Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 3 | The National Library of South Africa, page 2

Even so, the Corporation's Rookaya Bawa, drawing on her previous experience as head of the Provincial Library Service in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, thinks officials can be persuaded to support libraries. "The more that library facilities are seen as essential to education," she says, "the easier it is to raise money for them."

Dr. Graham Dominy, the National Archivist of South Africa, agrees, saying that he already detects a shift in attitudes about the need for libraries, primarily because of the demand from students. "Generally speaking," he says, "any library you go into in South Africa is packed with people. There is a palpable thirst for information, for knowledge." Bawa cites another reason that libraries and their resources are increasingly in demand. Youngsters flock to them, she says, "because, in many cases, students have nowhere else to study. Libraries have quiet space and lights, things they may not always have at home. Libraries, also, will often be the first place students see television and computers and be able to access the Internet. The library is indispensable to learning and development."

Positive Signs

One goal of the National Library of South Africa is--by serving as a model and by creating interest in and excitement about a library's ability to forge connections between people and nations, as well as to spur learning--to help build a constituency for libraries that, while rooted in popular support, also reaches into the policy realm. But to develop a library system that matches the needs of South Africa, says Graham Dominy, will cost many millions of dollars: expansion, improving technology, increasing access and adding resources are all expensive propositions. The government may not be inclined to contemplate that kind of investment right now but eventually, Dominy believes, the money will have to be found. "Many white South Africans can afford to get reading and entertainment material from private-sector sources," he says, "but that is not the case in black communities where libraries are necessary to fill the great educational gaps that exist."

Building a constituency for libraries has taken much of the time and energy of library officials like Tsebe and Ralebipi-Simela, and the task is mostly an uphill climb in a country where, out of a population of more than forty million, twelve million are functionally illiterate adults, half of whom can read or write almost nothing at all. Surveys also show staggering illiteracy among young school-age children. And the only book in most rural households is the occasional bible.

Still, there are hopeful signs of progress. For example, a project is underway that aims to involve each of South Africa's approximately 1,200 public libraries in the creation of "reading spaces" in places like churches, after-hours classrooms or even private home. The reading spaces would lend books like regular libraries and also offer supervised places for children to study. A local community member would be trained to run each reading space, which would receive books from the main library.

One place where the development of reading spaces has already been embedded into municipal planning is the township of Mdantsane in South Africa's Eastern Cape province. The second largest black township in the country, Mdantsane is currently served by only one library, but the construction of a second is expected to begin in 2006, with ten satellite reading spaces to be created as part of the plan. A similar project was undertaken in the Northern Cape province, with Corporation support. Sunitha Vallabh, the provincial library director, says that the reading spaces became so popular that there was great demand to turn them into full-fledged, formal libraries.

Next page: Making sure that the torch gets passed to the next generation of skilled librarians is another way that Tsebe is attempting to build a culture of excellent libraries and librarianship in South Africa.

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