   
Aid for Iraq
2003-2004
The Governing Board of IFLA at its meeting on 9th August 2003 decided to host on IFLANET a list of offers made by the international library community to help rebuild the library infrastructure in Iraq.
Offers should be sent to: agrestoj@orha.centcom.mil
Reconstruction of Iraq - British Library offer of assistance
The British Library has identified two principal means through which it might provide a contribution to the reconstruction of Iraqi libraries and archives under the heading "reconstruction of the collections". These are:
(i) Conservation training
The British Library can offer some assistance with conservation training
for Iraqi personnel, as the need becomes clearer in the future. This could
take the form of placements and/or internships within the Conservation
Department of the British Library, to help with the development of book
and paper conservation skills appropriate to the care of the Iraqi
collections.
Ahead of any practical conservation training, the BL could also offer
assistance in Preservation Management, especially in assisting with
priority setting and planning, given the scale and size of the
conservation problem.
(ii) Production of collection item surrogates
The British Library would be willing to particpate in an internationally
co-ordinated and funded programme to produce surrogate copies of cultural
heritage items of significance held in the BL's collections as a
contribution to the reconstruction of the collections of Iraqi libraries
and archives.
British Library
September 2003
Books required by University Libraries in Iraq
While almost all university libraries south of Iraqi Kurdistan were
looted and/or burned, even the ones left untouched have little in them.
In Kurdistan, there are hardly any books after 1980. It is the same for
journals. The law library in Tikrit has a few hundred law students and
80 books in its whole library - and most of these are Xerox copies of
Xerox copies stitched together. The will accept books in every field
and specialty.
That said, where they think the need is greatest is in the sciences and
medicine - including nursing, pharmacy and veterinary medicine and
science. These books, also, can and should be in English. All
agriculture related material is also vitally necessary.
While they will gladly accept all texts and back copies of journals,
they would lean toward the sciences and engineering and computer science
over the political science texts which predominate on your list.
Political science (hard as it might be to believe) is not widely taught.
Still, I need to emphasize that the need is across all fields, though
the books that would be most useful in English are in the sciences,
medicine, English literature and language, agricultural sciences, and
engineering simply because those fields are all taught in English.
John Agresto, Senior Adviser
Higher Education
CPA, Iraq
E-mail: agrestoj@orha.centcom.mil
March 2004
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