University of Arizona
School of Information Resources and Library Science
Middle East Librarianship Summer Course
July 19-30 2004
9:00am to 12:45pm weekdays
Course Summary
Middle East Librarianship underwent in the 1960's and 1970's an expansion parallel to that in the rest of academe, as US government funds were directed through the Defense Department and Office of Education to National Resource Centers in the area studies, among them those promoting the programs on the Middle East, South Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and so forth. Funds were made available to support the centers and the libraries associated with them. Often these funds were made available through renewable grants to research libraries to purchase books and support staff salaries. A number of librarians in charge of collections on the Middle East began their careers during these years because of the attractive opportunities. Now, nearly forty years later, these librarians are retiring. Unfortunately, they are not all being replaced because of the lack of qualified and interested candidates for these positions or because of funding cuts.
The shortage of qualified library staff, those who have or have acquired the necessary linguistic skills, subject area background, and technical training, and most important the inclination to pursue a library career, has become acute. Frequently, these prospective area studies librarians are (and have been in the past) those who have advanced academic credentials whose intended careers in teaching and research have been thwarted or redirected for some reason. It has been almost universally uncommon that area studies librarians began their careers with library work in mind.
The Middle East Librarianship summer course at the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science intends to remedy in a small measure the current situation in which there are few qualified prospective librarians or only accidental or reluctant candidates for the increasingly available open positions in Middle East librarianship. The course intends to introduce prospective librarians to the operation of a distinguished Middle East collection and offer students some essential training in collection development, technical services, reference provision, and management as these components are related to Middle East studies.
Themes (Areas and topics to be covered daily):
1--collection development (including book vendors, approval/blanket order profiles, acquisitions resources
2. Collection development (Europe, North American, the Middle East)
3--core monograph and journal collections and research-level collections, premier collections in the US and Europe and their histories, etc.
4--electronic publications and other resources
5--cataloguing issues related to Middle East subjects and languages
6--reference and instruction: basic print and electronic resources for technical services and reference
7--introduction to bibliographic utilities and online systems, especially from the perspective of non-roman alphabet script languages, technology and non-roman script languages
8--management of a small library unit and integration into the general organization, job descriptions and basic qualifications for Middle East librarians and technical support staff, budget (collection and personnel)
9--manuscript and archives collections and resources
10--professional and scholarly associations and their activities, histories, and publications
The course will be a seminar, in which the instructor will introduce the themes
of the unit, and each student will prepare (using the resources presented in
the online syllabus, bibliographies, and from material discussed in the previous
sessions) to present and discuss critically some aspect of the themes under
the moderation of the instructor.
Evaluation will be based on class participation and a final paper or project.