Professor Bronwen Densmore discusses her trip to Palestine over the summer as part of the program “Librarians and Archivists to Palestine.”

  Who organized your trip?
“Librarians and Archivists to Palestine” was organized by a group of librarians who were interested in exploring ways that librarians in the West might be able to connect and collaborate with Palestinian librarians in the West Bank and Israel (Gaza is a little more difficult to access right now).

Tell us about some of the most interesting libraries that you visited.
Over the course of the trip we visited dozens of different libraries, archives, and information projects. In East Jerusalem, we met with keepers of family archives and saw beautiful hand-written Qurans, books of poetry, and family records. We met with public librarians who serve Palestinian and Bedouin communities inside Israel, as well as with public librarians in Nablus and al-Bireh. We visited the Lajee Center in Adia Refugee Camp and the Yafa Cultural Center at Balata Refugee Camp to hear about their own library collections and youth education programs, and (of course) we toured academic libraries at Birzeit University and Al-Quds University.
 

What are some of the biggest challenges facing Palestinian libraries, librarians, and their patrons?
The libraries we worked with faced all kinds of challenges we don’t see in the United States. Access to books in Arabic is limited due to restrictions placed on what kinds of things may be shipped into Israel and Palestine (Arabic-language texts can be hard to get). Librarians’ limited ability to travel across borders (and impeded mobility within the West Bank and Israel) makes professional development and networking between libraries difficult. That said, Palestinian librarians in Israel and the West Bank are also doing a lot of the same work that librarians everywhere do: they work to connect their users to the best information possible, are thinking critically and creatively about ways to deliver library services, and are working to ensure a vibrant future for the profession.

What would you like to go back and see/do again?
I would love to go back. I’m very interested in open technology and grassroots mapping, and I was able to meet with a few organizations that are doing social geography scholarship and outreach: Zochrot in Tel Aviv and Grassroots Jerusalem are both organizations approaching the topic from different directions. On a purely personal note, there were places I’d love to have the chance to explore a little more: Nablus Old City was great (and I would love another chance to eat kunafa (a local delicacy) again. Ramallah, where we were based at the beginning and end of our trip was a bustling, international city with a lot more going on than I had time to see. I also felt like I was just starting to get the hang of transportation in and around the West Bank (the shared taxis system is great). In the meantime, I am trying to learn how to cook some of the amazing food that I had while I was there and learn at least a few words of Arabic.