ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 6 An American librarian in the Middle East By Thomas Cetwinski Consultant, Telemedia, Inc. Cairo, Egypt The challenges faced by a library consultant to the Royal Saudi Naval Forces. I n J a n u a ry 1972 an a g re e m e n t b etw een th e United States and Saudi Arabia created the Saudi Naval Expansion Program (SNEP). The objective of SNEP was to assist the Royal Saudi Naval Forces (RSNF) in the establishment of naval bases at Jid- dha on the Red Sea, Jubail on the Persian Gulf, w ith headquarters at Riyadh, the capital. The pro gram envisioned the construction and delivery of various classes of oceangoing vessels as well as smaller craft. Construction of the naval bases be gan in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s w ith actual im plem entation in September 1979. A Naval Forces School was established at Jubail to provide the RSNF w ith skilled technicians and officer personnel to direct, operate, m aintain, and support naval ship and required shore activities. Four separate but related schools m et this objec tive: a Naval Specialization School, a Technical Specialization School, a Com bat Training School, and a Naval Tactical School. In January 19801 accepted the position of librar ian for the Naval Forces School w ith Telemedia, a consulting firm in Chicago. Telemedia shared the responsibilities of im plem enting a train in g pro gram w ith several U.S. companies in Jubail, and the library was one of their direct concerns. The challenge The personal living adjustments for an Ameri an in Saudi Arabia are challenging, to say the ast. Tem peratures reaching 125 degrees w ith 7 % hum idity and summer sand storms displaced ny lingering rom antic notions of the desert. The ccess of our stay in Saudi Arabia was also prede rm ined by an ability to merge professional con pts of time, quality, scheduling, and cost w ith lo l practices common to Middle Eastern business ansactions. W hat was lacking in climate and liv g conditions, however, was compensated for by e Saudis themselves. O ur students and officers ere cooperative and eager to learn. Their desire adopt and implement U.S. standards and speci cations was encouraging and a constant source of otivation. The professional challenge presented was partic larly enlightening in two personal respects. The rst was th a t in practicing librarianship you are al ays able to rely on professional colleagues for ad ice through formal or informal discussion. If you ave a particular idea or problem you can also con uct a literature search resulting in shared experi ces. Rut in a remote fishing village of only several c le 9 a su te ce ca tr in th w to fi m u fi w v h d en 7 hundred population on the Persian G ulf all you are left w ith is your im agination. This leads to my second point. There has always been m uch discussion w ithin the profession con cerning our “transferable skills.” I have often been an outspoken proponent of librarianship’s flexibil ity in this regard. It was not until recently, how ever, th a t I realized my ignorance or naivete about w h at exactly th a t m eant. Here I was a librarian w ith an undergraduate degree in the hum anities and graduate courses in adm inistration and m an agem ent of academ ic and special libraries, on a m ilitary com pound in the desert, handling techni cal m aterial pertaining to sophisticated electronic equipm ent w ithout an initial staff or an issue of L i brary Literature in sight. After first panicking I realized th a t the packag ing and dissemination of inform ation is, in fact, a transferable skill; and th a t the bringing together of specific inform ation and p atro n requirem ents is not necessarily brought about by subject expertise, b u t rath e r understanding search strategies and in form ation organization. The subject expertise was present in my engineering and m ilitary colleagues a t th e worksite. I needed to draw from my know l edge and experience in conducting appropriate ref erence interviews to determ ine the nature of the lit e r a t u r e le a d in g to w a r d th e id e n tif ic a tio n of specific inform ation requirem ents. O f particular value was the professional respect shared on the project and our willingness to cooperate in reach ing com m on educational objectives. By the tim e our contract reached its conclusion a super-highw ay betw een Jubail and D h ah ran re placed the existing prim itive road. This increased our accessibility to the airport and a large city. Along w ith th a t milestone cam e the availability of resources at the University of Petroleum and M in erals, convenient international telephone and telex service, and a Safeway superm arket. The library T he library at the Naval Forces School h ad to com bine the best elements of an engineering and an academ ic library to offer independent research ca pability for all concerned. A collection of approxi m ately 6,000 titles w ith a m axim um grow th of 12,000 had to be cataloged and classified in a m a n ner in w hich the student, instructor, and engineer could m ake effective use of the collection. It was th e lib ra ry ’s objective th a t a p a tro n be able to search th e card catalog, retrieve a docum ent, and accomplish a task independent of a lib rarian ’s as sistance. All library m aterial was in English. The first stu dents acquired their technical knowledge and E n glish la n g u ag e a b ility a t schools in th e U n ited States. Subsequent students, however, w ould not have the U.S. experience. Therefore the prim ary concern in developing library services was the stu d en t’s ability to com prehend directions and con cepts presented in English. One central library w ith three satellite libraries h ad been planned for the school. T he satellite li braries w ere in different facilities, th e distance from the m ain library being such th a t it required docum entation readily available for th e daily oper ation and training on equipm ent. O ther th a n tech nical and support docum entation the central li b rary was designed to house a general college level On a military compound in the desert, without staff or a copy of Library Lit in sight. reading collection, selected microform m aterial, and a walk-in vault in order th a t required classified m aterial could be properly housed and controlled. T he collection consisted of technical docum ents, support m aterial for research and developm ent, a general reference section, school archives, and cur ricula m aster reproducibles. T raining devices in the school w ere actual ship board equipm ent. As a training device was deliv ered to the school, the accom panying docum enta tion fell into three categories: technical m anuals w hich w ere prim arily shipboard applicable, cur riculum for operation and m aintenance training, and m anufacturer’s m anuals. I t was the library’s initial responsibility to verify contract deliverables, identify discrepancies, d istrib u te m a terial, and m aintain m aster copies. O ther responsibilities in clu d ed a p p ro p ria te m a n a g e ria l tasks: rep o rts, planning, evaluations, adm inistrative duties, com m ittee assignments, etc. The most challenging as pects of the work of the librarian, however, w ere those areas requiring a comprehensive knowledge of librarianship and a fam iliarity w ith educational environments. There w ere plans for the eventual introduction of an autom ated cataloging system w hich w ould b rin g together all docum ent repositories of the Royal Saudi Navy in Saudi Arabia and abroad. The initial logistical problems of the rem ote site, how ever, p re c lu d e d such plans. A m a n u a l system w ould have to be im plem ented and m aintained for approxim ately five years. Publications arriving w ere placed in one of tw o categories by the NFS library staff: “training” m a terials or “technical” documents. T raining m aterials w ere contractor furnished com m ercial publications in support of the training effort. These m aterials w ere added to the collection using the LC cataloging and classification system. They represented approxim ately 10 % of the collec tion and w ere processed using cataloging-in-print data. Technical docum ents w ere governm ent or m a n 8 ufacturer’s published m aterial and accounted for 90% of the collection. After initial contract deliv erables w ere accom plished these p ercen tag es would eventually reverse themselves. Documents published specifically for the Saudi Naval Expansion Program were assigned an RSN (Royal Saudi Navy) cataloging and classification num ber. This identification num ber consisted of a five-digit code indicating a general commodity or subject m atter. It was followed by a chronological three-digit serial num ber and a three-letter code indicating docum ent type. For example, RSN- 09234-001-TMM began w ith the country code, Royal Saudi Navy; followed by a subject identifier 09234, gas turbines; a chronological serial num ber, 001; and a document type, TMM, technical m an ual. The NFS Library created an in-house subject classification to be added to LC subject headings which responded to ship applicability and equip m ent nom enclature unique to the training activity. It was therefore the cataloging librarian’s responsi bility to im plem ent a subject classification th a t m ight meet the requirements of a reference inter view. For such a specialized task it was im portant th a t the librarians become fam iliar w ith the m eth odology peculiar to naval documents. The student, for example, might request docu m entation on specific shipboard equipm ent by its common m ilitary acronym. If a student requested inform ation on the KSR or the TTY sets, the tech nical librarian would begin the search w ith the stu ent by keywords, or in this case key letters. Under SR there would be a see reference card to the en ry “teletypewriter sets.” The card catalog was divided into two parts. irst, there was a standard shelflist of all docu ents held by the library in call num ber order, re lecting shelf location; it also functioned as an in entory record. Second, there was the traditional uthor/title/subject card catalog in dictionary for at. Students were trained in the proper use of the li rary by a series of printed handouts dealing with arious policies and procedures. These were sim le, direct, to-the-point instructions,“since English as their second language. These were more suc essful th a n an all-inclusive, widely distributed user’s guide.” Guides were usually not read and ften misplaced, since they offered too much infor ation at one time. Each student was p art of a continuing English anguage course. Library instruction was included s p art of the course. This one-hour session encour ged library use. It was particularly successful in ringing to the student’s attention the wide variety f ways in which inform ation is packaged as well as n introducing the library staff. Discussion on dic ionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and other eference publications encouraged a sense of curi sity. Publications for which a cursory knowledge xisted then functioned as a secure base to more d K t F m f v a m b v p w c “ o m l a a b o i t r o e 9 specialized docum ent searches required in the op eration and m aintenance of sophisticated equip m ent. T he objective was to break dow n th e in tim i d a tin g b a rrie rs o ften fo u n d in lib ra rie s in th e M iddle East. I t w as no t long before students realized th a t identifying an inform ation need and articulating th a t need led to a positive resolution—w h eth er i was th e correct usage of a w ord or a com plicated schematic. This in tro d u c tio n to basic reference p u b lic a tions, com bined w ith a w orking knowledge of th card catalog, m ade it possible in tim e for th e stu d en t to identify an inform ation need, search th card catalog, identify a source, and locate inform a tion required independent of lib rarian assistance. O u r objective h ad been reached. M any practices of the Naval Forces School L i t e e b rary a t Jubail w ere unconventional by U.S. stan ard s. I t w as, how ever, a u n iq u e en v iro n m en t ith p a rtic u la r requirem ents. Regretfully our con ra c t h ad concluded w hile on th e threshold of the ext and final phase of academ ic lib rary develop ent. T he lib rary was about to go to an online sys em w ith th e ability to interface w ith other RSNF ibraries. A new academ ic building h ad been com leted, ten thousand volumes h ad been identified nd ordered, and the curricula began to indicate a ove from equipm ent-oriented train in g to a m ore rad itio n a l college engineering program . d ito r ’s N ote: The au th o r is cu rren tly working, ith Telemedia in Cairo to consult on the develop e n t o f a library fo r the E gyptian A ir Force A ca d m y to support a bachelor o f science degree in aero autical engineering and com puter science. ■ ■ d w t n m t l p a m t E w m e n Deacidification dialogue By Peter G. Sparks D irector fo r Preservatio L ibrary o f Congress n and Richard D. Smith President, W ei T ’o Associates M atteson, Illinois Further discussion on mass deacidification processes stimulated by Richard Sm ith’s article in the December CÒR.L News. E d ito r’s Note: Peter Sparks at the L ibrary o f Con ress was asked to co m m e n t on “Mass deacidifica- tion: The W ei T ’o w a y ”in the D ecem ber issue, pp. 88-593. Following his remarks are com m ents by uthor Richard Sm ith. Thank you for the o p p ortunity to com m ent on h e article by R ichard Sm ith of W ei T ’o Associates. short response is not adequate for extensive dis g 5 a t A cussion of th e technical claims in R ichard Sm ith’s rticle. H owever, th e position of th e L ib rary of ongress Preservation Office on several issues and s ow n process needs to be stated. D r. Sm ith appears to view other mass deacidifi ation processes to be com petitive w ith his own. he L ib rary of Congress Preservation Office does ot share th a t view. W e believe th a t th e processes resently available or u n d er developm ent present asonable alternatives, from w hich an institution t a C i c T n p re