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Eritrea
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Directory Information
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After nearly thirty years of war, Eritrea is a new country with many problems. Though other priorities demand attention, library development is not being entirely neglected.
Introduction
Libraries in the modern sense are a very recent phenomenon in Eritrea. A brief look at the history of this new country shows why this is so. From 1889 to 1941 Eritrea was an Italian colony, but neither Italian colonial government nor the British Military Administration which succeeded it from 1941 to 1952 showed any interest in library provision. While much of Africa moved towards independence in the 1960s, thus enabling the systematic development of indigenous library services albeit to widely varying degrees - Eritrea plunged into political turmoil and war. (An unhappy) federation with Ethiopia led to the latter annexing Eritrea as its fourteenth province in 1962, and armed resistance of Ethiopian repression increased. Matters deteriorated further 'rider Mengistu's brutal Dergue regime, but even the huge humanities of Soviet arms supplied to the Ethiopian forces could lot prevent the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) from thieving final victory in 1991. Two years later, in an internationally monitored referendum, 99.8 percent of those eligible oted for independence, and the EPLF reconstituted itself as a transitional government under the name, People's Front for democracy and Justice (PFDJ).
After nearly thirty years of war, which completely disrupted normal life, large swathes of the country lay in ruins. It will take many more years before the economy and basic services such as transport, water, power and health recover fully. Life expectancy is less than 50 years, and Gross Domestic Product bout USD 120.00 per year. By any standards, Eritrea is a desperately poor country, as anyone who ventures outside the capital, Asmara, can see. Scarce financial resources and a marginal government are daunting obstacles, but the pragmatism, skills needed to succeed of the 2.5 million people of Eritrea are reasons for great hope for the future.
Asmara University Library
Founded in 1958, Asmara University enjoyed a brief flowering in the 1960s before its inexorable asphyxiation under the Dergue. Students and staff were transferred to Addis Ababa or to southern Ethiopia, along with some 15,000 library textbooks. For all practical purposes, the University was closed, except for evening extension classes in local schools. In 1989, all 256 periodical subscriptions ceased when the Dergue refused to provide a budget.
When the University Library re-opened in 1993, some 75 percent of the total stock of 35,000 volumes was found to date from before 1960. The University has no money for the acquisition of anything other than basic stationery, and reliance on external funding has therefore been almost total, with the bulk coming from the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC). SAREC provides about GBP 100,000 a year, which pays for book acquisitions, periodical subscriptions, training and computer equipment. Free periodical subscriptions are also provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the United States Information Service (USIS); the titles are selected by the University departments. The library has also made some useful selections from Library of Congress and Book Aid International lists, and participates in the latter's International Campus Book Link journals scheme. As a result of these and other donations, the library is now able to provide about 60,000 volumes and 105 journal titles for nearly 5,000 students in the faculties of Science, Economics and Management, Agriculture and Aquatic Science, Engineering, and (due to open in 1996) Health Science. Official policy is to keep donor dependence to a minimum, but it is difficult to see this becoming a reality in the foreseeable future, especially so far as libraries are concerned.
Faculty libraries are being started for Agriculture and Engineering, which are not on the main university campus, but otherwise all the stock is to be found in the central library; which. consists of two separate collections. The main library houses core textbooks and some reference books with space for about 150 readers. It constitutes a reasonable basic collection, although judging by the number of university students in Asmara's public libraries, further large scale acquisition of current texts, especially in science, mathematics, technology and business, must be a priority. Adjacent to the main library is a new extension with circulation desk, short loan collection and places for sixty-five readers.
The research library, which only opened at the beginning of 1995 and is still being organized, is on the floor above. It contains the bulk of the reference books, all the periodicals (most of the runs seem to date back to about 1970, and materials relating to Ethiopian and Eritrean studies. The Eritrean collection is particularly interesting, certainly the most substantial of its kind in the country, and complements the holdings of the Research and Documentation Centre. With places for about forty readers and plenty of space to spare, the research library is intended mainly for third and fourth year students doing more advanced work (there is no postgraduate programs as yet), as well as for academic staff and external researchers.
In common with other libraries in Eritrea, the stock is neatly arranged on the shelves using the Dewey Decimal Classification. The card catalogue is being computerized using dBase as an interim measure until the Tin Lib system is installed in 1996. Cataloguing and circulation will be the first routines to be automated, and it is hoped to complete retrospective conversion of the existing catalogue by 1999. The cataloguing operation is centralized, with no plans as yet for introducing CD-ROM, networking or Internet facilities, all of which are likely to be dependent on external funding.
The University Librarian, Mr. Assefaw Abraham, gained his professional qualification in the United Kingdom. He is assisted by a deputy with eighteen years experience, three graduates with diplomas in librarianship from Addis Ababa University, and fifteen library attendants. The Librarian hopes to be able to recruit additional librarians, particularly in view of the switch to computer-based operations and the amount of cataloguing and classification still to be done. Now that close cooperation with Addis Ababa University has resumed, it is likely that staff could be sent there for further training.
Statistics
60,000 vols; 400 current per; 350 diss/theses; 150 govt docs; 98 av-mat; library loan
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