By Dr Jessica Bates (Senior Lecturer), Janet Peden (Director of Library Services) and Professor Kelsey Shanks (UNESCO chair), Ulster University
Libraries are recognised as having a crucial role for societies and communities emerging and recovering from conflict. Their importance for peace building cannot be underestimated, yet the significance of their role in this regard is often overlooked.
Free access to information and knowledge is a requisite for a stable and innovative society.
A library, whether a public library at a local community level, or a national library or university library, can be viewed as a peace building institution. We can reflect on the words of Bob McKee, speaking at the 40th anniversary of the United Nations Library, the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, in 2002, when he said: “a library can promote peace not just through the knowledge it contains, not just through the understanding it promotes, not just through the opportunities it provides – but also through the principles and processes it embodies.”[1]
This is a journey. When a society, its people and its institutions are demolished, the rebuilding process can be slow and difficult. But there is always hope, and a library is a beacon of hope. In the words of Dr. Alaa Hamdon, Mosul University Professor, “Libraries are light houses of knowledge – providing a beacon for those who value learning”.[2] Their beam can travel far and can strengthen and illuminate the progress that is being made in building a society. The values of the library can ripple out to underpin fragile post conflict rebuilding and restoration.
Left: Dr Jessica Bates, Right: Professor Kelsey Shanks
International research shows that libraries can directly and indirectly contribute to a peace building environment through providing access to local, national and global knowledge; preserving heritage and culture; providing a safe and inclusive space for learning; developing literacy and information skills within the university and wider community; supporting economic development, innovative activity, and the arts; and demonstrating ethics and values which will strengthen the peaceful bonds and understanding in that society.
Ulster University, with funding from UNESCO (through the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, AICS), is playing a vital role in the capacity building programme at Mosul University Library as part of the work currently underway in restoring the Library[3] there which was destroyed in 2015. Nearly ten years later, a team led by University Librarian, Janet Peden, Professor Kelsey Shanks, UNESCO Chair and colleague Dr Jessica Bates in the School of Education at Ulster University, have developed a training programme for Mosul Library staff to help them strengthen their capacity to deliver the best possible library services for all the community that Mosul University Library serves.
This project is intended to critically examine the training needs of library staff at Mosul University, to develop and provide a programme of training for library staff at Mosul University and Koya University, Iraq, to evaluate the training programme and to conduct an overall SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis of the Mosul University Library context in order to help develop a strategy and priorities for the Library going forward.
Any opinions expressed in this, or any other blog post on this website, are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of the Education, Peace and Politics organisation.
[1] https://www.un.org/depts/dhl/dag/symposium.htm
[2] https://bookaid.org/what-we-do/responding-when-books-are-lost/mosul/
[3] https://www.undp.org/arab-states/stories/reading-and-rebuilding-mosul-university-library-0