Today we finished up librarian training. We taught them the Dewey Decimal System and how to have a check out system. Liberia has very few libraries and most of those are not really libraries but rather reading rooms. The people think that books are too valuable, so they won't let the books be checked out and taken home. Our program requires that a school has a check out system, but training them to think differently about books is very difficult because of this mindset. Many of our new librarians have never read an entire book on their own. We also taught them how to scan documents and send reports on a computer. Only three of the five the librarians had ever used a computer. They are all very excited about their new job and have decided to start a librarian association and have named it the Liberia Now Librarian Association and will meet four times during the next school year. They also decided that they would all help each other set up their new libraries next week.
