– Daisaku Ikedu On Courage
I am an information professional with an international orientation. That’s because I know that people have more in common than what separates them. Dialogue and the courage to discuss difference has the power to change perspectives
My international consciousness: Forged in experience
My first international experience as a librarian occurred in the early 1990s, following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Shortly thereafter, the College of Physicians & Surgeons at Columbia University entered into a Russian partnership. My assignment was to teach computer and internet literacy to an annual cohort of Russian medical students that came to visit for three months. For three years I looked forward to this annual opportunity, and I hosted each cohort on social activities.
In 1994 I met the Library Director for the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong. She later contacted me and requested a proposal on how I could teach basics of Internet to public hospital librarians. I proposed a two-week training program, and arrived in Hong Kong in the middle of March 1995. Following each morning training lesson I provided, we lunched at a delectable dim sum restaurant. In 2015 had a 20th reunion with one of my Hospital Authority students, who had now herself become a Hong Kong Library Director.
I joined the staff of the Yale Libraries in late 1998. I was in the right place at the right time. The Yale World Fellow Program began in 2002, bringing 16 accomplished, mid-career, global leaders to Yale for a four-month academic experience. I would not think of Alexei Navalny as a friend if I had not met him as a Yale World Fellow in 2010, when we compared blogging techniques. Around 2006 the Yale Library started its own visiting Librarian fellowship, and I nominated and helped host an African World Health Organization librarian who introduced the Yale Library staff to the Blue Trunk Library. In 2007, following a walk-in library class, a visiting surgeon from Yerevan, Armenia, asked me if I would consider visiting Armenia to train librarians and residents. He introduced me to the Fulbright Specialist Program. In the late spring of 2008 I was on my way to Yerevan for two weeks of training and cultural immersion. I decided to return to Armenia in 2012 to continue my commitment to improve health care through information delivered by the Republican Scientific Medical Library. I was recently accepted for the 2021-2024 roster of qualified academic specialists.
I have also been active in the non-profit Networked Digital Library for Theses & Dissertations (NDLTD) , which grew out of my co-founding and managing the Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library, an original institutional repository for medical student M.D. theses. In 2010 I jointed the NDLTD Board of Directors, and I was an active participant in NDLTD activities for more than twenty years, attending annual symposia in Novisad, Serbia in 2022, Gandhidagar, Gujarat, India in 2023, and Livingstone, Zambia in 2024. I aslo was the founding Managing Editor of the Journal of Electronic Theses and Dissertations.
So how did I end up as the University Library Director in Wenzhou, China? It seemed like a unique opportunity at a time when I was ready for more library leadership experience: design, establish, staff, and manage a multi-story academic library being built to deliver English language university education for Chinese students. I dedicated more than five years to this task, truly immersing myself in local Chinese culture and both ancient and modern traditions. My position in Wenzhou concluded in mid-2019. My comprehensive library leadership opportunity in Wenzhou has created and sustained the evolution needed in my Library’s infancy, from merely a collection to a service organization. This is certainly a once in a lifetime experience that I am proud to have accomplished. Please see my blog for observations and stories about my life in China.
Library Professional, Library Science Instructor, Fulbright Academic Specialist, Creative Educator