CONTACTS WITH ALA

One the biggest achievements of AZLA of its existence is hosting the ALA Immediate Past President Ms. Ann Symons in Azerbaijan. Ms.Symons together with Mr.Jordan Scepanski - a Chair of the ALA International Relations Committee and Ms. Lea Wells - a former Chair of ALA's Personnel Administrator's Discussion Group conducted a workshop under a title: "Cooperation for library development: on library associations, consortia, and other collaborative approaches".

     Muzhgan Nazarova at Workshop openinng. Are sitting (from left to right): Mr.Craig Dicker, Ms.Ann Symons, Ms.Lea Wells, Mr.Khalil Ismaylov, Mr.Jordan Scepanski.

 

A workshop was supported by the USIA Alumni Small Grants Program administered by IREX and a grant from the Open Society Institute (OSI) - Azerbaijan. More than fifty Azerbaijani librarians attended a two-day workshop at the grand hotel Europe in Baku. During their stay in Baku the ALA guests have had a chance to visit the leading libraries in the country, get acquainted with the working conditions of the librarians and the library collections. The American librarians also have had a chance to visit a regional library network in Kuba - one of the regions of Azerbaijan.

The opinion of the American colleagues about Azerbaijani librarians and libraries is as follows: "even though there is absolutely no automation in local libraries, the collections are not updated regularly, a government is not providing enough support and the librarians don't have any idea about electronic databases, they still do a wonderful job keeping a traditional old-style libraries going under almost extreme conditions of work and still trying to meet the information needs of their patrons".

The USIS IRC and Information And Training Program (IATP) centers in Baku help to meet the information needs of the Azerbaijani audience by providing access to World Wide Web and multiple online databases".  Even though Muzhgan Nazarova has been involved in cooperation with the ALA since 1996, a visit of American colleagues to Azerbaijan has become a good start for AZLA-ALA cooperation in future.

September, 1999