Librarians Aid Troubled Iraq
Efforts, large and small, provide books and materials to Iraqi kids, U.S. troops
By Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2004
ALA will use a $20,000 grant from the Tides Foundation to provide children's books to public libraries throughout Iraq. The Near East and Southeast Asia subcommittee of ALA's International Relations Committee (IRC), which will coordinate the effort, is now collecting bibliographies of the best children's books in Arabic, Kurdish, and other languages, says Michael Dowling, IRC's director.
The need is great. "Many libraries and library collections in Iraq, such as the Basra Public Library, were damaged during the recent war," says ALA President Carla Hayden. Dowling adds that while Saddam Hussein was in power, Iraq's libraries were in severe decline and cut off from the international library community.
The Coalition Provisional Authority's cultural section is assisting the project, coordinating with local Iraqi librarians who will help review the children's book list. Dowling says that in addition to books published outside the country, ALA wants to acquire Iraqi children's books to help invigorate the nation's book industry. Books are expected to begin shipping this fall to libraries across Iraq from Al Basrah in the south to Mosul in the north to Baghdad and other cities in the central region. The project may possibly extend its reach to aid Iraqi school libraries.
Meanwhile, Michele King, a media specialist assistant who runs the library at Hawthorne Elementary School in Sweet Home has been running her own supply program for Iraq. Since the beginning of the war, she has collected several hundred boxes of donated supplies, including personal hygiene products, and shipped them to U.S. troops stationed there. King is now collecting school materials for Iraqi children. "These kids have nothing and keep asking the soldiers for pens, paper, and pencils," she says.
King says the project has kept her busy, helping offset her concern for her own son, Nobel, 31, an Army sergeant currently stationed in Iraq. Because of the classified nature of his work—Nobel's unit is part of the Patriot missile program—King seldom knows her son's exact location.
In the meantime, donations of materials have poured in to Hawthorne's library from students, teachers, and local businesses. King, pleased at the largesse, says, "It's just been a windfall." With the help of teaching assistants Peggy Hufford and Anita Nork, King says she's preparing an initial shipment of supplies to Iraqi children. But first she'll send her students home with a note updating their parents about the project.
Cheryl Sanderlin, a librarian at Vernon Hills (IL) High School, has similarly involved her school community in her project, collecting paperback books to send to American soldiers wounded in Iraq. Together with students from the Interact Club, an on-campus community-service group, Sanderlin has collected about 500 paperbacks, donated by students and families. Bookplates with donors' names and their notes of encouragement to the soldiers will be attached to the books.
Sanderlin, who launched the project in April during National Library Week, has coordinated the effort with U.S. Army Col. Mary Clark, the nursing director of the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Mosul, and is now awaiting shipping instructions. Sanderlin got the idea for sending books from an earlier schoolwide project, in which students corresponded with soldiers recovering in the Mosul hospital who needed something to pass the time.
And what do the students think of the project? "They were pretty excited to be able to help our troops," says Sanderlin. "It's a small way to make their days and nights a little easier, a little happier."
