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Libraries in the South CaucasusLeila Gibradze aa Continuing Professional Education Center of theAssociation of Information Specialists , Tbilisi,GeorgiaPublished online: 20 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Leila Gibradze (2001) Libraries in the South Caucasus, Slavic &East European Information Resources, 2:1, 17-21, DOI: 10.1300/J167v02n01_03

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Libraries in the South Caucasus

Leila Gibradze

ABSTRACT. The social and economic changes in Georgia, Armenia andAzerbaijan since the breakup of the Soviet Union have caused great up-heaval in libraries there. Libraries are currently undergoing wide-rangingreforms intended to make their collections more accessible and integratethemselves into the global information network. The Association of Infor-mation Specialists, the Georgian librarians’ association, has begun anew program for continuing professional education for librarians fromthe three countries and organized annual regional librarians’ confer-ences. The South Caucasian libraries are also automating, elaborating newnational cataloging rules and agreeing on standards for electronic datainterchange. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth DocumentDelivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> E 2001 by The Haworth Press,Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, libraries, librarians, reform,education, cooperation

The last decade of the twentieth century, for libraries in Georgia aswell as for those in other former Soviet Republics, can be divided intothree stages: breakdown of the entire library system in the country andof the acquisition system as well; desperate search for ways to over-come the crisis; and finally, taking real steps to rebuild a new andmodern library system.Today’s librarians face challenges posed by new and rapidly chang-

Leila Gibradze is Lecturer, Continuing Professional Education Center of theAssociation of Information Specialists, Tbilisi, Georgia.

This paper was presented as part of the 10th Annual Slavic Librarians’ Workshop,21-23 June 2000 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Slavic & East European Information Resources, Vol. 2(1) 2001E 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 17

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SLAVIC & EAST EUROPEAN INFORMATION RESOURCES18

ing information technologies, information economy, an increasinglydiverse user population, growing demands for both traditional andnew services and declining funds to support these services. Theknowledge and skills they receive in library school become outdatedalmost as soon as they graduate. They must continue learning to main-tain their skill levels and provide better services to their customers.In addition to the problems mentioned above, libraries in Georgia

are challenged by specific issues characteristic of transitional coun-tries. The change in the social and economic systems of the SouthCaucasian countries made it necessary to introduce new library anduser service policies, to develop new collections and services, and toretrain whole library staffs. It is worth noting that more than half ofSouth Caucasian librarians do not have formal library education, andthere was almost no continuing education provided to them from 1990to 1999.The Association of Information Specialists (AIS) in Georgia has

been carrying out various projects, some of which are in progress now,to promote reforms in the field of library science in the country. Thefirst project of the AIS, ‘‘Global Information World--Georgian Li-braries’’ consisted of two parts. The first part was the first SouthCaucasian Regional Library Conference, ‘‘Access to Information.’’The second part comprised a course of Continuing ProfessionalEducation (CPE) for librarians and information specialists. The Eur-asia Foundation sponsored the project as a whole, along with the OpenSociety Institute’s Network Library Program, the Open Society--Geor-gia Foundation, USIS and IREX.The first part of the project, the conference, was held in 1998 in

Tbilisi, Georgia and was attended by librarians, library and informa-tion science academicians, library administrators, and informationspecialists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, the United States, Hungary andGeorgia. This conference was the first time, after a long period ofisolation, that librarians from South Caucasian countries gathered to-gether, discussed their problems and tried to identify effective waysfor cooperation and partnership.One of the results of this conference was an agreement to begin

cooperation in the field of CPE. The agreement foresees utilizing theresources of USIA program alumni in library and information sciencefor the benefit of all three countries of the region. The Association ofInformation Specialists, as the national library association in Georgia,

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In Our Libraries 19

sees its primary responsibility as providing structure and content ofCPE for librarians and information specialists. The decision to startcooperation in the field of CPE resulted in a project to establish aregional CPE center in Tbilisi. Within the framework of this project, atwo-week workshop was held in Tbilisi in March 1999, which wasattended by 24 librarians from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.USIA program alumni in library and information science served asinstructors at this workshop. The project participants, from AkhundovState Library (Azerbaijan), the Armenian Library Association andAIS, decided to continue this partnership on a much broader basis,including other libraries and educational institutions in their respectivecountries. The main idea is to build a CPE network with a center inTbilisi and branches in Baku and Erevan.In the future AIS plans to continue its activities in the field of CPE

for librarians and information specialists, as well as to promote qualityformal education. In partnership with Tbilisi State University (TSU)and the University Library and supported by the Open Society Insti-tute’s Network Library Program, AIS is establishing a CPE center atthe Library, which later will be transformed into a graduate academicdepartment of library and information science within TSU. This isintended as an interdisciplinary program, which should bring togetherknowledge and expertise from various disciplines dealing with infor-mation/knowledge acquisition and management. Librarians fromGeorgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia will be trained at the CPE center.AIS plans to extend its cooperation in the area of CPE with countriesfrom outside of the South Caucasus area, particularly with the UnitedStates, Russia and Ukraine.The Association, together with the National Parliamentary Library

of Georgia, has recently started a new project, which is currently in theprocess of implementation: elaboration of new national standards forcataloging and electronic data exchange in Georgian libraries. AISwill translate and publish (in Georgian) the AACR2, Dewey andMARC21 manuals. The manuals will be distributed for free to li-braries, and AIS will continue to provide intensive training in catalog-ing and classification using the new standards. AIS sees these asnecessary steps in the process of reforming our library system andensuring its compatibility with the major library networks in the U.S.and Europe.The National Parliamentary Library of Georgia carried out a num-

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SLAVIC & EAST EUROPEAN INFORMATION RESOURCES20

ber of projects during the last ten years. In terms of automation andavailability of materials, definite goals were achieved. Now the usercan find the following electronic catalogs and databases at the NPLG:

S Electronic catalogs and databases of owned collections:

1. Electronic catalog of Georgian books, 1991-1998. Createdaccording to ISBD (M) and UNIMARC.

2. Electronic catalog of synopses of Georgian dissertations add-ed to the Archive of Georgian Printed Units. Also created ac-cording to the ISBD (M) and UNIMARC.

3. Databases of Georgian Books for 1988, 1989 and 1990,which were created on the basis of the records from the Geor-gian Book Chamber.

4. Georgian Book, an experimental database of Georgian bookswith bibliographic descriptions in English.

5. Index database of the main Georgian newspaper, SakartvelosRespublika (Republic of Georgia), from 1993 to the present.

6. Codex, a full-text database of Georgian laws, presidential de-crees and government resolutions from 1990 to the present.The database was purchased in 1997 and is updated every twoweeks.

7. Electronic catalogs and databases of foreign publications.

S Electronic catalogs and databases of accessible collections

1. Union electronic index of subscriptions from Soiuzpechat’,1980-1990

2. Union electronic catalog of foreign publications from 1984 to1990

3. Union catalog of foreign books (1995). This catalog meetsthe requirements of UNIMARC, but has not been updatedsince 1995.

4. Georgian books in print, which contains records of bookspublished in Georgia in all languages.

The libraries of the other Caucasian countries, Armenia and Azer-baijan, have more or less similar problems. Although no library in thethree Caucasian countries has a fully automated library system (exceptthe Papazian Library at the American University of Armenia), some

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In Our Libraries 21

important work has been already done in this direction. During the lastdecade several Armenian libraries have created bibliographic data-bases, for example, Armenian Medicine. This database includes ar-ticles published in Armenian medical publications; it was establishedby the State Library of Science and Medicine of Armenia. A couple ofyears ago the Fundamental Library of the Armenian National Acade-my of Sciences began a program to create a database of bibliographicdata for all materials published in that country.In summary, the libraries of the South Caucasian countries are now

implementing reforms by adopting new standards for cataloging andelectronic data exchange and automating library processes. The maingoals are to make their collections more accessible and to integrateSouth Caucasian libraries into the global information network. Thereforms are carried out at different speeds in each of the countries.Librarians in the South Caucasus are well aware of the problems theyare facing--lack of sufficient financing and lack of trained professio-nals--but they are working to overcome the obstacles. This work givesus hope that we are making our libraries better and more accessible forour patrons.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chkhenkeli, Teimuraz. ‘‘Document Delivery Service in Georgia.’’ In Conference onLibraries ‘‘Access to Information’’: Proceedings of the 1st South Caucasian Re-gional Library Conference, 3-5 June 1998, edited by Besiki Stvilia, 31-38. Tbilisi:Association of Information Specialists, 1998.

Hayrapetyan, Nerses. ‘‘Society, Library, Information.’’ In Conference on Libraries‘‘Access to Information’’: Proceedings of the 1st South Caucasian Regional Li-brary Conference, 3-5 June 1998, edited by Besiki Stvilia, 22-25. Tbilisi: Associ-ation of Information Specialists, 1998.

Stvilia, Besiki. ‘‘Opening Speech.’’ In Library Associations, Regional Cooperation:Proceedings of the 2nd South Caucasian Regional Library Conference, 18-21April 1999, edited by Besiki Stvilia, 5-7. Tbilisi: Association of InformationSpecialists, 1999.

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