{"id":63683,"date":"2010-11-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-grad-student-turns-the-page-for-book-deprived-south-africans\/"},"modified":"2010-11-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T00:00:00","slug":"uri-grad-student-turns-the-page-for-book-deprived-south-africans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/11\/uri-grad-student-turns-the-page-for-book-deprived-south-africans\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 Grad Student Turns the Page for Book-deprived South Africans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, RI \u2013 November 3, 2010 \u2013 Once upon a time\u2026

\n\u2026when 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate student Angelina Carnevale was in first grade, she came home crying because the school library wouldn\u2019t allow her to check out a book they thought was beyond her level.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe book had no pictures,\u201d the 24-year-old Warwick resident explained. \u201cIt was Madelaine L\u2019Engle\u2019s A Wrinkle in Time \u2013 and I\u2019d been reading chapter books since before I started school. So my mom walked me down the block to the local library, got me a library card and said, \u2018You can take out any book you want.\u2019 I was in heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nCarnevale\u2019s lifelong love affair with the written word is translating into a career that brought her to South Africa this year, where she introduced books to children and adults who had never seen a computer, let alone imagine Kindle book downloads.<\/p>\n


\nShe is in the three-year program leading to a Master\u2019s in Library Science at 溏心vlog免费B站, and will graduate next spring. Among the requirements is credit in Professional Field Experience \u2013 which in January 2010 took her to the Southern African Wildlife College, located on a game reserve in Limpopo Province, South Africa. \u201cI did it all on my own,\u201d she noted, \u201cpaid to get the entry visa, and for the plane ticket and the college fees.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 a hundred students are enrolled and live in cottages on the Wildlife College campus, Carnevale said. \u201cAnother hundred or so students bring tents and pitch them in the fields on campus \u2013 it\u2019s surrounded by an electrified fence, so we didn\u2019t have to worry about wild animals.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nExcept for the baboons, that is. Occasionally one would leap the fence to raid the trees of marula fruit. There were squirrels in the thatched roof of the cottage Carnevale shared with other staff. Snakes slithered, and a scorpion hid in her bed. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t all cheetahs and rainbows,\u201d she joked.<\/p>\n


\nIn the small college library on campus, with local librarian Sunel Lindeque, Carnevale spent her days chronicling materials relating to wildlife, creating displays, cataloging, and assisting students. She was first surprised, then appalled, by the lack of resources available to children and adults in nearby villages, where \u201cpoverty was just business as usual,\u201d with an unemployment rate that was \u201cstaggering,\u201d and education beyond primary school not guaranteed. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhat struck me was the complete and utter lack of books,\u201d Carnevale said. Other than at the college, which did not offer public access, \u201cthere wasn\u2019t a library around for miles. In the schools, students had blank notebooks, and copied all their lessons from the teachers\u2019 notes on the chalkboards and their lectures. It was something I knew I had to change.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe idea of a bookmobile \u201ccame a lot sooner than it panned out,\u201d she said. \u201cI did a lot of work early on into where I might get books. And money to pay for them.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nInitial appeals to government and non-profit agencies were to no avail, but there was one person who took an immediate interest. Gale Eaton, professor and Carnevale\u2019s supervisor in 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Library and Information Services, had been following activities on a personal blog Carnevale was writing to keep family and friends updated. <\/p>\n


\nEaton was intrigued, as was Janice Hromi, GSLIS student affairs officer. Their donations allowed the purchase of 100 books in the local languages of Shangaan and Sotho. (South Africa has 13 official languages and many more tribal languages and dialects. English is the common language; Afrikaans, a mixture of Dutch and Zulu, was the language of the original white settlers.)<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI was just so charmed by what Angelina was doing,\u201d Eaton said. \u201cThe central purpose of librarianship is to support people in their quest for information and knowledge \u2013 not just as a means to an end, but for what enriches you, what makes you whole.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nCarnevale was able to find \u201ca select few publishers\u201d specializing in native language books, ordered them, and they began arriving just as her time in South Africa was up. Reaction among villagers of all ages was immediate, translating into tears of joy.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThey have so little \u2013 the bare necessities \u2013 and they are so incredibly grateful for everything they get,\u201d Carnevale said. <\/p>\n


\nEven after her departure at the end of term, the project continued to grow. A grant proposal Carnevale had written was accepted, and 300 more native-language books were purchased and donated to the mobile library, which continues to make its rounds of the schools under the guidance of Lindeque and a volunteer. <\/p>\n


\nIn a recent e-mail to Carnevale, Lindeque envisioned the college library as developing into \u201can education center where students can come and study after school. We will have a reading area for children\u2026and can even look at getting computers. So big plans, but I know we can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n \u201cIf anyone wants to make a donation to the library project or wants more information, Sunel is the person to get in touch with,\u201d Carnevale said. (e-mail slindeque@sawc.org.za)<\/p>\n


\nCarnevale is gratified as she reflects on the fact that \u201cwhat is there now wasn\u2019t there before.\u201d She wants to return someday to the villages and see first-hand the results of the effort she initiated. As she recorded on her blog, \u201cI won\u2019t be happy until I\u2019ve accomplished the impossible: Native-language books for the children of Welverdiend.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nShe did. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cThis is exactly the kind of thing we want our students to be doing,\u201d emphasized Eaton. \u201cPutting books in the hands of children in their own language is so powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nA journal of Angelina Carnevale\u2019s 14 weeks in South Africa, and details on the mobile book library she established, can be found, along with photos, on her website: http:\/\/web.me.com\/angieboopusa\/p-f-e, or for further information, e-mail her at acarnevale@my.uri.edu<\/p>\n

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KINGSTON, RI \u2013 November 3, 2010 \u2013 Once upon a time\u2026 \u2026when 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate student Angelina Carnevale was in first grade, she came home crying because the school library wouldn\u2019t allow her to check out a book they thought was beyond her level. \u201cThe book had no pictures,\u201d the 24-year-old Warwick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}