Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

Na­tion­al Li­brary Week con­tin­ues un­til No­vem­ber 2 with pro­grammes and ac­tiv­i­ties. The Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (Nalis) is man­dat­ed to cater for the in­for­ma­tion needs of all and cog­nisant of that fact it em­braces those with spe­cial needs like the el­der­ly and dis­abled.

Ac­cord­ing to cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Deb­bie Good­man and di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Li­braries Di­vi­sion, Di­ane Sime­on, Nalis' ser­vices and ac­tiv­i­ties are wide-rang­ing and cater to every­one.

Some­thing for moth­ers

For new moth­ers and moth­ers-to-be, Sime­on said the li­brary en­cour­ages them to read to their un­born ba­bies as this is es­sen­tial in the process of their in­tel­lec­tu­al growth.

"We do health cen­tre vis­its, and these are to tar­get the moth­ers with young chil­dren to en­cour­age them in read­ing to their chil­dren even from with­in the womb. We al­so pro­vide post and pre­na­tal in­for­ma­tion to new moth­ers at the li­brary. And, we have a pro­gramme called 'ba­by lap-sit', where we teach moth­ers how to prop­er­ly po­si­tion the child on the lap when read­ing to them.There is al­so a food and nu­tri­tion pro­gramme where we teach them the right foods to eat and how to take care of their bod­ies," Sime­on re­vealed.

The el­der­ly and dis­abled

Ac­cord­ing to both Sime­on and Good­man Nalis al­so em­braces the el­der­ly and dis­abled.

"They are very much an ac­tive part of our so­ci­ety and they have needs too. For our se­niors we have a ser­vice to the homes for the aged where we pro­vide ma­te­r­i­al for them.

We al­so en­gage them in talk shops to en­cour­age in­tel­lect stim­u­la­tion. This is al­so of­fered by the Her­itage Li­brary oral tra­di­tion pro­gramme. We al­so pro­vide tech­nol­o­gy class­es for se­niors to get them fa­mil­iar with the com­mon tech de­vices that are used to­day. Apart from this we have book clubs and games for them," Sime­on not­ed.

There are free ser­vices for the vi­su­al­ly and hear­ing im­paired. There is a de­part­ment for the vi­su­al­ly im­paired with spe­cial equip­ment in­clud­ing the jaws com­put­er and open book soft­ware pro­grammes. There is al­so an adult au­dio book club as well.

The Guardian al­so vis­it­ed a mu­sic record­ing stu­dio op­er­at­ed by key­boardist Ra­jesh Mo­hammed who is vi­su­al­ly im­paired and a self-taught mu­si­cian. Mo­hammed teach­es both the vi­su­al­ly im­paired and sight­ed in­di­vid­u­als to play the key­board. Di­rect­ly op­po­site the stu­dio is sign lan­guage fa­cil­i­ta­tor for adults, Kath­leen Fran­cois who was busy with a full ses­sion in swing.

A li­brary for every­one

Nalis has 23 li­braries spread across T&T and pro­vides three mo­bile ser­vices in ex­treme rur­al ar­eas. Asked what was the lat­est de­vel­op­ment con­cern­ing the Ch­agua­nas li­brary which was at the cen­tre of con­tention over the pos­si­bly of it be­ing re­con­fig­ured to a ju­di­cial com­plex, Good­man con­firmed the lat­ter and re­vealed Cou­va has been marked for con­struc­tion of a new com­plex in the not too dis­tant fu­ture. How­ev­er, she was un­able to give a pro­ject­ed date for con­struc­tion to be­gin.

Good­man al­so em­pha­sised that all ser­vices avail­able at Nalis are al­so of­fered at all the pub­lic li­braries which it op­er­ates.

"The on­ly dif­fer­ence per­haps is the size of the struc­ture, but we main­tain a stan­dard across the board," she said. She not­ed for Na­tion­al Li­brary Week all pub­lic li­braries will em­bark on some of their own spe­cial events and ac­tiv­i­ties.

Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

If you vis­it the Her­itage Li­brary Di­vi­sion, lo­cat­ed in Nalis' build­ing, Aber­crom­by Street, you would stum­ble up­on an ar­ray of spe­cial col­lec­tions. One of the main events on show is the Lord Learie Con­stan­tine col­lec­tion. All-rounder Con­stan­tine was one of the best West In­dies crick­eters in his time. Af­ter crick­et he wore many oth­er hats and ti­tles in pol­i­tics, law and was T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Eng­land.

On dis­play are let­ters he penned, racist let­ters he re­ceived from those who felt that be­cause of his colour he should not hold such of­fices or ti­tles, books, sta­tion­ary, cloth­ing, awards, news­pa­per ar­ti­cles and the top hat he wore when he was knight­ed by the Queen. Ac­cord­ing to Her­itage Li­brary Di­vi­sion head, Ma­guerite Moore, Con­stan­tine's col­lec­tion spans over 20,000 pieces. All in the spe­cial col­lec­tions are al­so not­ed in UN­ESCO's In­ter­na­tion­al Mem­o­ry of the World reg­is­ter.

Oth­er col­lec­tions are the Mul­ti­Me­dia col­lec­tion of au­dio, video and film from the Caribbean mu­sic genre; Bill Trot­man; Prof Ju­lian Ken­ny's which un­veils over 3,000 slides of ma­rine life, flow­ers and peo­ple; post cards and stamps col­lec­tion of im­por­tant events in T&T's his­to­ry; Wayne Berke­ley cos­tume draw­ings from 1966 - 2000; Noel Nor­ton's pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry of T&T; His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety col­lec­tion ex­hibit­ing colo­nial pub­li­ca­tions and cor­re­spon­dence from 1490-1960 and the Ma­son­ic Lodge col­lec­tion with an ar­ray of jour­nals and books on Free Ma­son­ry world­wide.

At the con­ser­va­tion and preser­va­tion lab, staff work to pre­vent dam­age, to ex­tend use­able life, or to re­pair dam­age to ex­hibits. Op­er­a­tions in­clude first-time hard-cov­er bind­ing of se­ri­als and pa­per­backs, re­bind­ing, deacid­i­fi­ca­tion, and re­pair of ma­te­ri­als in the gen­er­al col­lec­tions as well as com­pre­hen­sive con­ser­va­tion treat­ment of rare and spe­cial col­lec­tions ma­te­ri­als.

Know your li­brary

Good­man and Sime­on said there was so much more to know about Nalis' of­fer­ings.

"We are not just about lend­ing books, rather we are here to fa­cil­i­tate the needs of all de­sir­ing in­for­ma­tion that is vi­tal to their every­day life," Good­man said.

Sime­on added, "We seek at all times to make part­ner­ships with com­mu­ni­ties be­cause as an in­for­ma­tion busi­ness we can­not op­er­ate in iso­la­tion. And so we con­tin­ue to do pro­grammes with com­mu­ni­ties and groups through col­lab­o­ra­tions with NGOs like the Li­on's Club, the Ro­tary Club, var­i­ous em­bassies and high com­mis­sions, even the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and a host of oth­ers.

"Our goal is to pro­vide an in­ten­tion­al stan­dard of ser­vice that de­liv­ers eq­ui­table ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion in all for­mats through high­ly ca­pa­ble and mo­ti­vat­ed staff, util­is­ing state-of-the-art tech­nolo­gies and fa­cil­i­ties to sup­port the de­vel­op­men­tal and recre­ation­al needs of T&T. So we are ask­ing the pub­lic to come out, vis­it your li­brary and see what it has to of­fer you," Sime­on con­clud­ed.

Vis­it: www.nalis.gov.tt for more in­for­ma­tion.

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NALIS col­lab­o­rates with UWI

Nalis al­so col­lab­o­rates with oth­er re­search and in­for­ma­tion cen­tres and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. UWI's St Au­gus­tine Al­ma Jor­dan li­brary's (AJL) serves a spe­cialised clien­tele of stu­dents, lec­tur­ers and sup­port staff. While Nalis serves the gen­er­al pub­lic

In a sep­a­rate in­ter­view with UWI head li­brar­i­an and for­mer Li­brary As­so­ci­a­tion's rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Nalis board, Jen­nifer Joseph, she said though UWI does not cel­e­brate Na­tion­al Li­brary Week, in a way it cel­e­brates the li­brary at cer­tain times in the aca­d­e­m­ic year, es­pe­cial­ly at the start of each se­mes­ter.

How­ev­er, Joseph said as AJL moves to­wards digi­ti­sa­tion and build­ing its her­itage, UWI and Nalis have been col­lab­o­rat­ing on the build­ing of a na­tion­al dig­i­tal her­itage por­tal since they both hold ma­te­ri­als im­por­tant to the her­itage and his­to­ry of the coun­try.

"This al­so re­quires us to col­lab­o­rate in the area of preser­va­tion. Nalis has a preser­va­tion lab­o­ra­to­ry and our staff have been trained there. We al­so col­lab­o­rate to plan work­shops, along with the Li­brary As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.

"The UWI Li­brary is al­so a mem­ber of the Nalis Com­mit­tee for the Restora­tion of the Old Trinidad Pub­lic Li­brary and its de­vel­op­ment as a Pres­i­den­tial and Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al li­brary. Our ex­pe­ri­ence in de­vel­op­ing and man­ag­ing the Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Col­lec­tion is im­por­tant in this re­gard. In that ca­pac­i­ty, UWI has been able to con­tribute and par­tic­i­pate in the de­vel­op­ment of Nalis. It has fos­tered shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion," Joseph said.

UWI spe­cial col­lec­tions:

AJL has 120 spe­cial col­lec­tions in­clud­ing its ma­jor jew­els in the col­lec­tion like the Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al col­lec­tion, the Derek Wal­cott col­lec­tion and the CLR James col­lec­tion, which have been named to the UN­ESCO Mem­o­ry of the World Reg­is­ter.

Vis­it www.sta.uwi.edu to view all spe­cial col­lec­tions.