ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 43 | February 2000
NLA
activity in the South Pacific
by Lenore Kennedy, National Bibliographic Database
Kinetica Document Delivery course trainees at the University of the South Pacific, Suva
It is hot in the South Pacific in December, very hot. And very wet.
So why was I there? My initial purpose was to conduct Kinetica training workshops for the staff of the Library at the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva, Fiji. This training was funded through the National Library of Australias Regional Cooperation Program 19992000.
To gain most from my presence in the region, I was also asked to undertake some acquisitions work in Suva, then fly on to Samoa (formerly Western Samoa) and American Samoa to renew the Librarys contacts, survey the current publishing scene and collect as many publications as I could carry.
The training at USP went well despite the mind-numbing slowness of the Internet connection. Luckily I had been forewarned of the problem and had brought along diskettes loaded with enough screen dumps to conduct the courses in a show and tell format. Over the space of four days, 25 USP Library staff were variously trained in the use of KineticaWeb, Kinetica Client and Kinetica Document Delivery.
Acquisitions time in Fiji was confined to a single day, while waiting for Monday to dawn in Samoa, on the other side of the international date line. This included a successful visit to the Lands and Survey Department, the South Pacific Forum Secretariat and the Government Printer.
In Apia, Samoa, my visit coordinator was Mataina Teo, Chief Librarian of the Nelson Memorial Public Library, who drove me around in the librarys van, a 20-year-old, non-airconditioned clunker. Mataina had also successfully applied to the NLAs Regional Cooperation Program 19992000, this time for a new computer to host the Nelson Librarys catalogue at its branch on the island of Savaii.
A meeting that Mataina had scheduled at the National University of Samoa had to be cut short, as there was to be a book launch on campus the same day. The advantage of being there, however, was that a contact at the meeting, Dr Sina Vaai, was the author of one of the books being launched while her husband had written the other. Consequently, I came away from the meeting with presentation copies of both books for the NLAs collection.* Fruitful visits were also made to the USP Alafua Campus, the Samoan Legislative Assembly, and the Development Bank of Samoa. Useful information was gleaned regarding a new series of Samoa maps currently being printed in Brisbane, and some gems were unearthed in the Wesley Bookshop.
In Pago Pago, American Samoa, I was met by Cheryl Morales, Territorial Librarian, who presides over the Feleti Barstow Public Library, a brand-new building that is scheduled to open to the public in March 2000. The highlight of my acquisitions in Pago Pago was being on the spot to purchase a copy of the new Atlas of American Samoa, hot off the press and selling fast. Current non-supply of the Samoa News was explained by the fact that it now costs $15 per week to post a set of newspapers that sell for a mere $3 per week; it was presumed foreign institutions would no longer wish to subscribe. Although the local Wesley Bookshop had much the same material as the one in Apia, my hotel gift shop was a surprising source of quality local publications.
I am confident the trip was successful from the National Librarys point of view, and I know it was successful from a personal perspective. Yes, it was uncomfortably hot and humid; yes, it was inconveniently wet from time to time; but yes, I met some wonderful, warm, dedicated people; and yes, it was definitely worth being there.
*Sina Vaai, Literary Representations in Western Polynesia Colonialism and Indigeneity. Samoa: NUS, 1999. Saleimoa Vaai, Samoa Faamatai and the Rule of Law. Samoa: NUS, 1999.
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: tford@nla.gov.au