Biblioteca de Babel: Developing University Libraries in Latin America
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050710874250 |
| Published date | 30 October 2007 |
| Pages | 30-31 |
| Date | 30 October 2007 |
| Author | Ian M. Johnson |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Biblioteca de Babel: Developing University
Libraries in Latin America
Ian M. Johnson
30 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 9/10 2007, pp. 30-31, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050710874250
Introduction
The European Commission's ALFA
programme (AmeÂrica Latina FormacioÂn
Acade mica)[1] encourages cooperative
activities between the two continents,
and specifically aims to encourage the
development of Latin America's
universities. Under the aegis of Round
II of the ALFA programme, a project
was undertaken between 2005 and 2007
to share best practice between
university libraries in Europe and Latin
America. University libraries in Latin
America are handicapped because of
inadequate human resources. They have
a small number of staff and face high
demands. They also exist within an
organisational culture in which
teaching tends to be didactic, and
research in many disciplines is weak,
leading to a diminution of libraries' role
and status. The project, initiated and
coordinated by Atilio Bustos, Director
of Library Systems at the Pontificia
Universidad Catúlica de Valparaiso
(PUCV) in Chile, was intended to
confront some of these problems.
Methodology
The first meeting of the group was
held in Paris in June 2005, hosted by the
Columbus Group, a small secretariat
that has been established to coordinate
joint activities by the European
Universities Association and the UnioÂn
de Universidades de AmeÂrica Latina y
el Caribe. Discussions in Paris ranged
across a variety of issues that are
challenging university libraries, and
settled on three of mutual interest ±
institutional repositories, information
literacy and digital reference. Working
groups were established to develop
guidelines for each topic.
From the beginning, the groups agreed
to communicate by e-mail between
meetings as only three main meetings
could be supported by the project grant,
and the Institutional Repository at PUCV
was used to share documents. However,
the group concerned with Information
Literacy experienced some
communication problems, and its Latin
American members scheduled an
additional meeting in Bogota, Colombia
in November 2005. One outcome from
that meeting was the initiation of a wiki
as a learning tool.
At the second general meeting in
March 2006, hosted by the University
of Utrecht, The Netherlands, each of the
groups refined the outlines for their
guidelines, and agreed who would draft
each section.
Everyone delivered the promised
contributions to the draft guidelines on
time. Some overlapping content needed
to be edited and restructured to clarify
lines of action. The project coordinator
and the coordinators of the three
working groups met in Granada, Spain
in October 2006 to edit the individual
contributions into a single document
about each topic.
Generally, those who had missed the
Utrecht meeting found that they could
assimilate what had been done because
of the preparatory work for the final
meeting in Chile in March 2007, which
was intended to review progress and
finalise the guidelines.
Outputs from the project
As the guidelines were aimed as
much at university managers as their
librarians, technological detail was
minimised to produce user-friendly
documents that would facilitate and
support decision making. The three
guidelines documents will be no more
than 25 pages each, with an
introductory executive summary to
capture the attention of the university
managers and decision makers. Each
focuses on the potential benefits in
terms of their contribution to the
achievement of the universities' overall
objectives. They reinforce an
understanding of the significance of
ICT applications for achieving changes,
as well as explaining what has to be
done to underpin that achievement. In
particular, they emphasise the need for
a broad based information strategy,
concerned not only with the
technology, but also with use of the
universities' information content
(particularly that which could be placed
in the Institutional Repository). They
will explain how this needs to be
supported by digital reference services,
and exploited by the development of
contemporary pedagogical approaches
based on the acquisition of information
literacy skills by staff and students.
The project was an encouraging
example of cooperation across distance,
time and institutional as well as
language barriers. Some 15 universities
from Latin America and nine from
European Union member states were
involved, although active participation
varied during the different stages of the
project. Their representatives included
not only librarians but also senior
university managers. Although, in some
cases, related development work was
already in progress, participation in the
project served to necessitate
formalisation of the activity and a more
structured outcome. It was noted that
for the Latin American partners,
software from commercial suppliers
was frequently not affordable. There
was therefore a general willingness
among participants to share materials
that they had developed to enhance the
outputs of the project. A side benefit of
the project partners' networking has
been an increase in student exchanges
between participating institutions.
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