In an effort to restore order to Iraq’s war-torn libraries, Harvard will participate in an initiative to train Iraqi librarians to modernize their holdings and their cataloguing methods, according to an announcement Thursday.

With a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Harvard University Library (HUL) will partner with the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science in an attempt to reverse the effects of a decade of war and economic sanctions, as well as looting that accompanied the recent regime change.

Representatives from Simmons and HUL will meet with Iraqi librarians this May in Amman, Jordan to discuss specific plans for program. Over the course of the next two years, Iraqi librarians will be trained in new methods of preservation, collection development, management and online information systems.

Although he could not be reached for comment this weekend, Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library Sidney Verba ’53 said in the Simmons press release Thursday that “librarians from Harvard will play a critical role in the Iraqi program.”

According to Ahmed al-Rahim, Harvard’s preceptor in Arabic, tight restrictions on the availability of books and scholarly journals imposed on Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s 25-year regime, especially since the last Gulf War, prevented Iraqi academics from keeping up with developments in their fields.

“One thing [that has been] discussed after the fall of Baghdad was that there was a lot of money that was taken from the Oil For Food program—money that Saddam and his cronies pocketed,” he said. “That impacted the education system and libraries as well. There was no money for books and academic journals.”

Omar al-Dewachi, an Iraqi medical school graduate who is now pursuing a doctorate in anthropology at Harvard, said academic resources in Iraq had stagnated because of sanctions and censorship in Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“Everything in the libraries did not go beyond 1988,” said al-Dewachi, who fled from Iraq to Lebanon in 1998. “Our textbooks were very, very old. The library was not a place where one could do that much. I used it maybe twice.”

Michele Cloonan, dean of the Simmons’ library sciences school and the principal investigator for the NEH grant, said in the press release that “the recent war has resulted in widespread destruction. Librarians were cut off from technological and professional development...so much has changed in library and information science since the Iran/Iraq war two decades ago.”

Al-Rahim said that the biggest contribution Harvard could make is to donate duplicate books to universities in Iraq, and to organize an exchange program for Iraqi and American librarians.

Cloonan was out of the country and was unavailable for comment.

It is unclear whether the NEH program will be sending American librarians to Iraq. The Simmons press release stated that “Simmons faculty will teach graduate library courses for Iraqi librarians...and serve as long-term mentors via the Internet.”

Officials from Harvard and the NEH were also unavailable for comment this weekend. According to HUL spokesperson Peter Kosewski, the University has been asked by NEH to hold off on public discussion of the program until later this week.

Al-Rahim, who said Friday that he had not yet heard of the planned initiative, added that Iraqi libraries need to be made more “user friendly” and conducive to foreign academic research.

“For a long time, Western academics have not been able to go to Iraq,” he said. “Many of them decided to study in Syria or Egypt instead—countries which have been easier to get into for research. Iraq has been completely closed.”