L i b r a r y a n d i n f o r m a t i o n s c i e n c e s c h o o l s With the exception of Morocco (where the school reports to the Ministry of Planning which has been recently disbanded), the schools of library and infor-mation science are all university departments, mostly in faculties of arts, but also in faculties of social sciences or education. There is no such school in Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, the UAE or Palestine.
Kuwait has one post-secondary department and Jordan has two, while Algeria, the Sudan and Tunisia have a diploma programme in addition to formal
Table 8. Children’s literature and libraries in the Arab region
State Children’s Children’s magazines Children’s Collections
books libraries
Weekly Monthly Books Journals Others
Algeria 17 –1 – – – – –
Bahrain 55 1 5 8 – – –
Djibouti – – – – – – –
Egypt 63 2 3 – – – –
Iraq 42 1 . . .2 2 – – –
Jordan 23 1 1 30 78 000 54 –
Kuwait . . . . . . 1 . . . – – –
Lebanon – 10 3 73 – – –
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya 12 1 4 – – – –
Mauritania – – – – – – –
Morocco 22 2 1 27 – – –
Oman – – – – – – –
Palestine – – – 50 54 524 64 1 160
Qatar 4 . . . 1 1 – – –
Saudi Arabia 27 2 2 – – – –
Somalia – – – – – – –
Sudan 7 6 5 14 – – –
Syrian Arab Republic 34 . . . 6 1614 – – –
Tunisia 129 1 4 28 – – –
UAE 20 1 1 5 – – –
Yemen – – 2 12 – – –
1. Figures not available.
2. Not applicable.
3. In addition to the mobile library service run by the Institute of Women Studies in the Arab World.
4. Most are either at the cultural centres or the mobile library service.
Source: Arab Council for Childhood and Maternity Annual Statistical Report 1994; and some national statistics.
university study. Unfortunately, Jordan has suspend-ed its postgraduate diploma as of 1995. The situation of the university departments is summarized in Table 9.
Teacher/student ratios are below international standards in most schools. The curriculum is mostly unbalanced as courses unrelated to librarianship and information science account for about 43% of the entire BA programmes. Modern information tech-nology is creeping slowly into the curriculum, with the Moroccan school the best equipped.
A recent development, hopefully signalling better co-operation, co-ordination and harmoniza-tion, is the formation of the Society of Arab Library Schools (1993), located in Rabat, Morocco.
C o n t i n u i n g e d u c a t i o n
As the role of library schools in training is too often unsatisfactory, continuing education activities are run by library associations, library sections of the ministries of education, some national information
Table 9. Library schools
State No. of schools Student enrolment Graduates Staff
Total BA P Dipl MA PhD BA P Dipl MA PhD BA P Dipl MA PhD Full-
Part-time time
Algeria 4 3 2 1 . . .1 1 800 33 40 . . . 390 –2 – . . . 60 –
Bahrain 1 . . . 1 . . . . . . . . . 31 . . . . . . . . . 51 . . . . . . 1 –
Egypt 5 5 1 3 2 1 650 45 25 24 3 750 374 65 34 36 –
Iraq 3 3 . . . 1 1 – . . . 21 – – . . . 73 – – –
Lebanon 1 1 . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . . . . – –
Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya 3 3 . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . . . . – –
Morocco 1 1 . . . 1 . . . – . . . 15 . . . – . . . 89 . . . – –
Oman 1 1 . . . 1 . . . 128 . . . – . . . 53 . . . . . . . . . – –
Qatar 1 . . . 1 . . . . . . . . . 20 . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . 3 –
Saudi Arabia 5 5 . . . 3 3 – – – 2 – – – – 51 –
Sudan 4 3 1 1 . . . – – – . . . – – – . . . – –
Syrian Arab
Republic 1 1 . . . . . . . . . 2 048 . . . . . . . . . 106 . . . . . . . . . – –
Tunisia 1 1 . . . . . . . . . 70 . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . . . . 1 39
Yemen 1 1 . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . . . . – . . . . . . . . . – –
Total 32 28 6 11 6
1. Not applicable.
2. Figures not available.
Source: Wise and Olden (1994); Qdoura (1993); Mahmoud (1992, 1993).
centres, some national libraries and some regional and international organizations. But this training is not carried out systematically, and no follow-up programmes are ever done anywhere. The topics are mostly traditional, and the region is in bad need of training programmes for the trainers, using modern techniques.
Conferences and seminars are held in the region both nationally and regionally, although the latter are diminishing owing to the severe financial crises Arab organizations are facing.
On paper, there are twelve library associations at the national level in ten states (Bahrain, Egypt (three societies), Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Tunisia). But it is difficult to assess their activities in
concrete terms. For instance, only the Jordanian Library Association has continued issuing its quar-terly journal, Risalat al-maktaba (The Message of the Library) since 1965. All the other journals, in any case few in number, either face interruptions or have ceased publication (Qanded, 1995).
There are four other regional associations: the Arab Federation of Libraries and Institutions (AFLI), established in Tunis in 1985, the Arab Association for University Libraries, established in Kuwait in 1976 (no longer existing), the Arab Branch of the International Council on Archives (ICA) and the recently formed Society of Arab Library Schools. The American Society for Information Science (ASIS) has a Gulf branch.
Arabic professional library literature is rather
weak; current journals (other than those intended for bibliographical control) number only nine titles for all the Arab states put together.
The other important part of library literature is the provision of working tools in Arabic. For cataloguing purposes, the Anglo-American catalogu-ing rules (AACR2) were arabized and published by the Jordanian Library Association, while all International Standard Bibliographic Descriptions (ISBDs) were arabized and published by ALECSO.
The eleventh and twelfth abridged editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) were translat-ed and modifitranslat-ed by ALECSO. Filing rules were pre-pared and published by the Arab League Docu-mentation Centre (ALDOC). The Jordanian Unified Format, based on the Common Communication Format (CCF) of UNESCO, was prepared by the Jordanian National Information Centre. Sixty-two Arab Standards on documentation and information based on International Standards Organization (ISO) standards were issued by the Arab Organization for Standardization and Metrology (ASMO) before it ceased to exist as an independent Arab Organization.
Since 1990 it has become a department of the Arab Industrial Development and Mining Organization (AIDMO), and no further standards have been issued in the field of information.
Subject headings and thesauri have also been published, although the former cater for small and medium-size libraries. There are now four general lists and three specialized, while there are six-teen specialized thesauri, two monolingual, and the remainder bilingual or trilingual. The list of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) also is being translated.