On Thursday, after a well-timed dose of antibiotics improved my health situation a bit, I took the opportunity to visit Rosa Aguilar, the current president of the Nicaraguan national library association, at her office in Managua. I was interested both in seeing her library and in interviewing her for the video project.
Rosa is the head of the library and archives of the Ministerio de Transporte e Infraestructura here in Nicaragua — the government ministry responsible for most public works projects in the country. The library includes a small reading room, and in the remainder of the building, space has been cobbled together for stacks, map cases, and many makeshift shelves holding banker’s boxes of archival records. The building itself clearly began life as a warehouse many years ago, and has the ramshackle appareance you might expect from such an arrangement.
There is no classification system for books. Instead they are arranged on the shelves by broad category (Engineering, Environment, Urban Planning, etc.) and then within the categories by accession numbers. Rosa said this system was adopted from one being used in Cuba when the library was first started. The library has a searchable electronic catalog (baso de dato) which makes it easier to find books.
The archival material was clearly an area of concern for Rosa — she repeatedly noted how the conditions weren’t optimum for preservation or intellectual control. But she also showed me a “before” picture, with massive piles of boxes chucked in a remote corner of the ministry. Apparently for a decade there had been virtually no staff to manage the archives. So, in comparison, the current situation is much better — if not perfect.
The library has an interesting electronic records and digitization project. It is attempting to save electronic versions of current publications, and is also actively digitizing materials from its collections using software called Alchemy. Examples I saw included annual reports of the ministry going back to the 40s and 50s, and plans for highways and other infrastructure throughout the country. The library has a massive scanner and printer that allows it to digitize and output copies of engineering drawings used by its design staff. (Rosa also showed off a large new uninteruptible power supply which the library is about to install — like everyone else in Nicaragua, MTI is not immune to the brownouts and blackouts that plague the electrical system here.
Despite its relatively innovative digitization program, there were also signs of resource constraints. For example, the library is currently having trouble with its server, and is waiting for funding to upgrade it. Rosa indicated that the only online copy of the archive was currently located on the one PC used for scanning. She said they had backups, and pointed to tapes and CDs in the credenza behind her desk. But there are currently no offsite backups — she said they have not been able to buy sufficient tapes to do this as of yet. There was also no functioning Internet in her office when I was there — she indicated that the ministry needed to work on upgrading its network, but had not done so yet.
The library is not immune to the sorts of disasters that can strike libraries anywhere in the world. She showed me video of the staff frantically sweeping water away from the flooded stacks after someone left a tap on overnight elsewhere in the building. Luckily, the water was not deep enough to reach the first shelves, but all the same, it was a reminder of the importance of disaster planning.
After the library tour, I sat down with Rosa for around 45 minutes and talked to her about libraries in Nicaragua and the importance of what Jane has been doing to promote public lending libraries. She has many good ideas, and her voice will be a valuable addition to the video project.