Carrying a Library in your Pocket

As we prepare for our last training session at VETA Mikumi and get ready to say our goodbyes to this beautiful country and the many friends we’ve made during our time here, I reflect on the many successes we’ve experienced in the library and IT portion of the “Building Capacity in Tourism and Hospitality Training” project and all we’ve learned along the way.
In this final phase of the project, the library team, Leigh Gagnier, NSCC Electronic Services Librarian, Christina Pottie, South Shore Public Libraries Outreach Coordinator, and I identified and purchased e-books and apps to build an electronic library of resources to support the needs of the faculty and students in their teaching and learning. These e-resources were pre-loaded onto tablets as a convenient and flexible library solution, a ‘library in your pocket’.
It was especially exciting to witness the practical application of these tablets in both the Tour Guiding classroom and in the field. For example, when Tour Guiding instructors Ludovic Saronga and Patrick Kipinga took their students and the NSCC team on safari, the tablets quickly became a teaching tool. As Saronga pointed out various bird species in the Mikumi National Park, Patrick supplemented the lesson by showing the students photos of the birds and playing the bird calls. Having this portable library of resources at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere, creates a rich learning environment and is a wonderful supplement to the curriculum.
Also, thanks to our creative NSCC IT specialist, Paul Tweed and ICT instructor Selemani Mbaga, a solution was found to bring wireless access to the campus making the tablets an even more robust tool by allowing faculty to access the Internet for an even broader range of resources.
There have been many lessons learned from our experiences with this project which we believe will be of benefit to future International projects as well as enable us to further enhance our own e-book program within the NSCC library system. Asante sana to the faculty and students of VETA Mikumi who have taught us so much and made this project such a memorable experience.

Andrea Stewart
Director, Library Services
NSCC