School Photo

I love this picture, on many different levels. It was taken this month when I was a special guest at Lord Byron School in Gyumri for a poetry recitation by the school’s English students.

The British Government built the school in 1991 at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership to aid the community, which had lost most of its schools in the 1988 earthquake. The school was modeled after the latest British school design of the time. It is composed of three classroom areas and a fourth area, which is a large gym, all connected by enclosed walkways in a square configuration. It is a wonderful concept, with great spaces for kids. But the building has had little maintenance since it was built. The roof leaks, there is no running water (and a terrible stench from the bathrooms where water is carried in and poured into the drains once a day), and there is no heat. The gym is currently not usable due to floor problems.

On the day this picture was taken, there were several inches of snow on the ground outside, and all the kids and teachers were wearing their winter coats in the school. This picture shows several of the students who recited poetry written by Lord Byron (1788-1824), their principal, and the English teacher, a special friend of mine.

Note how I tower above everyone (I may be the tallest woman in Gyumri), the usual dour school principal expression, and what really pleases me, there are a few smiles escaping from some of the kids’ lips. Armenians do not smile. The predominant color worn by all Armenians is black. Note my brown coat. Two women here have told me that my “coat would be nice if it were black!” The teacher, Anahit, is a warm bubbly person, something that could never be captured in a photograph, as she would never allow that side to be shown. She is incredibly typical of Armenian women of her age (54), short hair dyed reddish, ten pounds overweight for each decade past twenty, stylishly dressed (the snazzy boots don’t show), and very proud. She adores her students, and her husband.

The Mission of Libraries in Armenia

Last week I was invited to attend a conference in Yerevan which centered on regional libraries in Armenia. There are ten regional libraries outside Yerevan, which are all supported by the national Ministry of Culture and therefore receive no local funding. Civilitas Foundation, which, among other wonderful activities, supports libraries in Armenia, sponsored the conference.

The guest of honor was a librarian from the Los Angeles Public Library. She is an Armenian American and headed up the American University of Armenia Library from 1992 to 1996, its startup days. Previous to this meeting she had been making site visits to the regional libraries.

I had met with Ani the day before at the Shirak Regional Library (SRL). The week before I had been to the library; there was no heat, the few employees who were present were heavily bundled up (snow blanketed the ground outside), and the roof in the main section was leaking badly. When I arrived at the library to meet Ani, space heaters had been cranked up, workers were repairing the roof, and all 72 employees of the library appeared to be working, though there were few library users. I made sure that she saw all the corners in this labyrinth called a library. Ani said that many of the problems in this library were present in the others.

The meeting the following day was very instructive. She mentioned so many things that are intuitive for us, but which were eye-openers to the Armenians. Such as: Heating is important for preserving books. Moisture in books can contaminate adjoining books and can ruin a whole collection. Shabby and ruined books are anti-hygienic. The entrance to libraries must be attractive to users and have good signage to invite people in. Books in the children’s section must be within reach of children and the furniture should be sized for children. There needs to be open space and lots of places to sit. People need to see that you are actually improving the library; if they don’t see progress, they will not contribute or support the library. Of course, none of these things are happening at the regional library.

Global issues are that the libraries see themselves as individual entities. Through a united association they can address larger issues. It is important to re-activate the library association.

She talked about how disturbing it was to see more employees than users in the libraries and talked about how this was a relic of the Soviet era. She suggested that libraries could work with a fraction of their current staff if they were trained professional staff, and if they were hard working and dedicated. She questioned why people who work should be paid the same as those who don’t. (All staff receives the same pay.) The LA Public Library, which has 850 librarians, would have to have 5,000 librarians for the same level as seen in the regional libraries.

Then the regional directors talked about having bookstores within the libraries, to raise money for additional programs. The other professionals were dismayed at this idea. One of the directors’ reasons was that there are no bookstores in some areas. (In Gyumri, population 150,000, there is not a single bookstore.) Ani said that if they opened bookstores there would be a disincentive for organizations to donate books because they might fear that the libraries would sell them, a thought that had not occurred to the directors.

Libraries should be seen as public centers of civil society. They need mission and vision statements. They need to be involved in outreach. They should be pulling in grandmas and kids. They need to ask people why they don’t come to the libraries. They need to advocate for their own libraries and study the needs of their communities, and collect feedback. They need to clarify their objectives. They need to set priorities based on their vision. “You know what you have, you are not clear what is needed.”

There was a very heated discussion when Ani said that the libraries needed to have a collection development policy and weed out old books. She said that generally scientific books should be kept no more than ten years. The directors said that they were not allowed to throw away old books. They need “justification.” The Ministry counts books. They have to keep whatever books are received from the Ministry. They don’t receive many books, so they can’t just throw some away. Farmers are detached from modern technology and they still need the old books. Ani asked if the library association could discuss this with the Ministry. (The SRL has thousands of un-catalogued books, mostly Soviet-era technical books, dumped on the floors of several small rooms.)

One director admitted that his library had many employees for social reasons. He could not cut his staff. They could increase their workloads. He admitted that it was difficult to retrain older employees. New functions are being added so he needs all the staff. “Employees of culture should not be fired. It is better to fire teachers.” You cannot alienate cultural employees. (This man’s background is in physical education and there are no trained librarians in this library.)

Ani said that the role of regional libraries has changed since the Soviet times when they were serving all the smaller libraries. Today the regional libraries should each be able to operate with 20 active employees who can all work and are well trained.

Civilitas gave each of the libraries a Wi-Fi router and suggested that they put up signage that Wi-Fi exists as a sign that they are actually improving the libraries. And they were given a Flip camera to be used for publicizing events on a new regional library website for Armenia. (Libraries.am)

Then there was a discussion about free open source library software. The speaker (Tigran Z) gave a demonstration of OpenBiblio, which Georgia is very happy with, is widely used in Europe, is designed for libraries having 50 to 200,000 volumes, is very user friendly, works with MARC21, maintains a user database, and has check-out and check-in capabilities. It can also handle multiple languages (Armenian, Russian, English). He even offered to set up training classes.

The head of the Information Resource Center of the US Embassy (Nerses H) introduced their web page, suggested the new regional library web page, and offered to help the libraries set up their own individual pages, and then give trainings.

Another interesting guest was the head of the National Tempus Office (Lana K) who provoked much of the discussion. Her organization, in cooperation with several EU countries, is offering a masters program in library science, a rarely studied but much needed skill here. I’ve been talking it up to as many of my students as I can interest.

I gave a presentation on what Peace Corps Volunteers are currently doing in Armenian Libraries, and presented ideas about other possibilities. The directors were enthusiastic, and said that they were interested in IT help (setting up Wi-Fi), Excel trainings, and help with grants (which have to be presented in English.) Then I received a message from the Peace Corps that they were not interested in placing volunteers at libraries, a huge disappointment to me.

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