Ahmad Shah

I was born in a remote valley of Yasin in Gilgit-Baltistan, situated at the extreme north of Pakistan. My childhood or school-aged memories are unimaginable as my school consisted of 2 mud-made rooms across a river bank with no protecting wall on the river side. The only communication channels were a Japan-made radio at our home and a rough rocky 10’ wide jeep road connecting our village to the City through a 12 hours journey at that time, now it is 4 hours travel due to a comparatively better road. The radio was emitting all strange languages, our local dialect ‘Brushaski’ (a dying dialect) had no written words or alphabets therefore, we were unable to understand what the radio was saying. The only charm in that box was music, not withstanding lyrics. Electricity, the television, telephone and library were unknown to me and the rest of the villagers. I was the only person of that bunch who managed to get into university in the metropolitan city of Karachi, which is 2700 kilometers away from my village.

Relationship with books or information resources may be an unavoidable fact of life for everyone who has gone through the formal education systems of the world but converting this relationship into a hobby or profession may not be a dream of all. I dreamed of it. Yes, I was lucky enough to extend this relationship by selecting library and information sciences as a subject in my university courses. This was a tough decision because the library scenario in Pakistan never received recognition from its society and the profession of librarianship in Pakistan is not an area of choice for most. Therefore, to me, it was a less traveled path and I loved it.

After receiving an MLIS degree I started my career as a reference librarian in a semi-private health sciences library in Pakistan and I have a range of experiences from school librarianship to business librarianship to health sciences librarianship and academic librarianship. I held the following titles during these assignments

  •  Campus Librarian, University of Central Asia, October 2017 to December 2018
  • Associate Librarian, Systems & Administration, Aga Khan University. 2016-2017
  • Associate Librarian, Reference & Collection Development, Aga Khan University, 2012-2016.
  • Assistant Librarian, Reference & Collection Development, Aga Khan University 2010-2012.
  • Library Officer, Institute for Educational Development, Aga Khan University 2008-2010
  • Technical Research & Library Officer, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan, 2007-2008
  • School Librarian, Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan. 2005-2007
  • Reference Librarian, Sindh Institute of Urology & Transplantation, Pakistan. 2002-2005.

Currently I am working as an Associate University Librarian at the University of Central Asia https://www.ucentralasia.org/

Founded in 2000, the University of Central Asia (UCA) is a private, not for profit, secular university through an International Treaty signed by the Presidents of the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, and His Highness the Aga Khan, further ratified by their respective parliaments, and registered with the United Nations. The Presidents are Patrons of the University and His Highness is the Chancellor. UCA brings with it the broader commitment and partnership of the Aga Khan Development Network.

The following statement made by the chancellor of my university represents my participation and expectation as a Mortenson Center Associate:

“…it is important to know that what we are doing here will be a valuable example of international cooperation for the future not only here in the region, but also for people for beyond the region.” His Highness the Aga Khan, UCA Naryn Campus Inauguration Ceremony (Naryn, Kyrgyzstan, October 19th 2016)

Objectives:

  1.  Development of well structured blog
  2.  Hands on Training and develop a subject guide at my university’s LibGuides page, and plan to have structured training plan for my staff
  3. To get in-depth knowledge of OCLC WMS utilizations and discovery
  4.  be able to publish my work with the collaboration of one of faculty librarians of UI.
  5.  Upon my return share the learning experiences of Mortenson Program and collaborate with other professionals.
  6.  To learn research methodologies & explore grants for further growth.

Read Ahmad Shah’s blog posts here.