Fourth Project Period

The circle of stones marks the spot where a student died, shot by police in riot Dec 2002

Two Australian library volunteers, Pamela Thompson and Karen Myers, went to Dili in early November to provide further training and support for two months.

Volunteers at the UNTL Library

Pamela Thompson and Karen Myers returned home to Shepparton (Vic) in January after working in East Timor for 2 months. They had a very busy, productive and eventful time. They have done an extraordinary amount of work in a short space of time. As with many volunteers, they found it very difficult to come home.

The UNTL Library staff also face the difficulty of another long period without volunteer support

Click here to read Final Report

Challenges

• Karen & Pamela faced many problems, including the terrible events of December 2002 when a demonstration circled the campus and passed by the front of the UNTL Library.
  
  Two students were shot dead by police in the streets, at the front and at the back of the University. One died outside the front door of the Library after being carried in off the street by other students.
  
  Nearby the main Dili supermarket, Hello Mister, was burnt out and the hotel opposite trashed.
  
  For the next three days Pamela & Karen stayed behind the locked gates of the family compound where they rented rooms and were well looked after by the family.
  
  Then they got back to work.



• When they arrived they found that the small library computer network was not working. Major disruptions to the power had caused the breakdown of hard drives and network links. The power situation in Dili had deteriorated with at least 2-3 blackouts per day, as well as frequent spikes, surges and brownouts.
  
  They found the librarians very disheartened by IT problems they could not deal with without support.



• Five thousand catalogue records had been lost some months earlier, presumably as a result of these power disruptions. The cataloguing project had ground to a halt, as staff did not have the confidence to continue.
  
  The volunteers needed to check hardware, undertake complicated searches of each hard drive to locate problems and missing records, identify missing records and recatalogue titles and reconstruct the library management system network.



• The new barcodes (donated by the UTS Library) needed to be applied to all books and student records and entered online.



• The library was still closed to student access, as major work was still underway to repair the badly leaking roof and to make alterations to improve the climate, operability and security of the library.
  
  The contents of the library had had to be completely dismantled in June 2002 and removed during building work.
  
  Library staff were waiting until the rains came to ensure roof was not leaking before returning books and shelving to library. The Library opened again for students just before they left, after being cloded for 7 months.
  
  The staff work rooms still have to have their roofs removed and rebuilt.



• The partial contents of 4 shipping containers sent from Sydney and a shipment of supplies sent via Rotary in Melbourne were disgorged, presenting additional workload unpacking, sorting and storing.
  
  The 20 computers sent by UTS needed to be checked over and problems identified and rectified (a number of hard drives were not working, presumably damaged in transit).
  
  Metal library shelving destined for elsewhere was also dumped in the library and provided some considerable headaches.
  
  The containers included bicycles for most of the Library staff and many personal supplies that had been collected by Pamela in Shepparton.



• This was all on top of the absolutely enormous backlog of cataloguing and other workloads faced by the UNTL Library staff and volunteer support staff

Progress & Achievements

Included:

1. Upgraded Athena to multi-user Version 9.1 and re-established network on five computers: 2 cataloguing, 2 circulation and 1 search PC.
   
   
2. Relocated 7 wooden shelving units to the cataloguing room to improve workflow (converting double-sided to single sided configuration). They had been built with funds from an American aid agency.
   
   
3. Searched hard drives, CD's and floppy disks for backup files, zips etc. but found nothing likely to include missing catalogue records. Implemented daily backup program using rewriteable CD's to avoid future losses. Conducted stock inventory of Milik Perpustakaan (main collection) in conjunction with barcoding of collection. A total of five bays of books (not including Reserve Collection which remains to be inventoried) found not to be on catalogue. Missing records not in any particular number sequence but from all over collection. These books returned to cataloguing room with some weeding taking place.
   
   
4. Barcoding of collection in conjunction with stock inventory. This has taken up the majority of time and the Reserve Collection remains to be inventoried. Staff was shown how to replace a barcode using the barcode reader.
   
   
5. Barcode readers were installed on two circulation computers with PS2 connectors. Awaiting USB connectors to install readers on cataloguing PC's.
   
   
6. Pamela and Library staff entered 6,500 student records on Athena (including replacing 1,200 lost due to a blackout!). Circulation training with actual barcoded books and student records just after the library opened - the staff were very excited with the ease of operating basic "Check Out" and "Check In" procedures with barcodes.
   
   
7. Books were returned to the shelves in Dewey order (formerly collection was stored in Faculty groupings). The shelves are numbered at the end and labeled with subject guides in Bahasa Indonesian to assist the students with the new order.
   
   
8. Set up networked laser printer
   
   
9. A work flow chart was developed to demonstrate to the staff how things should work from unpacking books through cataloguing, and who was responsible for each task, shelving etc.
   
   
10. After new supplies of stationery arrived, all supplies were sorted and stored according to function,
    
    

The 24 hour power promised after Xmas was short-lived and problems with blackouts continued.

The library opened again for students on Monday 13th January, and was busy with students using its services.

Repair work to the roof appeared to have been successful with no leaks at the time of leaving Dili. But later weeks, heavy rains caused leaks in the still to be established Multimedia Centre - ensuing repairs appear to have been successful.