Monday after my return from Bamako, Paul Solomiac, director of Academic Affairs for SIL West Africa, and I went to visit the local library school, ISTID, or the Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l'Information Documentaire, which trains archivists, curators and librarians for Burkina Faso in partnership with other library organizations in France. The training is based on a French curriculum, and the degree is recognized by the CNAM, the degree-granting organization of the French government. The man we met with, Djibrilou Tamboura, is the director of Studies and Continuing Education. Ezéchiel, who has been volunteering in the library, is considering picking up a library degree if he can fit it into his schedule. Paul and I thought it would be good to have a look at the facility and talk to someone on the faculty there since the website seemed a little skimpy on information. Professor Tamboura seemed very knowledgeable and was a good source of information.
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| this is Professor Tamboura |
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| The neighborhood looks a little deserted. The library actually shares its quarters with another educational institution. |
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| One of the classrooms |
Below is the primary textbook used:
The negative is that the distance-learning degree is not offered at this time as it requires a certain number of students (30?) to make it worthwhile. This means an evening program for Ezéchiel involving, a commitment of 6 nights a week for two years... He has a number of extracurricular activities so this may not work out...
On another note, here's the new outfit I picked up from the tailor that same evening. The African jewelry lady, who comes by the Center at least a couple of times a month touting her own handiwork, found me a coordinating necklace of small wooden beads and colored coconut discs which I couldn't resist. She manages to know exactly when there is a workshop or conference going on.
Since the outfit feels a little like wearing hospital scrubs, it is good to have some jewelry to dress it up a bit!
Work is a little slow in the library because there are two computer- related workshops back-to-back and most of the bandwidth is used up. Both are SIL workshops and are Africa-wide so the computer person from Mali is here this week, and Dan Brubaker, who I worked with there in Mali, will be here next week. I have also run into a really helpful man named Matthew Lee from Cameroon who was here possibly 3 years ago at a workshop and he helped me with a frustrating ResourceMate issue at that time. Small world.
But there are those from East Africa as well, many who had very complicated flight schedules because of the lack of direct flights from certain regions. Most of the participants are men, but there are two women, one from the Côte d'Ivoire, and one Burkinabè. I chatted with the woman from Burkina at lunch, discussed the library, told her a little about Simon Nacoulma and his various projects, and now she is interested in contacting him... I also gave her a little tour of the SIL library afterwards, and she was very interested in the materials on adult literacy as well. As you recall the statistics are pretty grim here in Burkina Faso, although the literacy rates are improving.
Fina also asked me to talk to Simon about translating a few books from the Bloom Library into French for her Saturday Kid's Club. Bloom Library is a SIL literacy project that allows the creation of simple books in any language or adapting those from another language. I tried adapting one into French myself but ran into a problem with slow response time here and the inability to upload the finished document to their site as a result. Very frustrating.
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| Bloom Library |
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| African Storybook |
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| Book Dash |
There are a couple of other similar open-license book-making sites, Book Dash and African Storybook listed on the Bloom site, both out of South Africa, but geared to a very culturally different part of the African continent than Burkina.
I have also contacted Dounko Sanou at FAVL (Friends of African Village Libraries), about visiting this week but he is currently in the western part of the country visiting 4 libraries involved in a special "Readers are Leaders" (nos dirigeants de demain sont des lecteurs d’aujourd’hui) program co-sponsored by the US Embassy here in Burkina. I'm not sure what that involves but will ask him about it when I finally get to see him next week. Probably speeches and a donation of books (primarily in English) to each library. It seems I recall another donation made by the Embassy of Japan to the Mediathèque Municipale in Ouagadougou a few years back... Which is why, although that library suffers from a paucity of books by African authors in French, it ironically has a lovely collection of books in Japanese...
Since I now have the time [as there is such limited Internet access during much of the workshop!], I am writing up my assessment of the SIL library in Bamako and will send it up with my recommendations after I finish translating it into French for the the two francophones that I am cc'ing...
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