Georgetown University: School of Foreign Service in Qatar

On May 27th, over 100 local librarians filled the LAS Building of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Qatar) for a day of workshops relating to research skills and technology for libraries. Sponsored by SFS-Qatar’s Office of Educational Enrichment (OEE), the event was held in conjunction with the Supreme Education Council (SEC) and other Education City universities including Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Northwestern University in Qatar, and Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar.

“The SEC is very grateful to the librarians from Georgetown, VCUQ, Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern University who have so willingly offered their time and expertise in the delivery of this month’s workshop, which focused on internet searching strategies, website evaluation techniques and how to create a virtual library,” said Supreme Education Council Professional Development Consultant, Martine Raphael. “With such support and so many keen librarians wanting to improve their knowledge and practice, the future bodes well for librarianship in Qatar.”

The event was the fifth in a series of SEC workshops for librarians of independent schools in Qatar and marked the first-ever joint venture between the SEC and Education City universities to provide professional development training for local librarians.

“I believe the success of this event shows that we can certainly have future joint events to encourage the professional development of local educators. We were very pleased with the connections we were able to make with so many school librarians through this event,” said Emily Wilson, the educational enrichment coordinator at Georgetown’s Qatar campus.

Throughout the day, workshop sessions explored participants’ familiarity with the growing world of internet research strategies. Education City’s leading librarians provided participants with assistance on navigating online public access catalogs as well as instruction on website evaluation. In the closing session, attendees were given the opportunity to experiment with the creation of personalized “virtual libraries,” used for storing and sharing website bookmarks, with Yahoo’s social bookmarking service, Delicious.

Frieda Wiebe, the library director at Georgetown’s Qatar campus said, “It was gratifying to see so many people who are engaged in the work of providing library services in schools come together in one place. My sense was that the workshop participants were eager to discuss online library catalogs, strategies for searching and evaluating web resources, and to experiment with the creation and organization of a "virtual library" of useful websites for school libraries. I hope that the sessions offered at Education City will have been of benefit to the Independent Schools.”

The Office of Educational Enrichment was founded at SFS-Qatar in late 2008, in an effort to provide a continuous program of educational enrichment through partnership creation between the faculty, staff, and students at SFS-Qatar and the administrators, teachers, and children in Qatar's school system. The library event concluded OEE’s professional development workshops for the 2008-2009 academic year. Wilson said planning for next year’s workshops will soon be underway as the department looks for further opportunities to partner with the SEC and neighboring Education City universities.