Pam, Rebecca, and Brian have left, having accomplished a tremendous amount in just a few days. As Rebecca notes in her entry, she helped the cataloging department with Cutter tables and UDC, MARC21, and questions about ALEPH.
Pam has been working with the reference librarians, who are also responsible for reserve. They have sorted out the manual reserve procedures and policies, and are ordering reference books. They are putting together lists of reserve books to purchase. It is extraordinary how little information there is on print reserve procedures. All current articles and books about reserve discuss electronic reserve, not reserves in print.
Brian has been working with the IT group. He brought up a web server using IIS on the MS WIN2003 server, installed Deep Freeze ? a workstation security and imaging application from Faronics which we purchased in the US (also used in the GSLIS Tech Lab), installed the Linux operating system on a small server, and has done some training in command line Linux to support the ALEPH configuration files.
I have been meeting with Besim Kokollari and Faszli Gajraku to decide how to spend the funds from the US State Department and the United States Office Pristina. Besim is the Head of the University of Pristina University Library Center, and Faszli is the Head of Collection Development. Besim is getting a quote and license from eIFL.net for a suite of online databases that will be made available to roughly 15 higher education institutions throughout Kosovo. eIFL.net is an independent foundation whose purpose is to help make databases available to library users in transition and developing countries. It was initially funded by the Open Society Initiative, part of the Soros Foundation. Besim and Faszli are sorting out the collection development budget, and how to order the books quickly to meet the October roll out date.
We are addressing library network bandwidth issues, which, if not solved, will make the 25 recently purchased public workstations an exercise in frustration. The network is too slow. We are also outlining a web site for the University Library Center.
We have made good progress. I am remaining in Pristina for a few days, and will have more to report. It is good to see the participants in the Kosovo Librarian grant again: Besim, Urim Sallauka, Ramush Zeka, Bedrije Mekolli, and Bukurije Haliti. Today, thanks to Urim and Besim I spent a wonderful afternoon at Lake Batllava, roughly 25 km north of Pristina. Kosovo is a stunningly beautiful country. I enclose two photos: one of Lake Batllava ? the beauty of Kosovo, and the other of the ALEPH server and the library network rack ? opportunity and frustration.