MELA Notes number 83 (2010) - Middle East Librarians Association

SPURR: Iraqi Libraries
developer for Lund University Libraries in Sweden (also the
developer and host of the Directory of Open Access Journals at
Lund 2 ), who has now started his own company called SemperTool,
which is the provider of LibHub.
The Iraqis contract directly with SemperTool for provision of the
service, which involves collecting all of the relevant metadata and
converting it to OAI (Open Archive Initiative) format. This is all
hosted on a single server to which the IVSL is connected, obviating
the necessity of searching a multitude of separate databases.
This single, unified indexical system is faster and more efficient.
It also permits clicking on a particular author‘s name, thus creating a
new result set of all articles written by him or her. It also has a ―my
collection‖ function.
I must also thank Dr. Bahaa Kazem, professor at the University
of Baghdad, and Iraqi academic point man for IVSL. His view of the
new phase under Iraqi management is that Iraqi goals should be to
increase Iraqi experience in the top management of e-resources,
increase the number of users through developing the awareness of
Iraqi students and faculty members by direct training, and improve
the content of the databases available at IVSL. Dr Kazem sees the
main problem that the project faces as a bureaucratic system that is
not ready to work with new publishing systems and technology. With
the shift in support and responsibility, consulting actors at CRDF
now communicate directly with high-level individuals at the
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. Regarding
stability of the costs, a critical factor to insure the willingness of the
Iraqi government to support the project, Dr. Kazem states that some
publishers have asked to increase the fees, but in general the costs
remain within the specified budget of the project as originally
accepted by Iraqi government. This is no small matter, since Mr.
Naim has informed me that the similar project he developed for
Pakistan, which was the model for the IVSL, has recently been
defunded by the Pakistani government, and that the senior academic
figure overseeing scientific development within the Pakistani
academia was shoved out in favor of a crony of the prime minister.
These are the sorts of problems bedeviling those trying to
accomplish good work in many places.
2 See Lund University, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals):
http://www.doaj.org/
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