A week ago I put up a link to Mary McGregor’s Extreme librarianship : Biblioburro! blog, about Luis Soriano and the PBS documentary about his work bringing books to kids in rural Columbia. I’ve managed to find an SBS Australia Dateline episode on Luis and his donkey ‘Alfa.’ Titled ‘Four-legged library’, it was aired on 24.07.2011.
Four-legged library / Reported by David O’Shea, Dateline, SBS Australia, 24.07.2011, viewed 20.08.2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPfFZEPhLAE&feature=player_profilepage (also http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601279/n/Four-Legged-Library)
Some quotes from the show:
LUIS: (Translation): If we teach a citizen, a compatriot, to read, he or she will be a good citizen. The main purpose of the Donkey Library is to take books they can at least look at. So they see that the world isn’t just mountains, paths, donkeys and cows…
D. O’SHEA: I tell Luis that gadgets for reading are replacing books in my own country but he doesn’t see that as a problem.
LUIS: (Translation): We have to teach and prepare them. And it’s a good thing. It has to happen. We need development. We can’t be left behind…
When things are done with love and dedication, they transcend time and space. That’s why it’s had such impact and worldwide recognition. It’s a labour of love. Things are more valuable when they can’t be bought.
In the documentary, David O’Shea gets Luis in touch with the President of East Timor, Jose Ramos Horta. In May 2011, Luis Soriano met Ramos Horta in Singapore (See Tarie’s blog – The Children’s Literature Lecture and Awards Ceremony / Asia in the heart, world in the mind [09.06.2011], and afcc.com.sg)
A transcript of the SBS Dateline story is available, and the SBS page links to a few resources on the topic:
- Biblioburro Foundation, viewed 20.08.2011 http://www.fundacionbiblioburro.com/.
- Columbian ‘Bilioburro’ has 4,800 books and 10 legs / Simon Romero, New York Times, 20.10.2008, viewed 20.08.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/world/americas/20iht-20burro.17088328.html
- Teaching kids to read from the back of a burro / Ebonne Ruffins, CNN, 26.02.2010, viewed 20.08.2011, http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/02/25/cnnheroes.soriano/index.html
- Biblioburro : the donkey library / PBS, 19.07.2011, viewed 11.08.2011, http://video.pbs.org/video/2061537618 also http://www.pbs.org/pov/biblioburro (NB: the documentary isn’t available in Australia due to restricted rights [currently that is] but the trailer can be seen on Youtube from Simon and Schuster under the title Biblioburro)
And some of the links I found were:
- Community Hero Luis Bohorquez / by Ryan from San Diego, 27.02.2010, viewed 20.08.2011, http://myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=L_Bohorquez_dnhs_US_2010
- The Biblioburro Facebook page
- Wikipedia/Biblioburro
- For some other online information about Luis Soriano and the Biblioburro, articles tagged ‘biblioburro’ in WordPress, see this saved Deeperweb.com search, the works listed at Trove, and this saved search of Flickr.com which has quite a few pics of the biblioburro.
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Updated 21.08.2011
A Searching Librarian 