A mentor of David Gerhan once told him that everything
a reference librarian learns will benefit a student some day.
That advice, from Professor Emerita W. Loretta
Walker, Gerhan's predecessor as head of public services at Schaffer
Library, has proven beneficial to Gerhan himself as the reference
librarian prepares to spend his sabbatical next year as a Fulbright Scholar
at the University of Botswana in southern Africa.
For Gerhan, his experience in the Peace Corps in Libya some
34 years ago was instrumental in developing a proposal to
return to Africa as a Fulbright.
“It feels like I've come full circle,” he says, reflecting on
his tour in the north African country where he taught English
to schoolchildren. His Peace Corps assignment was cut short by
the revolution that brought Mohammar Qadaffi to
power, but the experience developed his sense for what it means to be
an American trying to contribute in a foreign culture, Gerhan says.
This time, Gerhan returns to Africa to teach a new
generation of students about reference services and library
administration at one of the premiere library training programs on
the continent. Gerhan refers to the university's library as
“proto-online:” users have access to major on-line libraries
and selected databases, but evidently fewer books and databases
than what most major research universities in the West offer.
The challenge for the University of Botswana is
not unlike that facing Schaffer Library: to enhance its access
with limited resources. “It takes money to be online,” Gerhan said.
“The hardware and some of the subscription resources
are expensive while other electronic documents are free.”
The outlook has improved recently for libraries like the
one at the University of Botswana, Gerhan notes. Because
major library catalogs are mostly publicly accessible and
free-of-charge, they can be exploited for subject bibliography. “If you're
in the Harvard catalog, ” he says. “You're going to get a
fairly comprehensive look at the literature.”
“I'm interested in the role that electronic technology plays
in libraries internationally and how it will level the playing
field,” Gerhan says.
The University of Botswana, in the capital of Gaborone east
of the massive Kalahari Desert on the border with South Africa,
has about 8,200 students in graduate and undergraduate programs. Botswana, a former
British protectorate about the size of Texas, has a population of
1.5 million. The standard of living is somewhat higher than
other African nations, thanks to the discovery of diamonds in
the 1960s. The climate is mostly arid. Religion is a mix of
indigenous traditional faiths and Christianity. Setswana is the native
language; English, the official language, is spoken at the university.
Gerhan says he expects to learn things in Botswana that
will help him in his role as head of reference services in
Schaffer Library. “I've always felt that anything a reference
librarian learns will help a student sometime, somewhere,” Gerhan
says, recalling his mentor's advice. “I cannot predict, but there will be
a time when the experience will prove helpful in my work
with some student here at Union.”
“That's the benefit for me and Union,” he says. “But
more than anything, I aim to train new librarians in a changing world.
For all I've been given, I want to pay something back.”