LIBRARIANS FROM REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA VISIT U.S.
TO STUDY ROLE OF LIBRARIES IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES

U.S. State Department funds three-week program with $150,000 grant

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. ­ Sixteen librarians from the Republic of Georgia will come to Massachusetts for three weeks in January to receive training in various aspects of library science, and to learn how libraries can help build a stronger democracy through serving as active players in the building of civil society, through a program organized by the Institute for Training and Development in conjunction with Mount Holyoke College.

Funded with a $150,000 grant from the State Department's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, the training will be conducted by librarians and faculty from Mount Holyoke and professors Simmons College's Graduate School of Library and Information Science, which has a branch at Mount Holyoke. The program will be directed by Stephen Jones, associate professor of Russian and Eurasian studies and a preeminent authority on Georgia, who submitted the grant proposal in conjunction with the Institute for Training and Development (ITD) of Amherst. Large, medium and small public libraries, as well as college and high school libraries in the Pioneer Valley and Boston have agreed to participate in the program, which runs from January 5 through January 24.

Jones, who has studied Georgia for more than two decades and is a frequent visitor to the former Soviet republic, sees the program as an effort to help a poorly functioning democracy in a region increasingly vital to the strategic interests of the United States. Both the global war on terrorism ­ including the Georgian army's conflicts with Chechen "terrorists" ­ and the threat of war with Iraq have magnified Georgia's importance, Jones says.

"The goal of the program is to give Georgian librarians training about various aspects of library science, as well as the role of libraries in the community," Jones says. "We want them to have some idea of how libraries work positively for democracy, how important they are to democratic development, how important they are to the development of civil society, and what their function should be in the community." In the seven decades Georgia spent under Soviet rule, its libraries functioned largely as book repositories, subject to communist censorship and control.

Jones and Julie Hooks Davis of ITD visited Georgia in October to select the librarians who will take part in the program. Of the sixteen chosen, only six are from the capital, Tbilisi, with the remainder from the outlying provinces, where the need is greatest. Jones suspects it was this aspect of the proposal that led him and ITD to succeed over their rivals for the grant. The majority of the participants cannot speak English, and translators have been provided.

Participants will attend presentations on various aspects of library science and the role libraries play in the American social and political scene. They will also visit several libraries in the Pioneer Valley and Boston, and will be able to "shadow" their counterparts at several sites. Also included in the intinerary are trips to cultural sites in Boston and New York, and attendance at a Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners meeting. After their return to Georgia, the participants will attend workshops on seeking grants from international foundations that fund projects in that nation.

"We want to help them help themselves, so part of the project is to try and encourage them to think about what can be done for very little money in provincial libraries," Jones says. "We want a practical result from this." In the summer of 2003, a group of librarians from the Pioneer Valley will travel to Georgia, following up on the libraries' funding requests and helping to further cement connections with and among their Georgian counterparts.

The program continues a connection Mount Holyoke established with Georgian libraries in 1995, when the College helped organize the first national library conference in that nation since its independence in 1991. Mount Holyoke has also donated books to Georgian libraries, which have no funds for buying materials.

Hooks Davis, of ITD, sees the program as a benefit not only to Georgians, but to Americans as well. "In general, Americans are very isolated from the rest of the world. This is largely due to geographical reasons. The more contact Americans get with people from other countries, and the more we come to know how other peoples think and experience life, the better we will understand what it means to be human beings," she says.

"The opportunities we take to share our wealth of knowledge and resources make our lives richer. In this case we can share our concepts of individual involvement in the community and community involvement in our democracy. We can also share our concept of education as an open process, where the learner is not inhibited or limited in the search for information."

Jones' efforts complement those of Andrew Lass, an MHC professor of anthropology who has worked to improve technology and training in eastern Europe.