Finishing Up and Looking Forward

After meeting with all of the teachers at Ridge Experimental School, we had another meeting with Eugenia and Bertha, the two teachers that will be caretakers of the library. Our goals were. to make sure that they understood the organization of the library and show them how to use the library database we created in Excel. The organization system was clear, but the Excel database was not. Since computers are scarce here, Eugenia and Bertha have little experience with using computers and even less experience with using Excel. After realizing this, we explained in more detail and eventually decided that creating a manual for using Excel and our database would help reinforce our explanation. That way, both the current and future librarians will have instructions that they can always refer to. We created the manual using screenshots of Excel and our database. We added labels and instructions for completing tasks such as sorting columns, adding new books to the database, and finding specific books.

We've also been traveling with the other project groups to Babianeha and Kranka to identify potential library sites. So far, all of the schools we've talked to have been extremely interested. We collected data about each school, such as how many students there are and what resources they have, so that next year's group will have as much information as possible while preparing for their projects. While at the villages, we also assisted Jon and Kurt with their community interviews.

In our last few days at Ridge, it has been so wonderful to see the students sitting and reading in our library!