On the Same Page

THINKING OUT OF THE BOX

Being able to criss-cross the globe on the strength of the Internet has made it possible to engage with creative ideas, conversations, and experiences which otherwise would be beyond our reach—and at times, even beyond our imagination.  On The Same Page will bring to the reader of Torchlight, a combination of textual-audio-visual curated content, about and around libraries and bookish love.

During my first years of schooling, my idea of what libraries looked like was as constant as the four-walled spaces that housed them. I knew where to go and be sure that I would find them in the same place, day after day, week after week.  Between Mondays and Fridays it was the 3-room library in my school and on weekends it was the neighbour’s curiously charming home library seven floors away and the tiny, nondescript, neighbourhood lending library within walking distance from my home.

At age nine, I encountered a library that sailed into—and out of my life. The world’s largest floating library/book fair docked at Ferry Wharf in Mumbai for 24 days. As luck would have it, this too was within walking distance from home. It was an experience that I thought I would never forget—but I did. Until a few weeks ago when, while browsing the Internet about the evolution of libraries, LOGOS surfaced in my memory. To date, LOGOS has visited 119 ports across 70 countries and territories.

Individuals and organisations have imbued their abiding faith in the transformative power of books with imagination to create shape-shifting libraries. While pragmatism or a spirit of adventure may have played a role, the overriding stimulus has been to provide library services to populations that are excluded, isolated, remote—geographically or circumstantially. Defined by mobility and flexibility of purpose and design, many of these libraries seek to address varying forms and levels of inequity. They exist for those who might have to forsake the joys of reading or be deprived of it; for whom books are unaffordable and knowledge unreachable.

Challenging the anthropocentric world view, as it were, are libraries that operate because of animals. The special bond between humans and animal, characteristic of rural life anywhere, was extended to the library experience. Its pioneer was May F. Stafford in 1913, who travelled on a pack horse to deliver books in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky, USA.  She was the precursor for the Pack Horse Library Project that operated in that region for almost a decade in the early part of the 20^th century. “Book ladies” or “packsaddle librarians” as they were called, rode and walked an average of almost 5000 miles over the course of a month! Household items were refashioned into essential library items; cheese boxes became card catalog files and license plates were bent into shape as bookends.

Towards the end of the 20^th century, more of these “partnership” libraries came into being. Stories in themselves, some have been written up as children’s books, inspiring children and adults alike. Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia by Jeanette Winter tells the real life story of librarian and teacher Luis Soriano and his two donkeys Alfa and Beto who travel  to remote villages in the country’s Magdalena Department. My Library is a Camel: How Books are Brought to Children Around the World by Margriet Ruurs is an eye-opener as it reveals the extraordinary efforts made by those who value libraries. In Kenya, it is the camels and in Laos, the Asian elephants that are pressed into service and transport books to schools and communities. In the case of the latter, the “library” has a larger mission at hand with the endangered Asian elephants creating awareness in areas that experience human-elephant conflict.

Interesting to note is that the human-animal partnership library was first mediated by the wheel. The first “perambulating” library, a horse-drawn wagon in Cumbria county in Northwest England in the mid-19^th century, was seen as revolutionary in the realm of library services. It became the prototype of the “mobile library.” Its equivalent in India was the bullock cart library in rural Tamil Nadu in 1931 and subsequently donkey cart libraries first in Zimbabwe, followed by Ethiopia and Tanzania. By the middle of the 20^th century, libraries operating via cars, buses, or trucks became a familiar sight in several countries (every continent had them) and are popularly known as “bookmobiles.”

In places where land is inaccessible, water bodies have shown the way. As Davids to the Goliath LOGOS are “library boats” or “book boats” in Scandinavian countries, Indonesia, and Laos.

Perahu Pustaka combines journalist Muhammad Ridwan Alimuddin’s passion for books and boats to bring the joy of reading to fishermen’s children in the villages and tiny islands of West Sulawesi. Alimuddin’s boat journeys sometimes take the better part of a month and what he waits for are the smiles on the children’s faces when they open a book. In Laos, the Lao Children’s Library Boats are held in high esteem; the village primary schools are dismissed the day they arrive so that children can read into the night and play book-based games. Book bags are also left behind in the villages and exchanged periodically.

With digital dominating the 21^st century, the notion of mobility as applied to libraries got stretched more than several thousand miles all at once. Digital repositories like the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) based in Maryland, USA, The African StoryBook project in South Africa, and StoryWeaver in India have made it possible to cross language and location barriers with just a click—and  the world shrinks swiftly. Another library form that transcends international boundaries, to meet the knowledge and information needs of vulnerable populations is Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (Libraries Without Borders, LWB). Just over a decade old, it has worked in 50 countries around the globe, using innovative tools and diffusing resources to expand access to information and cultural resources.

If mobility got redefined by digital libraries, flexibility was given a new avatar by LWB. Realising that access to vital information in the aftermath of a disaster and ways to initiate the healing process in a conflict ridden region assume as much importance as humanitarian aid, LWB set about creating the Ideas Box: a pop-up multimedia centre and portable library. “The Ideas Box is highly-durable, easy to set-up and energy-independent. Within twenty minutes of unloading the box, users will have access to a satellite internet connection, digital server, a power generator, 25 tablets and laptops, 6 HD cameras, 1 large HD screen, board games, arts and crafts materials, hardcover and paperback books, and a stage for music and theatre.” With these minimal library resources at hand begins the rehabilitation and resilience building of a vulnerable population.

Breaking out of the historical four-walled definition, libraries today have traversed new territories and sailed to new shores. In fact, now there is a small Story Time from Space library growing with several children’s books on the International Space Station read aloud by astronauts! Even when not grand in form, such as books strung on a rope in a playground, hung in a bag on a classroom wall, stored in movable crates to set up on street corners, spread out under a tree in a park—each of these has expanded the space libraries occupy literally and in the minds of people.

For more about digital libraries, visit Torchlight Issue 2 and Issue 3