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Students from a variety of backgrounds come to study at @ My Library in Luang Prabang, Laos, where 85 per cent of the 1,200 books in the library cannot be found anywhere else in the country. (Dawn Starin)
Throughout the UK, one of the world’s most developed and most literate countries, local branch libraries are being threatened with closures. Readers and writers, parents and children, librarians and trade unionists are up in arms.
Yet, unfortunately, the harsh truth is that here library visits are down, and fewer books are being borrowed. More people are accessing information through the internet, making a trip to the local library a trip too far, and around 500 libraries (just over 10 per cent) have been identified as likely victims of the government’s spending cuts.
In contrast, halfway across the globe in one of the world’s poorest and least developed countries with a low life expectancy, an annual per capita income of £220, and a low literacy rate, a little library is flourishing.
Landlocked, mountainous Lao People’s Democratic Republic is poor, very poor, and yet in the centre of the ancient royal town of Luang Prabang, library visits are up, borrowing books is up, and a trip to the local library is a trip worth taking.
Not far from the banks of the muddy, mighty Mekong and its tributary, the Nam Khan river, across the road from the glistening gold roof of the richly decorated Wat Nong Sikhonmeuang, is a revolutionary learning experiment: @ My Library. This small NGO, occupying a little building, has big hopes and aspirations for the many students who walk through its doors every day.
On the ground floor, two young novice monks, wrapped in orange robes, sit at computer terminals practising English. A high school student sits at another computer terminal playing Scrabble.
Up a narrow set of stairs is a room lined with bookshelves. One young man reads a science book; another reads a history book; and a third is engrossed in a novel. Books on art, history, and Laotian folktales are very popular and there is a range of Hmong language books, which the ethnic Hmong users are amazed to find.
Most of these learning materials are simply not available anywhere else in Laos. There are about 1,200 books, all carefully selected to be appropriate for the users in terms of reading level, subject, and language. This may not be a huge library but it is one of the best in the country – 85 per cent of the books can’t be found anywhere else in Laos.
Students, who have never owned books, are able to check books out for two weeks. At present about 1,000 books a month are being checked out for free and almost all of them are being brought back on time. Students who normally have no access to quiet corners for concentration have a dedicated place where they can come to read and learn in silence.
This is an eclectic education enterprise. It is not just computer skills and reading and writing that are encouraged. Artistic endeavours are taken very seriously. Cameras have been donated, volunteer photographers have provided tutoring, and Lao, Hmong, and K’hmu students have started snapping people and places, making a record of today’s Laos.
On a large table in the back of a sunshine-filled room a young student looks through his portfolio. Imaginative prints of elephants and Laotian faces and landscapes spill across the table.
Here, the walls have become a photo gallery. The pictures are all for sale and each time a photo is sold, the photographer gets half the money and the library gets half. The students are learning a craft, presenting their culture through their own native eyes, and learning about running a business and earning money. It seems to be a perfect win–win situation.
And learning here does not stop at the end of the day. There is a music studio where budding musicians can lay down tracks, and after hours they come in and record Lao and Hmong music using guitars, keyboards, and synthesizers.
@ My Library is unique. Advanced computing skills, music lessons, Lao and English typing skills, five different languages, Japanese calligraphy, and artwork instruction are all available for the asking, and all of them free.
This experiment in all-around, holistic learning was started in 1999 by American Carol Kresge. Carol originally taught at a private school in Bangkok for privileged students and came here for what she thought would be a short visit. Taking in the lack of experienced staff and educational opportunities, she was blown away by the clear desire to learn and the complete dearth of materials.
“I looked around me and decided there and then that my time teaching in Bangkok private schools had to end. I needed to come here and start this programme,” she said.
At first this project was simply a library with a few computers. Now the students actually build their own computers, fix earphones, play Scrabble and other thinking games, and hold public speaking contests.
At first no one was able to use a computer or even control a mouse. Now, 25,000 computer hours are clocked up every year by users ten-finger typing in Lao, English, and Hmong.
Read On One of the students, Vanh, has actually developed a computer-based Lao–English talking dictionary
