ZLS receives 35,000 books from the USA

There is a book famine in Africa, but not just for any old books...

ZLS has just received over 35000 books from Books For Africa to be distributed to educational libraries across Zanzibar. As we do not have the space to store such a large shipment, we are using a classroom at the local Teacher's Centre for a month to try as best we can to sort and pack up boxes of books that will be useful for schools and colleges here in Zanzibar.

Libraries in Zanzibar would not exist if it weren't for the generous support and donations we received from organisations such as Books for Africa, but shipments of this size are very difficult to manage, especially when most of the materials are in English and many of the staff members sorting the stock are not confident working in English. Some of the shipments we receive include books that are damaged, old, out-of-date, irrelevant or culturally inappropriate to the Zanzibar context. These essentially unusable books are being sent at considerable cost, from places with decent paper recycling facilities, to a small island nation without...

Many suppliers of donated stock are working hard to improve their systems so that there is a better match between the information needs of local library users and the books provided. (For more information about how book donation programmes (should) work, read CODE's publication 'Book donations for development' available at http://www.codecan.org/english/donations.html).

But what libraries in developing countries are really missing is the money to buy locally published books. Grants to buy indigenous materials would not only enable library services to buy books that are appealing, relevant and easy to read for local communities, but it will also help to strengthen and improve fledgling local publishing industries.

If you are thinking about donating stock to libraries in Zanzibar, PLEASE consider working with local publishers and library services to provide mother tongue materials and locally produced textbooks as these are the materials that are most sorely needed in our libraries at present.