The following is an excerpt from an interview conducted with the University of Toronto LWB Fundraising Committee on April 27th 2011. It highlights the different activities and insights that this group gained from their participation with the LWB Asturias project.
LWB BLOG TEAM: As the Fundraising Committee for LWB University of Toronto, what types of activities did you plan to help raise money for the Asturias project?
U of T LWB Fundraising Committee: We held two events and two bake sales. We also had a letter writing campaign; we contacted the administration of the school, the alumni and the student association and solicited for donations. We ended up getting a $2000 donated for Asturias.
LWB BLOG TEAM: Wow! That is amazing! Well, what did you learn from this experience?
U of T Fundraising Committee: People will surprise you. You have to contact stakeholders that may have an interest and they may surprise you. There is money to be found if you are willing to ask for it. You have to state a good case for your cause.
LWB BLOG TEAM: So it sounds like you learned a lot about advocacy and perhaps even marketing?
U of T Fundraising Committee: Yes!
LWB BLOG TEAM: How did your experience as LWB Fundraising Committee enhanced your library school education?
U of T Fundraising Committee: …When we were soliciting for donations…the letters we sent to the administration is something we would not have ran into necessarily in school or in our regular lives. That is a definite skill…
LWB BLOG TEAM: What would you pass on to future fundraising groups?
U of T Fundraising Committee: Think bigger than your school because I think the majority of our donations came from friends, family members that came and supported us. So, really try to reach out to the community…
LWB BLOG TEAM: Well, thank you very much for your time.
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By Katie Cuyler
For the information literacy group we wanted to focus on increasing information literacy in the library for both students and teachers. Since we had nine people in our group we decided to subdivide into four smaller groups in order to be more efficient. The first group focused on creating guides for teachers to inform them about how to use the library. For this the developed guides to the classification system, floor plans for the library, and other instructional documentation to show teachers how the library can be a helpful resource for their classes. The second group focused on creating resource lists for teachers. At Asturias each month is given a theme, such as gender, discrimination, ecology etc., and the classes that month are tailored to these themes. Therefore the resource lists are based on these themes, primarily these lists reflect resources already in the library, however they also offer suggestions for future collections development. The third information literacy group focuses on developing guides, examples and best practices of book talks as a way to help foster a culture of reading in the students of Asturias. The final group is focusing on creating information literacy games. In this capacity two different scavenger hunts have been created. One focusing on the very basic structure of the book and another on the thematic differences and types of resources available in the library. I am working with the fourth group and I’ve encountered a few obstacles which I think are worth noting, which I’m sure other group have also grappled with. These obstacles largely revolve around defining and understanding the user group, which is one of the most important factors to consider when planning any library programing. The difficulty with creating programing for this user group is that there is such a diversity of skill levels and that the culture and skill levels
Library class for grade 1
are very different from what one expects coming from a western culture. Firstly the students are divided into grades based primarily on age rather than skill level, which means there may be students in first grade with higher reading comprehension skills than others in grade six. Secondly there is not a culture of reading in Guatemala like there is in Canada, so students often come to school completely illiterate and not understanding the basic structure of the book. A few of us observed during reading time that students will open a book and read the publication information or pick up a book open to any page read it then go find another book. Despite this the students seem quite excited to be in the library and thrilled to have the opportunity to read to someone. All in all I’m optimistic about the future of the library and hope our information literacy programs help foster a culture a reading for the students of Asturias.
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By Katie Needs
Ola from Xela! Our time in Guatemala has been excellent - we’ve experienced beautiful scenery, eaten great food, and have been warmly welcomed by our hosts and greeted very happily by the locals since we’ve arrived.
After much anticipation we were finally able to visit the Asturias Academy and get a grasp on the state of the library. After meeting with Steve (the librarian) and participating in some reading time with the kids, I noticed that the overall organization of the library was something we could help with immediately. The books are not in order and there’s no re-shelving system in place to make Steve’s job easier. When considering the day-to-day operations of the library, this seemed like one of the most immediate causes for concern, and one which our group can definitely help with during this week in Xela.
Yesterday we were finally able to collect all the books donated by each chapter - about 350! These books span many different genres and reading levels, from picture books to YA, to reference and english works of fiction and non-fiction. Needless to say, Steve was thrilled - particularly with a number of early chapter books and an “electrical how-to” set of texts (see Nina’s post for a great shot of his reaction). The organization group worked on putting together a spreadsheet of the books we’ve donated for easy entry into the Asturias’ Library Thing, cataloguing the collection, adding labels, and developing a plan for re-organizing the library to ensure efficiency and ease of use for both Steve and the kids.
Today we came up with a colour coding system for the books which corresponds to their physical location in the library, reading levels, and general categories (YA, early chapter books, picture books, adult, etc…). We also did a huge chunk of shelf-reading and assigned coloured labels to the majority of our donated books and a lot of the picture books in the Asturias library. We will be continuing this, as well as cataloguing, adding books to the LibraryThing, and working on putting the books in order for the rest of our time here.
Hopefully this overview or the organization project can give you (wonderful readers!) a good idea of what sort of immediate actions are being taken to help out the Asturias library and their librarian, in terms of handling the physical library on a day-to-day basis.
Hasta luego!
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by Sarah and Rebecca
K’iche’ is the predominant Indigenous language spoken in the central highlands of Guatemala, including in and around Xela (Xelaju, the Mayan name for Quetzaltenango). The official Guatemalan 2002 census counted approximately one million K’iche speakers, although that statistic is known to be conservative. K’iche’ is the native language of several students at Asturias; additionally all students take K’iche’ classes. The Asturias curriculum has included K’iche’ language classes for sixteen years, although it is only one year since the government mandated K’iche’ classes for all public and private schools. However, the Asturias library has only a few K’iche’ language materials. Like other Mayan languages, K’iche’ continues to be an oral language spoken by thousands. K’iche’ has been a written language for less than 100 years, therefore it does not have a tradition as a written or published language. K’iche’ as a language is marginalized, which has further prevented the publication of relevant material. Audio format lends itself well to this situation, and aims to fill gaps in the collection at Asturias.
Rebecca Burbank, an LWB member completing her MLIS at McGill, has spearheaded a project that has the potential to be immensely valuable to Asturias’s library and curriculum. She proposed to implement a program to create K’iche’ language resources that could be used in the Asturias library and in K’iche’ language classes. Our project group, the school librarian, and Asturias administration thinks that audio recordings would be a great method to support the language programming at Asturias. Prior to our trip, we recorded examples consisting of K’iche’ stories and their Spanish translations dictated by a native language speaker. We envision recording basic K’iche’ phrases and stories along with their Spanish translations to be used as curriculum resources. With the help and translation of Steve, the Asturias librarian, we proposed the idea that K’iche’-speaking students could take appropriate Spanish-language books and work on translating them into their native tongue. This could be done as part of their coursework with the guidance of Roney, the school’s K’iche’ language teacher. This is one way the students could gain an even deeper understanding of their language and the many ways it functions in today’s world, as it resiliently has for centuries.
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The 2010 Annual Report for Librarians Without Borders is now available. Here is an excerpt from the Board of Directors’ message:
“This has been a very defining year for Librarians Without Borders. At our Annual General Meeting last December, we reported on the very beginning stages of a fundamental re-evaluation and strategic re- focusing effort. Now, twelve months later, we can report that we have progressed from taking stock of our strengths and weaknesses, to identification of core considerations to guide our direction going forward, to synthesis of a strategic road map that meets our mission, and finally on to practical execution of these directives. We would like to briefly describe some of the thinking behind these ideas…”
View/download: 
LWB 2010 Annual Report
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The School of Information Studies at McGill University recently published their Fall 2010 inFocus newsletter, which features an article on last year’s LWB trip to visit the Asturias Academy in Guatemala (pages 10-11) and a nod from the school’s Director, France Bouthillier on page 2 in her Message from the Director column. Very glad that we have the support of the library school at McGill!
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Proceedings of the conference “Information Access: Commons, Controls, Controversy” have been published as Volume 2, Number 3 of Faculty of Information Quarterly.
This includes an article by University of Toronto Student Committee Co-Chair Mark Gelsomino, as well as other articles of interest to Librarians Without Borders supporters.
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From September 2009 to April 2010, the Librarians Without Borders
student committee at UWO and Central American partner organization
VIDA, undertook a project to build a school library for the rural
village of El Humo, Costa Rica. In April, ten LWB members travelled to
Costa Rica for two weeks to physically construct and set up the
library. They’re back and ready to share their experiences. LWB
members will speak not only about their experiences in Costa Rica but
also about the planning, organizing, collection developing, all around
hard work behind the project.
Please join us:
Wednesday, June 9 from 12:00-1:00 in NCB 293
Refreshments will be served.
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McGill’s LWB Student Committee has put their final report for Miguel Angel Asturias Academy online.
View their blog post and the final report!
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You might want to follow the University of Western Ontario’s Librarians Without Borders student committee on their new website and blog:
http://uwo-lwb.blogspot.com/
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Asturias, News | admin May 2, 2011 | 
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