Myanmar Library Collaboration

Myanmar Librarian Collaborative Project

As part of a collaborative exchange of librarians from Myanmar’s Universities Central Library and Yangon University Library with Arizona State University, the University of Washington and Northern Illinois University, Daw Ni Ni Naing and Daw La Pye Win Htun stayed in Tempe during the month of June, 2014 in order to work with the various library resources and departments at Arizona State University. Dr. Ralph Gabbard of the ASU Universities Libraries, who traveled to Myanmar earlier this year to select applicants for the program, organized the exchange and the ASU University Libraries, ASU Global and the Center for Asian Research facilitated it. This collaborative exchange program will continue in October 2014 when 2 additional Myanmar librarians will spend a month at Rutgers University to continue helping the consortium universities curate our Myanmar and Southeast Asia collections.

To welcome Daw Ni Ni Niang and Daw La Pye Win Htun to ASU, the University Libraries and the Center for Asian Research hosted a reception on Thursday, June 3, 2014 in Hayden Library. The reception allowed the library staff and faculty with specialties in Southeast Asia to meet the Myanmar librarians and exchange ideas in a relaxed setting.

Daw Ni Ni Niang and Daw La Pye Win Htun shared their expertise in the Myanmar university library system and their methods of curating manuscripts in a lecture held on Friday, June 20, 2014. The lectures focused on their home libraries at Universities Central Libraries, Rangoon, Myanmar, and Yangon University Library, Myanmar. They presented their home city of Yangon, Myanmar and reflected on their experiences during their month long exchange at the ASU University Libraries’ personnel.

Click here for links to the power points from the lecture Universities' Central Library(NNN)20-6-2014(ASU) and Yangon Library Update (20.6.14).

During their stay in Tempe, Daw Ni Ni Niang and Daw La Pye Win Htun also visited the Grand Canyon with local Burmese families. They then went to Northern Illinois University where they met up with colleagues who had spent June at the University of Washington working with their library staff. They visited the library at the University of Chicago and Newbury Library during their visit in Illinois.