Business Library Development in Vladivostok
Business & Finance Bulletin
No. 103 (Fall 1996) pp.15-21.
By Gordon Aamot
ABSTRACT
The University of Washington School of Business and Vladivostok State University of Economics worked cooperatively on a USIA-funded project during 1994-1996 to develop a new undergraduate business school curriculum in Vladivostok. Given the paucity of contemporary business information sources in Russian libraries, library development was determined to be crucial for the success of the project. Library staff development was also important. Librarian exchanges took place between Seattle and Vladivostok in 1996 and funds were allocated for the purchase of library materials. It is suggested that business librarians can play an important role in international library development projects.
INTRODUCTION
Connections between the Puget Sound region of Washington state and Vladivostok are very strong. Both have beautiful coastlines and deep harbors, strong maritime traditions, hinterlands rich in natural resources, and are heavily engaged in international trade. Although separated by the Pacific Ocean, Vladivostok is closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow. Vladivostok and Tacoma, Seattle's Puget Sound neighbor, are sister cities. The ports of Vladivostok and Tacoma are sister ports. But until 1991, Vladivostok was a closed city, visited by only a few Americans. Access was difficult even for Russian citizens. Since 1991, military spending has declined dramatically. Standards of living have plummeted while unemployment has soared. The political and economic changes of the past few years have also caused great shifts in higher education. Where the emphasis in the past was on educating technicians and engineers, now business, entrepreneurship, and international trade are much more important. Vladivostok, like the rest of the Russian Far East, has worked to make the difficult transition to a market economy and to leverage its strategic position on the Pacific Rim. One of the necessary conditions for developing the economy is the creation of a system of business education capable of training a new generation of managers and entrepreneurs, especially in the area of international business. Business librarians, through library development projects such as the one described below, can also play a role in Russia's transition to a market economy.PARTNERSHIP FOR MANAGEMENT EDUCATION
In September of 1994, the University of Washington Business School's Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) received a two-year grant from the United States Information Agency. The purpose of the $300,000 grant was to promote cooperative relationships between UW Business School faculty and faculty at the Vladivostok State University of Economics (VSUE) as they jointly planned for a new Business School that would prepare Russian managers to function in the world market. Rather than send American faculty to teach classes in Vladivostok, the strategy of the Partnership for Management Education program was to develop the capabilities of Russian management faculty and administrative systems at VSUE and, thus, permanently impact business education at the Institute. Project goals included introducing a new undergraduate business curriculum, developing linkages to the local business community, and laying the foundation for continued cooperation between VSUE and the University of Washington. The project was originally conceived as supporting only faculty exchanges, with no library component. During the first half of 1995, half a dozen Russian faculty members spent six months at the University of Washington in Seattle, working with UW Business School faculty mentors on a curriculum for their new business program and sitting in on business classes. The following summer, participating UW faculty visited Vladivostok and continued their consultations. While in Seattle, visiting Russian faculty members also received orientations to the University of Washington Libraries, especially the Business Administration Library. When plans for the second year of the grant were reviewed, the Russian faculty insisted that some degree of library support be folded into the project. The original grant application was modified and a library component was included for the second year. This included librarian exchanges between Seattle and Vladivostok and the purchase of library materials to support the new business curriculum and faculty research.VLADIVOSTOK STATE UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS
Founded in 1967, the Vladivostok State University of Economics is a relatively new school. [1]. It offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees. There are nearly 3,000 students and over 300 faculty and staff. Its original mission was to produce a supply of engineering and technical specialists to work in Siberia and the Russian Far East. In 1992, as Russia moved towards democracy and a market economy, VSUE restructured its curriculum by creating a School of Economics and Business, and a School of International Economic Relations and Management. A School of Economics and Law was created in 1993 to meet the demand for graduates trained in Business Law. The Institute also has strong programs in Apparel Technology and Design, and Mechanics and Radio Engineering. In 1995, the Schools of Business and Economics and International Economic Relations and Management were merged to create a School of Business Administration.VSUE competes for students with several other older and larger universities in Vladivostok, such as Far Eastern State University and Far Eastern State Technical University. Its strategic goal is to create a niche for itself as the most technologically advanced institution of higher education in the region. This is a challenging goal for any institution in the Russian Far East, in part because the telecommunications infrastructure is not well developed. Electrical outages and brown-outs are everyday occurrences. Hardware, software, and telephone lines are expensive and academic budgets are limited. VSUE has made some progress, though. Faculty and staff have email access, albeit limited, so communication between Vladivostok and the rest of the world is relatively quick and cheap. The Institute's administration has also been able to successfully solicit corporate donations and, thus, outfit several PC labs with 486 Pentium machines and a Novell local area network. VSUE administrators, some of whom have visited Seattle and seen the role American libraries play in management education, have included the library in their vision for the future.
LIBRARIAN EXCHANGES
The Director of the VSUE Library, Tatiana Grekhova, visited the University of Washington from February 22 through March 19, 1996. Since she spoke little English and most of the UW Libraries staff spoke no Russian, an English-speaking student from VSUE served as a translator. The object of the visit was to provide her with an opportunity to learn about American libraries and establish relationships with UW librarians. Her program constituted a broad overview of American librarianship--from service programs to technical processing to administration and fund raising. The concepts of service to the user and access were emphasized in all these sessions. Ms. Grekhova received orientations from Libraries staff to a number of Libraries units, including Circulation, Reference, Bibliographic Instruction, Cataloging, Acquisitions, Gift Processing, Slavic studies, and Systems. She also visited several other public and academic libraries in the Seattle area. Since VSUE's programs are primarily focused on business and economics, she spent much of her time at the Business Administration Library. Coincidentally, both the VSUE and UW Business Administration Libraries have new library facilities under construction, so she was especially interested in how American librarians plan for services and security in new buildings. We also spent many hours discussing issues of mutual concern, such as budgets, staffing, relationships with administrations, ideas for project purchases, and the impact of electronic resources on library services, staff, and users. Besides being introduced to all the public and technical service functions of a branch library, she also had a chance to explore the World Wide Web through our campus network, as well as our locally mounted and CD-ROM databases.As the second half of the exchange, I visited the Vladivostok State University of Economics between May 11 and May 24, 1996. My goals were to identify first hand what the needs of the VSUE library were and to learn how Russian libraries operate and what similarities they shared with American libraries. I also wanted to see as many other area libraries with business collections as possible to determine the local context in which the VSUE library operated.
The program that my Russian colleague prepared for me was similar to her experience in Seattle--orientations to the library, discussions of library needs and future plans, and visits to other libraries in the area. Because I spoke no Russian, I was always accompanied by a VSUE staff member or student who could translate for me. The English language skills of the several translators varied, so communication was sometimes difficult and, I'm certain, subtleties on both sides were missed. My Russian hosts were very considerate of my linguistic deficiencies, however, and through humor, body language, and practice we managed to communicate successfully most of the time.
I had an opportunity to interview staff members in the different areas of the library and learn about their units and how students use them. The library has a collection of 230,000 volumes and a staff of nineteen. There are over 4,000 registered library borrowers, mostly students and faculty, but there are also a number of local business people that pay a small fee to use the collection. The library's single reading room seats 88 users and contains the card catalog. The library has two PCs, one used by catalogers and one in the Director's office. Staff there told me that because energy was so expensive in Vladivostok, the university couldn't afford to heat many of the rooms in the building during the winter, including the library.
Organizationally, the library consists of the Director, Circulation, Reserve, and the "Business Information Center," which is comprised of Cataloging, Acquisitions, and Reference. The Director provides leadership for the library staff and is the primary liaison between the library and the Institute's administration and faculty. In a period of economic transition such as the last five years, her role in "damage control" has been just as important as her role in planning new services. VSUE's president has made a number of reallocations of space within the building housing the library that have impacted library staff and services. The staff joked that the building was undergoing its own version of "peristroika."
Both the General and Reserve collections are closed-stacks, a characteristic held in common with most other Russian and Eastern European libraries. The General stacks consist largely of multiple copies of textbooks and older monographs and number about 200,000 volumes. These books circulate for between three weeks and an academic year, depending on the number of copies of the item. Their large collection of Marxist economics literature was not discarded after 1992, but relocated to the far reaches of the their basement stacks to make room for newer titles. The library's Reserve collection has a separate service desk and is, in American terms, a combination reference/periodicals collection. This is where nearly all of the newer materials are shelved. Materials are room- use only and must be checked out. The Reserve staff provides quick reference and catalog assistance to students. More advanced questions are referred to the "Business Information Center.
The name "Business Information Center" does not refer specifically to business information, and caused me a good deal of confusion at the beginning of the project. It is where the "business" of the library (cataloging, reference, acquisitions) is carried out. These three functions were collapsed into one unit when library staff and space were lost to the new School of Economics and Law in 1993. The word "business" connotes modernity and efficiency and is used loosely in Vladivostok libraries. The Business Information Center does all cataloging and maintains both the library's card and PC-based catalog. Their "Inform" catalog software, produced in Moscow, has been adapted by Business Information Center staff to allow them to index and abstract articles from their collection. The database is searchable and staff often run searches for faculty and students. They even provide a SDI service for faculty who want to keep up with what's being acquired in their fields. Their reference services are also used by local businesses. In addition, Business Information Center staff teach a two-hour workshop on library research that is required for all incoming students.
The library is under some pressure by the administration to become a profit center. To help generate extra revenue, the library has entered into a joint venture with a local book vendor. The library provides space and some of its discarded books in return for a percentage of the sales. Library staff also charge local businesses for borrowing privileges and other services. Since returning from Seattle, the library director has also instituted a gift recognition program in an effort to promote donations of books and money.
"LIBRARIANS DAY"
It was a stroke of luck that my visit to Vladivostok coincided with Russian "Librarians' Day." The celebrations and events leading up to Librarians Day gave me an opportunity to meet many other Russian librarians and Russians interested in libraries, and make connections beyond the bounds of my host institution. As an American librarian, I was considered somewhat exotic and a subject of no small interest in the Vladivostok library community. I was invited to give the keynote address at the first annual conference of the Primorye Region Library Directors' Association. The conference theme was "Primorye Region Libraries Moving into the Twenty-First Century". The conference was held in the reading room of the Gorky Public Library and was attended by 40-45 library directors. Despite listening to me speak on "planning for library services" through a translator for over two hours, the audience seemed attentive and interested. The issues raised during the question and answer period confirmed my suspicions that we shared many values and practical concerns. One person pointed to all the old materials on the reading room shelves and asked if and how American librarians weeded their collections. Another was curious about services American libraries provided for disabled library users. Someone else asked if American libraries collect (or censor) religious books. A poet who wandered into the session from another part of the library asked what American libraries did to support poets and artists. I felt quite unprepared to answer all of their questions about American librarianship, but I was struck by the familiar themes that ran through the discussion--weeding, disabled access, intellectual freedom, and libraries and the arts. This experience, along with others, made me feel I had much in common with my Russian colleagues.My host also arranged for me to visit several other libraries in the area with business collections. The Far Eastern State Technical University (FESTU) Library was founded in 1918. It has a staff of 82 and a collection of over one million volumes. Like its parent institution, library facilities are decentralized and are spread throughout FESTU's 45 facilities in Vladivostok. There are eleven separate subject-oriented reading rooms, all with card catalogs. As in all the Russian libraries I visited, computer resources were scarce. For example, there were five computers in the FESTU library system. Most of these machines were in their technical services sections. FESTU's academic programs are very broad, with a traditional emphasis on science and technology. However, business is becoming increasingly important, especially as a means of promoting economic development and building community support. The few current business books in FESTU's collection are now located in the library's Foreign Literature Department. During my visit, however, the library was in the process of opening a new Business Center in its main library building. The foundation of the collection will be a gift of 500 business books from a recent USIA exhibition held in Vladivostok. It will also have a small reading room with a selection of Russian business and economics journals.
The Far Eastern State University (FESU) was founded in 1899 and is the oldest and chief academic library in the Primorye Region. It has 60 staff and a collection of 1.24 million volumes. The library's administration has a tradition of supporting other libraries in the region. To this end, its Systems staff are working to make their online catalog internet- accessible. Like VSUE, however, they still maintain and rely on a card catalog because of the regularity of power losses. There are five subject reading rooms--Law, Physics, Humanities, Natural Science, and Korean Literature. The last reading room is part of a new Korean Studies facility, constructed in 1995 with funding from the South Korean government and reflects Vladivostok's strong economic ties with that country. The library has also benefited for the last several years from a University of Maryland Business School project. Maryland faculty have come to Vladivostok each year to teach in the FESU business program. Like the University of Washington, Maryland has also allocated money for library support. The library has received shipments of American books two times per year for the past four years, and now has a collection of nearly 400 recently published English-language business and economics titles. These business books are located in the Humanities Reading Room.
Two other libraries of importance in Vladivostok are the Gorky Public Library and the US Information Service Library. Founded in 1886 and with a collection in excess of one million volumes, the Gorky Library is the oldest and largest public library in the Primorye Region. It is heavily used by students from all the schools in Vladivostok. Given the interest in economic development in the community, the library is also trying to increase its services to local businesses. Last year the library began a new service specially tailored to the needs of businesses. The Business Information Office has a quiet consultation area, a small collection of Russian business journals and reference works, its own phone line, and a fax machine. The US Information Service Library in downtown Vladivostok opened in December 1995 and promises to play an important role in the provision of business information to Russian citizens. The focus of its small collection is on Humanities and Social Science works that provide information about the United States. However, there are several hundred management and economics titles available. Business information seekers are frequently referred downstairs to the US. Trade Office, which maintains a small working collection of directories. The USIS Library also has UMI's General Periodical Collection available for public use. This collection of full-text articles provides a resource the scope of which is unmatched elsewhere in Vladivostok. The USIS librarian also hopes that her office can play a role in helping to coordinate cooperative efforts between Primorye Region libraries in the future.
LIBRARY COOPERATION IN VLADIVOSTOK
The librarians I met were very interested in cooperative efforts to stretch their limited resources, reduce costs, and provide greater service to their users. Evidence of this interest may seen in the formation of the Primorye Region Library Director's Association last year. This group will provide a forum for ideas on future library cooperation. One example of cooperative efforts already in place is the shared cataloging database of VSUE, the Gorky Public Library, and the Far Eastern Commercial Institute. Until recently, libraries in the Russian Far East purchased most of their cataloging from Moscow, but prices have risen beyond their means. These three Vladivostok libraries all use the same "Inform" software and, every two weeks, exchange diskettes of recently cataloged materials so that each partner knows what the other has acquired and can adapt catalog records for its own use. A rudimentary interlibrary loan network, based on this shared information and personal contacts strengthened during the project, has also developed between the three cooperating institutions. As is often the case, one instance of library cooperation leads to another.PROJECT PURCHASES
Librarian exchanges were significant components of the project. However, an equally important part of the project was the purchase of library materials. Like most libraries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the VSUE collection contained very current information on economics and business. Those few titles they had were donated by visiting foreign scholars or solicited as gifts from European or American institutions. Since the needs of the library were so great and our resources finite, we decided to focus our resources on several areas:
Upon my return to Seattle, I began compiling the orders and working with UW staff and vendors to acquire the material. The books and CD-ROM drives will be shipped to Seattle and then reshipped to Vladivostok, but the CD-ROM and journal subscriptions will set up to be mailed directly to Vladivostok. As with many international projects that include library development, the library budget will not be finalized until the end of the grant period. At the time this article was written, the library materials budget was estimated to be $35,000.Core collection of reference works and monographs. These were to cover a broad range of business topics, with special emphasis on international business. Since all VSUE students are required to study English and relatively little western business and economic literature is available in Russian, it was decided to buy English- language titles. VSUE library staff and faculty provided input on subject areas needing coverage, but the over 300 individual titles purchased were selected by me using a variety of selection aids. These included USIA and USIS recommended business book lists for Eastern Europe and Russia, a list of international business titles recommended by the Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University, and recent acquisitions lists from the University of Washington Business Administration Library. In addition to the purchased items, we were able to send approximately 1000 gift books donated by the University of Washington Libraries and Business School faculty, staff, and students.
CD-ROM databases and CD-ROM drives. These included National Trade Data Bank, the Wall Street Journal, Compact D/SEC, and Worldscope. These were selected to provide coverage for international business, company data, and business news and analysis. Worldscope was donated free of charge by Disclosure, Inc. The grant is purchasing CD-ROM drives but, in keeping with the "partnering" aspect of the project, PC workstations will be provided by VSUE.
Circulation and Catalog software. In keeping with VSUE's goal of becoming a "high tech" institution, this resource was deemed an especially important resource. The grant is paying for the software (Winnebago) and a multiple user license. VSUE is providing the PCs, network, and systems expertise.
Pre-paid journal subscriptions. The journals we were interested in generally allowed us to pre-pay for one year only. Since our grant expires in 1996, it is hoped that some of these titles can be continued via an exchange agreement with the UW Libraries Slavic Section that developed as a result of the project.
Expanded e-mail and WWW access. In order to promote better communication internally and externally, funds were budgeted to pay for phone lines for email and World Wide Web access.
CONCLUSION
The two most obvious benefits of this development project for VSUE and its library were the librarian exchanges and purchases of library resources. There were also other, less obvious, benefits for all the project participants. Library employees at VSUE became more service-oriented. Staff members I spoke with said that the Director had made customer service a priority upon her return from Seattle. They seemed genuinely concerned about meeting the information needs of their students and faculty. An additional important outcome for the library was the increased credibility Ms. Grekhova gained with her administration as a result of her close association with an American university and an American librarian. Along with this greater credibility came the administration's increased willingness to allocate its own financial resources to the library. During my visit, the VSUE administration agreed to purchase additional computers, printers, scanners and furniture for the library. Assuming it continues, the recognition by the VSUE administration that support for the library benefits the entire institution will have the most lasting impact on the library of any aspect of the project.For my part, the benefits of participating in this project have been many, not the least of which has been the opportunity to work with the librarians of the Vladivostok State University of Economics as they plan for library services in the twenty-first century. It also has provided an opportunity to step back and view American libraries and librarianship from a different perspective. Now, instead of worrying about how our budgets are shrinking, I find myself more often thinking how fortunate we are compared to our colleagues in transitional economies. American business librarians, with our expertise and access to resources, are uniquely positioned to make contributions to libraries in developing economies throughout the world. At the same time, participation in library development projects such as this affords us a fresh perspective on our profession and the world.
[1]: VSUE has undergone several recent name changes. From 1967 to the end of 1995, the school operated under the name "Far Eastern Technological Institute." In January 1996 it was changed to "Far Eastern State Technological Institute." In August 1996 it took its current name, Vladivostok State University of Economics.[back]
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