The seminary librarians at the Pacific Regional Seminary in Suva have catalogued 19,000 records and put the catalogue online.
They have been assisted by Hans Arns who is the project coordinator of Sharing the Word an initiative linking up Catholic seminary libraries and librarians throughout the world.
This is being done to provide all seminarians and theology students in Africa, Asia and Oceania with the best possible resources.
Sharing the Word hopes to give every Catholic theological student equal access to the world’s best resources.
At present most seminary libraries in Africa, Asia and Oceania are isolated and poorly resourced.
This lack of resources affects the ability of the students to learn and achieve.
The Pontifical Mission Societies in Australia (known as Catholic Mission) is the lead agency for the Sharing the Word project.
The first step in the project is updating libraries and providing online resources is to install a computerised library automation system (catalogue) in every library.
The system was brought online in 2013 and is hosted in Sydney.
This means Sharing the Word is taking care of backing up the data and maintaining the system software.
When PRS began the work of cataloguing, the internet connectivity was slow and unreliable.
To provide uninterrupted service to the library the software and the data were duplicated on the local server.
The library used the local system to record loans and returns where necessary.
The updated data was then automatically sent to Sydney whenever the internet was available.
Internet reliability and speed is not an issue any more in Suva and it will not be an issue anywhere in the near future.
Catholic Mission will also assist each seminary to acquire a server and a number of workstations the librarians and students can use to access the available resources.
Hans is now busy finding free and up-to-date material that seminary students will all be able to access once the system has been installed in their seminary.
Who is using Sharing the Word?
Source
- Sharing the Word
- Image: Pacific Regional Seminary
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News category: Asia Pacific.
