Few months after getting my Ph.D and returing back to the University of Tabriz, I received an invitation through my Faculty of Education and Psychology. This invitation was from the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, and it was rather an order for me to attend a National Library and Information Science Conference in Tehran.
Although the country in that time was in a turmoil, and the antagonist groups where scattered in all corners of the universities, the Iran-Iraq imposed war has not been started yet.
And when I arrived in that Conference I found that actually all known Iranian librarians, library science teachers, and many higher ranking Government authorities were sitting there, and at the end of the day, when the conference reached to an end, the result was to train thousands of professional and semi-professional librarians by the Library and Information Science Departments, so that,those graduates could be employed in high school libraries or,in the village Public Libraries.
This was the beginning of the Islamic Revolution of Iran and everything seemed to be pure and desirable for the expansion and the developments of libraries and library education in Iran, but very soon the imposed Iran-Iraq War, or, in my opinion, the Iran-World War started and the staff and the students of libraries and the information Science centers, either went to the fronts to fight against the enemy, or had to remain in the Universities and confine themselves inside the classes, or go through the programmes of Library and Information Science courses and try to expand and make enough changes to the programmes of the old Departments of Library and Information Science.
This National Library and Information Science Conference was a pre-text to Library and Information Science Curriculum Committee. Dr. 'Ali Shari'atmadari, Professor of the University of Tehran was the main body and the responsible for the Higher Education Committee of Humanities Curriculum.
Before that Dr. Tahereh 'Oloumi being plut to the post of the Committee of Library and Information Science in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, Dr. Behpazou, a Professor of the University of Tehran was the head of that Committee.
Dr. Tahereh 'Oloumi, a Ph.D. holder from USA and the Professor of the University of Tehran was assigned as the head of the Library and Information Curriculum Committee by Dr. 'Ali Shari'atmadari. Other members who were invited to work with her were the representatives from the Universities and Higher Education and Research Institutes of Alzahra, Ahvaz, IRANDOC, University of Iran Medical Science, Mashhad, Shirz, Tabriz, and the Tehran University.
Iran-Iraq war started, butduring the bombardments and missiles attacks on all cities of Iran, we librariansworked very hard to provide the best programmes for the Libraries and Information Science schools and colleges throughout the country. I think it would be nice here to mention the names of those who attended regularly in the Committee for twenty years, and also remind the problems that we had to face in that long period. In fact all of these underlined names are my colleagues and except one or two, all of them are alive and active in their field. Here are more: |
