IFLA WLIC Day 8 - Last Official Day

Last night might have been the Closing Session, but today was my last day with official conference stuff on my to-do list.  I had registered for one of the local library visits, heading to the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and its associated Mayibuye Archives.

UWC has a interesting history, especially for a pretty new institution. It was only founded in 1959, with the first students in 1960. It was created to be a college/training institution for colored South Africans, but in about 10 years become a full university. When the first black Rector was appointed in the mid-1970s, UWC became increasingly liberal and by the early 1980s, had an official policy of nonracial admissions in place.  The university was one of the vocal supporters of democracy, and was home to lots of intellectual debates on the subject.  It has grown into a respected research university (the Chem and Life Sciences buildings were both enormous and state of the art!).  President Mandela praised it for having grown "from an apartheid ethnic institution to a proud national asset."  It's student body is still predominantly black or colored, and the school keeps education for under-serviced/disadvantaged populations as one of it's primary missions.

The library at UWC itself is pretty standard in a lot of ways for a large university library, I guess.  There are 14 floors of materials, special collections, study areas, archives, computer labs, computer classrooms, offices, and so on.  Some of the special collections are pretty unique, with lots of local history (there's a whole section on District 6 and relocations, for example).  On that topic, for another personal touch, one of the collections development librarians leading us around had been a resident of District 6 - his family had been relocated when he was about 5 or 6.  Again, putting a personal face on history.

The library's in a nice, big new building (see above!) and it's understandable they're proud of it.  The 14 floors seem to be staggered or offset from each other, not 14 floors straight up like a sky scraper.  They are all accessed from a main atrium.  There's a ramp instead of a staircase, spiraling up the atrium and opening onto each floor.  It's a neat use of space, and apparently the design won some architectural awards.

 

Something I didn't know was that South African universities use Dewey for their academic libraries.  Not everyone uses Library of Congress, of course, as it's the US Congress referred to in the title.  But I honestly didn't know what they would use, if they would have their own national system or something.  Now I know!

The other stop of the tour was the Mayibuye Archives.  The archives are housed on the UWC campus, on one of the lower levels of the library building, but they are actually run by the Robben Island Museum.  It has focused on collecting material about all aspects of apartheid, resistance, social life and culture in South Africa, and has built collections from several hundred individuals and organizations.  They describe themselves as an inside look at apartheid, because of the thousands of letters and personal papers that they have collected.  There's thousands of pictures, oral recordings, and video material too.  Very very interesting place.  The biggest downside?  Being a museum archive, there's a relatively small staff, so there are always more projects on the to-do list than the staff has hours in the day.

Oh, and "mayibuye" means “Let it return” in one of the South African languages (there are 11 official languages, and I'm not sure which one).  The word was a popular slogan and rallying cry in the anti-apartheid movement, with a number of meanings.  Two of the most common uses are referring to bringing back exiled South Africans, and to bringing back Africa to her people.

There weren't pictures allowed in the interior of the Archives, but they had a very interesting display of the history of apartheid and the anti-apartheid movement.  Lots of newspaper clippings, flyers, photos on display for the casual researcher to see as they visited the building.  It's one of those displays that really made history feel real.  And rather disturbing - some of the newspaper clippings were about the children arrested as political detainees: 1000s arrested, subjected to the same arbitrary decisions of the police, even the same beatings and tortures (electroshock, especially) as the adult detainees. And this was in the early 1980s!  Just like the District 6 Museum, it's the feeling that this shouldn't be happening in my lifetime, that people and governments should be more civilized than this. But then, we still have news today of violence and police beatings and so on in developed nations, including the US.  Maybe we just want to feel like civilization has progressed, when we're really always working against humanity's baser, more negative (and self-defeating) interests.  (And when did this become a philosophic, 'serious issues' blog??)

One last note on the UWC trip.

To get there, we had to drive about 20-30 minutes away from the downtown area to get to the campus.  In doing so, we drove through the Cape Flats area, which is one of the township areas.  These are the areas where black and colored people (distinct racial classifications under apartheid) were relocated after being removed from other areas of the city (like District 6).  These areas were typically under-supported by the city, to put it mildly.  As one librarian at UWC termed it, these are shantytowns, or squatters areas.  These areas show various levels of poverty, and even from the highway as we drove by, you could see lots and lots of tin roofs crammed in tightly next to each other.  For a little girl from the US suburbs, this was worlds away from anything I'd ever seen.

 

The librarian who was leading our tour, however, had an interesting perspective.  She drives that way from her neighborhood, past the Flats, to get to UWC for work.  She says that it's a daily reminder of why she does what she does.  As I said above, UWC was one of the earlier universities to adopt nonracial enrollment policies, and still boasts a large number of graduates coming from lower socioeconomic circumstances.  An education opens doors, makes change possible, and the library helps a student reach this goal.  A daily reminder on her commute to work.

IFLA WLIC Day 7 - Boulders Beach

And here it is, THE PENGUINS!! You knew it was coming at some point this week, and today was the day :)  This is a very picture-heavy post; you have been warned.

Boulders Beach is on False Bay, to the southeast of Cape Town.  It is part of the national park, and it is a protected beach where African penguins come to nest!  Once you're in the park, you follow the little boardwalk around to the beach.  It's a short little walk, so easy enough for anyone who wants to see. 

And there they are!  They are RIGHT THERE near the boardwalk.  Wild penguins!!  See how close they are to the boardwalk?

This little guy was just too cute, standing so properly.

 

African penguins are unfortunately an endangered species.  The several large nesting grounds in South Africa are reporting fewer and fewer breeding pairs each season.  Like many animals, humans are having an impact - the fishing industry has depleted their food supply, their beaches are being built up with condos, global warming, pollution, and the occasional oil spill. 

We even saw a penguin release today.  Several people carrying large cardboard boxes with air-holes and labeled with the Shorebirds Conservancy logo crossed the fence, going off the boardwalk and onto the beach itself.  They carried the boxes over to a quieter part of the beach, lined them all up, and then tipped them slowly out.  And out came penguins!  I didn't get to ask the parks staff (dressed in that standard, international olive green shade used by Parks departments around the globe) if they were rescues or rehabilitated or what.  But whatever they were, they were released!

 

Aside from the pictures I'm in, I think this is my favorite one that I took.  I am actually quite proud of it.  :)

IFLA WLIC Day 7 - Wind and Wildlife

Today I took a bus trip down to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope.  Which, incidentally, is not the furthest south you can go in Africa.  There's another cape a little to the east (just a couple lighthouses east, as a matter of fact) which is further south.  The Cape of Good Hope is, however, the further southwest that you can go in Africa.  And how often can you say you've been to the corner of a continent?

The drive reminded me very much of Highway 1 in California.  Very rocky coastline, very windy roads, and absolutely gorgeous scenery.

 

The Cape itself is a National Park, with plenty of wildlife and wide open scrublands.  There really isn't tall vegetation, simply because of the wind!  This much water around you, this far south, means that the winds can get pretty intense.  Fun fact: they were going to name this the Cape of Storms, but that was considered too negative, bad luck, so they went with the more positive Cape of Good Hope.

At the Point itself, you take a little funicular rail to the base of the lighthouse, and then can take the stairs up to the lighthouse.  You have an absolutely breathtaking view, while the wind is whipping about also taking you breath away!  In the pictures below, the one with my windblown locks is in front of the Cape of Good Hope (the little spit of land behind me) while the other is in front of False Bay.  Which is actually a bay, but not Table Bay at Cape Town which olden sailors were aiming for.  The mountains apparently looked similar enough that it caused confusion; hence, False Bay.

 

And being a national park, we were on the lookout for wildlife.  The first siting was an ostrich crossing the road.  It sounds like the start to a joke, doesn't it, but there he was!

 

Further up the road, our bus driver slowed because he had spotted a baboon on the side of the road.  As we sat and watched, it turned out the baboon wasn't alone!  There were several of his friends, including several young ones scampering about and playing!!

 

 

Baboons are actually a pretty dangerous pest animal in that part of the world.  They are intelligent, move in large groups, and will eat anything and everything.  The park and the coastal towns actually have a job called Baboon Spotter, who radios in the movements of baboon troops sited in the area, so that those nearby can plan accordingly.  

And yes, this sign below was the one which the baboons were playing behind.  Very appropriate, really.

But the real stop was coming up next - Boulders Beach!

IFLA WLIC Day 6 - Multicultural Librarianship

Today was my day of multicultural sessions.  My morning session was sponsored by the Indigenous Cultures Special Interest Group, and my afternoon one by the Multicultural Libraries one.  I had been looking forward to today's sessions more than any of my others, I think.  Between moving to Hawaii in the spring, and a long running half-joke, half-plan to move to New Zealand when Zach gets out of the Army, I was definitely curious.  I was also pretty sure there was a lot I could take home from these sessions.

The morning one was by far my favorite.  There's just so much potential from the projects these presenters are working on, and so much need for them.  It's just a great opportunity.

The project that intrigued me the most was out of Western Australia, called Storylines.  It works with Aboriginal groups in WA, uploading pictures and using the community knowledge to add names, dates, places, and tags to them.  And the tagging goes beyond just basic metadata; users can add whole stories to the pictures (or recordings or videos, whatever was uploaded).  The portal is available in several Aboriginal languages, and they aim to eventually have it available in all languages in that state.  The project returns materials to the Aboriginal families if possible, once everything's uploaded, so there is a restoration component to the project too.  And there is a culturally sensitive aspect; pictures can be marked as private or sacred or secret, so that something that should be treated with a great deal of respect doesn't end up as 'just another picture' going viral on the Internet.  There's a little bit more restriction in dealing with those, so that they can indeed remain private. It's a great platform with a lot of potential applications.  I can think of several historical libraries I've researched in which would benefit from being able to collect local, personal history like that.  And even the college I work for has boxes of old pictures from the 1960s and 1970s which would be such a resource, if only they could be properly labeled.  A portal like Storylines would be really be useful for libraries and archives like these!

And there are so many stories coming out of Storylines so far!  A man from the Lost Generation was helping with the project, and actually identified some of his own family members, and was able to reunite with his mother.  And in another area, children were asking about a dance shown in pictures, one they hadn't seen before.  It sparked the elders to remember the dance and teach it to the younger generation.  And the presenter said that's an added benefit, how it's helping to bridge generations as they share stories; the children hear stories from the past, and the older generation learns computer skills working with the portal.  It's a really, really impressive project.

I think that is becoming one of my favorite topics this week.  Not indigenous populations necessarily, but inclusion. Yesterday I had a session on LGBTQ materials in the library, and today had the two multicultural sessions.  I'm a knowledge junkie, and curious.  I want to know everything I can.  And one of the things that boggles my mind utterly is the conscious decision to deny someone access to information.  It's one of the reasons that Banned Books Week can get me riled up - if you don't agree with something, fine, but don't try to tell me it's something that I'm not allowed to read.  Let me decide for myself.  If there's an unconscious block to information access, or an institutional hurdle rather than an actual policy or rule, then it's something that can be overcome.  We just have to figure out how.  So I have really enjoyed my sessions which discuss inclusion within a library, how best to provide information to all audiences, to meet the needs of more than just the majority.  Sometimes it's because you're in that minority that you need the resources a little more.  Seeing people all over the world tackling the same (or very similar) problems, it makes you think.  At what point is this a reflection of human nature, dominance of the majority and all, but is it also part of human nature to work together, to share ideas on how to address the balance?

I had a nice long chat with the Indigenous Population SIG chair after the morning session.  Lots of good advice for someone starting out in the profession, and possibly thinking about this aspect of a library.  Volunteer volunteer volunteer!  Get involved, both professionally and in the community.  Especially if I'm thinking about working with multicultural or indigenous library services, being active in the community will definitely help build those connections. And she had a great line about native cultures and the more relaxed way many of them look at life, that "things just bloom in their own time, when they are meant to."  I know it's a cliche, but when you're looking at finishing your degree and moving a quarter of the way around the world in the same month...  well, the reminder that things will happen when they happen, and sometimes the best opportunities are the ones that come upon us unexpectedly, can be very comforting.

IFLA WLIC Day 6 - Knitting!

So, last night at the cultural event, like I said, I spent a good hour or so knitting.  I left with the needles and yarn and the blanket square I'd completed, planning on bringing them back to the charity booth today when I wandered the Exhibition.

As it turns out, today at lunchtime was the collection day for all the blanket squares.  The project was 67 Blankets for Nelson Mandela Day.  Why 67?  Mandela worked for human rights for 67 years of his life, so it's a common number used when honoring him.  

 

This project is like Project Linus in the States, for those familiar with it.  People contribute knit or crocheted blanket squares, and then volunteers will seam the squares together into whole blankets.  People can contribute whole blankets too, if they want.  The completed blankets are then donated to charity.  And excitingly, the Conference knitting group reached their goal - 67 blankets!  Plus a few scarves and hats :)

Most of the people involved with the project here at the conference are local (well, South Africans - some are from Joburg or Pretoria or elsewhere, not all Cape Town).  Many of them were chattering along in Afrikaans around me as we were all knitting while staff counted up the completed squares (a sampling of which is shown above).  One lady noticed me, and asked if there was a similar charity that I was working on.  I said that no, I'd gotten involved after meeting some knitters the day before, and thought I'd stop by to help.  Knitting is pretty universal, after all, and knitters are knitters wherever you are.

And speaking of "knitters are knitter wherever you go," I was sitting and knitting along, and the guy standing next to me knitting (the bearded gentleman in the picture below) mutters under his breath "Oh, kraap!"  And I spell it that way because you can't hear the thick Afrikaans accent otherwise.  But I laughed at how that translates in any language, and he was chuckling and turning a little red, knowing that he'd been overheard dropping a stitch :)

The other funny story from that lunch was that I kept hearing what I thought was my name, except that no one's name tag showed "Lara" or anything like that.  But I asked the lady next to me if someone had that name (I didn't know if it was a word they were using - with my familiarity with Afrikaans, I could have been hearing the word for 'yarn' or 'shoe' or something, and confusing it with my name).  But, lo and behold, there was another Lara there!  We laughed and chatted and swapped business cards, laughing that we are going to form an International Knitting Lara club (current membership: 2).  

Oh, and I got another half a square done as I was sitting and chatting :)  I'd've finished it too, except I had to scoot out to make my afternoon session.

For my knitting notes, I completed one and a half blanket squares in the approximately 2 hours I was working on them.  I cast on 35, knit garter for a few rows, then garter stitched the end 3 stitches and stockinette the middle.  The I finished with a few rows of garter stitch again.  I was on size 5.0mm needles using a DK acrylic.

IFLA WLIC Day 5 - Knitters!

Tonight was the Cultural Event for the conference, so lots of delicious food and entertainment.  (As a side note, it reminds me of school - we didn't have parties, we had cultural events!)  There were face painters and lots of music, even a drum circle.  I've a few pictures here in the atrium and hall areas (which were still very much part of the event), but my pictures from inside the main room were too dark.  You'll just have to check out the official IFLA FB and Flickr pages to get the full idea.

 

 

The main entertainment for the evening was good, but it's still a large, crowded dance floor, and I can only take so much before I need to slip away (introvert, remember).  So as I was taking a moment in a side room, enjoying the calm for a moment, three girls a little younger than me sat down on the couches around where I was sitting.  And I kid you not, one of them opened her bag and pulled out knitting supplies for them!!  I just started laughing, "Mine's in my room!"  

The girls turned out to be staff members for the conference, working for the company organizing the volunteers.  They were on duty tonight to manage the volunteers during the cultural evening, and had brought the knitting to help pass the time.  The knitting is for a charity project going on during the conference, and as I was sitting and chatting with them, one ran into the Exhibition Hall to get another set of needles from the charity's booth.  So I, too, sat and knit a blanket square!  Probably not what some would think of as an exciting Cultural Evening, but I had a great time!

I had a great time chatting with the girls, who were all South African, and just as much fun listening to them.  It seems it's a matter of routine to shift from English to Afrikaans and back, like Spanglish.  So we talked about languages for a little while, which I found very interesting.  There are 11 official languages in South Africa, and it's not uncommon to know 2 or 3, plus a smattering of words from others.  I was told that those speaking the African languages likely know even more, since the tribal dialects can be pretty similar.  Then English is the business language, and Afrikaans is still very much in common use.  Even the ATM I visited gave you 4 language choices - English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu.  Apparently the younger generation (like the girls I was chatting with) are more prone to mushing the languages together, while their parents tell them to 'keep it pure', and hold consistent in language choice at least until completing the sentence.  It reminded me of the movie Tortilla Soup, where the father is constantly fussing at his daughters to pick one language and stick to it.

And my final thought for the night is that I didn't look for knitters, and hadn't tried to go yarn shopping, but the knitters still found me :)

IFLA WLIC Day 5 - Meeting people

Networking, networking!

Part of the benefit to these conferences is the ability to meet people face to face, swap business cards, build those connections.  And I'm doing my best to strike up conversations.  As I mentioned yesterday, it's not my strong suit, introvert that I am, but librarians on the whole are a pretty friendly, helpful bunch.

As I've been talking to people, I've been asking about career paths and schooling.  Librarianship is such an unusual field in terms of grad school.  We all need our master's (or at least most countries require it) but unless they want to teach, few get into the field thinking "I want my PhD in Information Science."  That's very different from my undergraduate degree.  Scientists pretty much know if they will need advanced education, and if they will need it, most go straight through to the doctorate (or at least the ones I know).  At most, it seems they might take a year or two for some sort of work-study or Fulbright or Peace Corps sort of project.  But I know very few librarians, either in my grad school or those I've met at events like this, who have gone straight through.  A lot of people seem to get out and work for a couple years (or more) and then find their way back to a PhD program for one reason or another.  Common advice I'm hearing is to get involved in the IFLA and/or ALA committees.  They are good ways to get to know other professionals, and also to learn some of the opportunities and possibilities out there for librarians.  More chances to figure out how I want to focus my library career, and possible ways to go about doing it. 

As for me, I'm still learning my options.  We will be moving to an actual city in April, and there will be a university there with a PhD program I could enter.  I don't object to further education, so in terms of the work, I have nothing against earning my doctorate.  But with moving around so unpredictably, I am unsure if I should get my PhD while we're in a city where I can, or if I should wait, or if I need it at all.  Will I spend all that time and effort and expense to earn my degree, and then end up getting stationed at Ft Irwin or Polk or someplace else so remote there's no chance to use it?  So, as I chat with people, I'm also trying to pick their brains, get advice, and hear their story of how they ended up where they are.

Speaking of where we'll be in the future, I've met one librarian who teaches at the university there where we'll be stationed in the spring, as well as a couple people who will introduce me to others (people who know people, in other words).  Here's hoping that it'll help get my foot in the door next year, and make moving to a new area a little easier (in the job search, at least!).

I'm also meeting non-librarians (who'd've thought!) and it's very interesting talking to people from all over.  At the reception last night, for example, I had a great conversation with a college kid from Montreal who had come along with his mom before heading back to school in the fall.  We talked about beaches and the coast (the reception was at an aquarium, after all) and travel and sites in Cape Town and the surrounding area.  I've only had a little bit of tourist time so far, but what I've done hasn't been what he's done so far, and vice versa, so it was interesting comparing notes.  He said that he'd be shark diving this week, so hopefully I'll see him again later this week and be able to hear how that went!