Librarianship is a truly global discipline with practitioners all over the world. Being aware of larger developments in the field and learning about libraries in other regions can broaden your own professional horizon and give you a fresh perspective on things. The new Open Access ebook “Librarians Around the World” helps gain this perspective. It includes contributions by 34 librarians from 19 countries spanning North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia/Oceania. Initiated by the New Professionals Section of the Library Association of Latvia, the project has been in the making since early 2017 and was finally published in December last year. Participants were asked to write about themselves, their libraries, library systems, education opportunities, library related organizations and other aspects of librarianship in their countries.
Together with three colleagues, I contributed a chapter about librarianship in Qatar. In four parts, we are discussing 1. LIS education in Qatar, 2. the establishment of the Library and Information Association in Qatar (LIA-Q), 3. the diversity of the librarian community and library users and 4. Maktaba, Qatar’s first private public children’s library. Below is the full text of our chapter. I hope you will get inspired by this and all the other contributions in the book!
LIS Traveler 