Fifteen years ago NORWAC started a project to raise the standard of the library at Shifa hospital in Gaza. In the late nineties it emerged as a good, modern library. Spacious rooms, a good book collection, a useful collection of journals, open to health professionals from outside the hospital, computer cataloging, Medline on CD-ROM, and more.
Then one problem came after the other: the second intifada, pressured economy, Israeli closure of Gaza, and – last but not least - the war last winter. Much has gone from bad to worse in Gaza. That goes for Gaza Health Sciences Library at Shifa also.
Image: Salim El Bast is Library Director of Bireh Public Library, one of Noursofts long-standing customers on the West Bank. To the left Erling Bergan from Librarians Union of Norway. He is in Palestine to get the rebuilding Gaza Health Sciences Library started.
Now the opportunity is there to build the library again. With the help of a substantial grant from the Norwegian Nurses Association, funds that have been raised and an exciting academic partnership with The Librarians Union of Norway, this library is on its way up again. The plans will be made in cooperation with the Palestinians on site. But Erling Bergan from Bibliotekarforbundet does his preparations, in order to present options.
AN important question is the emphasis on the change from physical books / magazines to online digital resources. The internet works far better than the postal service in Gaza. And professional literature is going digital throughout the rest of the world. It is a question of what available expertise the library can have in the fields of librarianship and IT. An important source will probably be HINARI, the large collection of resources on health sciences for developing countries.
Another question being examined now, is what systems should be considered for cataloging the physical collection. Erling Bergan has a group of librarians looking at different aspects of this. Bergan has just had a meeting with the supplier of Libsys, a library system developed by the company Noursoft in Ramallah on the West Bank. He has also met a representative of the Ministry of Culture, to be updated on the situation of libraries in general in the Palestinian areas.
