript & Museum Library non, Senegal, South Africa, Syria, Tibet, and scripts, incunabula, ephemera, rare (formerly known as Hill Monastic Manu- Turkey. By design a "library of libraries", books, esoterica, and fine art resides script Library) has expanded its image access to HMML's textual and visual re- within the underground domain of the holdings to more than one million in digi- sources can be best understood and ap- Hill Museum & Manuscript Library. tized format and on microfilm reels, in proached as "collections of collections". Dis- religious and vernacular subject areas. persing international teams of researchers, Under the auspices of Saint John's Ab- Augmenting its virtual archives are physi- technicians, and photographers in collabora- bey & University in Minnesota, cal content in the form of artifacts and tive global endeavors, HMML cooperates HMML maintains as its primary mis- collectibles of principally devotional pur- with institutional and individual partners sion the photographic conservation pose: carvings, icons, furnishings, liturgical and donors who are in possession of the and preservation of antique manu- book arts of monastic scribes, textiles, original documents. In the filming and dig- scripts resulting from intellectual and chants recordings, original folios, and calli- itization of the manuscripts, HMML also spiritual endeavors of monastic re- graphic works of contemporary artists. sometimes acquires by purchase the original search communities. source works. HMML's Armenian collec- Of particular interest to this ALA/ACRL Born of Benedictine ethos from the (Continued on page 3) section would be HMML's manuscripts Vol. 5 No. 2 Spring 2008 AAMES Newsletter Page 2 Librarianship Endeavors in Kenya Mara-Skyline.jpg Public Domain; See: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mara-skyline.jpg Kenya is an important country to research librarianship practices because developed regions in Kenya, and contains dren to literacy rather than nothing be- of the high rate of illiteracy in the coun- 962,143 inhabitants (Atuti, 2002, p. 2, 5). cause of the low school attendance. try. Much of Kenya is a pastoral society The Camel Library Service targets For each camel mobile library, in which people move from one area to manyattas (villages) and nomadic schools there are four boxes containing about 300 another and many children do not at- (Atuti, 2002, p. 2, 5). library materials, which are loaded onto tend school. Therefore, when thinking The Camel Library Service origi- three camels, along with a tent, two chairs, of Kenya, a person wonders what Kenya nated on October 14, 1996 in Garissa a table, and umbrellas (“Camel mobile,” has to offer in terms of librarianship. town, which is in the North Eastern Prov- n.d.). A librarian is in charge with two as- Two specific librarianship endeavors ince of Kenya by the Kenya National Li- sistants as well as a camel herdsman unique to Kenya are the Camel Library brary Service (“Camel mobile,” n.d.). On (“Camel mobile,” n.d.). There are currently Service and book boxes. April 13, 1999, the Camel Library Service a few constraints, which the camel mobile was replicated in Wajir town (“Camel library faces: lack of materials in local lan- Camel Library Service mobile,” n.d.). The camel mobile library is guages, harsh climate, camels becoming In 2002, Kenya had 28 branch librar- meant to provide access to books for pas- indisposed, and inadequate funding ies including seven provincial libraries, toralists surrounding Garissa, five to ten (“Camel mobile,” n.d.). These constraints eight district libraries, and thirteen kilometers away from the regional library, will be discussed in more detail. to help fight illiteracy (“Camel mobile,” community-based libraries (Atuti, 2002, Atuti surveyed 250 library users of n.d.). Currently the North Eastern Prov- p. 2, 5). Of the community-based li- Garissa about the Camel Library Service, of ince has an 85.3% illiteracy rate versus brary, two are camel mobile services which 160 questionnaires were usable for 31% in all of Kenya (“Camel mobile,” n.d.). (Atuti, 2002, p. 2, 5). The Camel Library the study (1999, p. 4-5). 72% of camel li- This program is also meant to support Service is meant to service the nomadic, brary users were males, which could be due education, since 48.4% of primary school pastoral community of North Eastern to the higher percentage of male enrollment age children do not attend school (“Camel Kenya. This area encompasses about in Kenya's schools (Atuti, 1999, p. 4-5). mobile,” n.d.). It is better to expose chil- 22% of Kenya's land, is one of the least (Continued on page 4) A Bibliography of Afghan Librarianship “Afghan Libraries Get Help from unpublished, this document may be avail- ghanistan, and roundly condemns the Iran.” American Libraries 34.10 (Nov able from the library of the Afghanistan actions of the Taliban against the librar- 2003): 27. Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU). ies of Afghanistan. While factually accu- Little more than a printed sound bite, rate, the political agenda of the article this brief news article highlights a num- deserves some scrutiny (at the time, ber of Iranian initiatives in the year Amirkhani was the Director General of 2003. For a detailed look at Iranian sup- the National Library of Iran). port for library-related initiatives in Amirkhani, Gholamreza. “Visitors Find Afghanistan, see “Iran and Afghanistan's War-Weary Kabul Librarians Strug- Reconstruction.” gling to Rebuild.” American Libraries 33.11 (Dec 2002): 31. Alkozai, Jamil, et. al. “Ministry librar- Wavy Afghan flag Public Domain—see http:// ies in Kabul: an initial listing.” Dec commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Afghan_flag_wavy.jpg The political agenda of this article, too, 2005. Unpublished. deserves some consideration, although, Amirkhani, Gholamreza. “Afghanistan's again, the article is factually accurate. Although several years out-of-date at Lost Splendor.” American Libraries 32.11 While giving only the briefest glimpse of this time, so far as I know, this article is (Dec 2001): 19. the only survey of the libraries in Af- the state of some of the libraries in 2002, ghan government ministries. Although This article talks briefly about the great the hopes described in this article pro- history of libraries in fifteenth century Af- (Continued on page 4) Vol. 5 No. 2 Spring 2008 AAMES Newsletter Page 3 Digital Divine contd. (Continued from page 1) metadata attachments in an array of lit- erary and liturgical languages, dialects tion includes microfilmed content ob- (Greek, Christian Arabic [Melkite, Ma- tained via the libraries of University of ronite, et alii], Persian, Osmanian- Tübingen, the Mechitarist Congregation Turkish, Arabic-Persian, Coptic, Coptic- in Vienna, and the Armenian Apostolic Greek, classical Arabic, French, Span- Catholicosate of the Great House of ish), tongues, translations, and translit- Cilicia in Lebanon. An additional preser- erations (Greek-to-Arabic, Syriac-to- vation project - also commenced in Arabic). HMML's texts and artworks Lebanon -at the Institut du Clergé Patri- images are as vast and disparate as the arcal de Bzommar has produced a super- Syriac Sertâ book script.jpg Public Domain regions in which they were photo- lative collection of manuscripts in the See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ graphed (Cairo, Montserrat, Barcelona, Armenian, Syriac, and Arabic languages. Image:Syriac_Sert%C3%A2_book_script.jpg Lisbon, Rome, Berlin, Gottweig, et cet- era). A handlist compilation, along with com- literature written on paper and palm leaf