Developing rural libraries in New Caledonia

Received from Christophe Augias, director, Bibliothèque Bernheim, Nouméa

Libraries did not begin to develop significantly in New Caledonia until the 1990's. Traditionally, it was accepted that New Caledonians lived in an environment of oral tradition and the great outdoors and so were not interested in reading. The population is approximately 207 000 of whom about two thirds are in the capital and only city, Nouméa. The few libraries that existed were in Nouméa and in a couple of neighbouring big villages. Generally, it seemed that libraries were considered a luxury that only bigger communities could afford.

It took a strong professional and political will to change this way of thinking. One of the major instruments for this work has been the Bernheim Library in Noumea. As the territorial library, one of its main missions is to promote reading and give access to material over the whole territory. In order to do so, it was essential to develop a network of libraries that could host collections for the country lending service and to allow work at the local level.

The first measure taken was to meet people from the 32 rural districts and high-level officials and politicians, to convince them of the need for a system of libraries throughout the country. This happened early in 1996. Most of the rural communities range in size from a few hundred to less than 5000 inhabitants. Today, 25 of those districts have libraries and each library holds a small collection of between 500 and 3000 volumes, supplemented with books from the country lending service. Some communities have chosen to use existing buildings for the libraries and some chose to build new ones. In both cases, most libraries offer reasonably good conditions for the readers, and the more success they have, the more mayors are willing to make further improvements.

Small villages find it difficult to pour resources into buying books and paying for full-time librarians while they still have other heavy infrastructure commitments. However, examples in neighbouring villages have shown how unexpectedly successful those small libraries are. They also proved to be a way of asserting the future-oriented policy of the city councils - a very valuable concept in today's New Caledonia.

The challenge now remains to keep these small libraries alive and allow them to play their essential role in promoting reading and success in schools. For this to happen, training and recruiting are key elements, and they could not have been carried out properly without close contact with city councils. Initially, the Bernheim Library organised a training and continuing education program, strongly emphasizing the importance of having adequately educated people in order to do the job properly. Thus, the pre-requisite for training was at least a high school diploma. This proved to be difficult in smaller villages, especially as some mayors preferred to keep such people for other tasks. Once again, the importance of the role of libraries had to be stressed. Over the years, experience in various places demonstrated the importance of librarians in the success of a library. Mayors are now increasingly willing to involve the Bernheim Library in their recruitment processes.

But rural libraries are not the 'smallest end' of the network, since the 300 minority ethnic groups of New Caledonia cannot be ignored. Most of these can be easily served through the existing libraries. However, others are very remote, and people seldom have an occasion to come to the village. Thus we had to find a way of reaching them. This was achieved through rural libraries and through establishing 'reading-points' (a poor translation of 'points-lecture'). In some places, librarians go to tribes on a regular basis to bring books that can be lent and will be given back on their next trip. In other places, small libraries (the reading-points) are set up and looked after by volunteers. There are about fifteen reading-points in the territory and we expect that number to grow in the next few years.

From the time of the creation of the territorial library system until recently, the country lending service had been operating (more or less poorly) from Noumea. New Caledonia is about 400km long and about 50km wide with a mountain range separating the two coasts. The geography therefore made it difficult for the country lending service, which was located down south, to be efficient. So it was decided to decentralize a part of this service by providing another two new centres, one up north and the other on the East Coast.

The Mednord, a very modern library, is now being built in Poindimie and should bring a major change in providing access to material in more remote areas. The second part of the project will be to build another decentralized library on the West Coast.

Those new creations were also an occasion to try and accomplish a librarian's dream: the creation of a common catalogue. The Redocal network was thus begun in 1997.

Nowadays, Bernheim is the head of a network of twenty two libraries sharing a common catalogue, allowing readers to locate and order books from any place on the island. This system had major advantages. It makes it much easier and cheaper for small libraries to computerize: they do not have to seek a library system; they do not have to learn how to use it on their own; they do not have to buy expensive servers to host their database; and it allows librarians to share the cataloguing. Having the same software and same database also makes things much easier for the country lending service. However, a very centralized approach also has disadvantages, especially when it comes to changing software or servicing the whole network. But it has allowed a very significant leap forward as far as computerization and document access are concerned. This period of growth is nearly over and it is expected that, by 2005, all districts will have their own libraries and a stronger network of reading-points will be established.

The next step is to make sure that these libraries are as effective as possible. We have the right tools, we now need to make the whole system work.

Christophe Augias (please remove '.nospam' from address)
Bibliothèque Bernheim
BP G1 98848 Nouméa Cedex
Nouvelle-Calédonie

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