Librarians as Ambassadors: The Horner Fellowship Exchange Program for Arizona and Japan Library Personnel

Librarians as Ambassadors: The Horner Fellowship Exchange Program for Arizona and Japan Library Personnel

Now more than ever, citizen diplomacy on a personal, face-to-face level is essential to facilitating understanding between people of different nations. Librarians are natural ambassadors, typically having high levels of cultural awareness and sensitivity, innate curiosity and openness to new experiences and knowledge! Recognizing this, and with the goal of fostering cultural understanding and informational exchanges between Arizona and Japanese librarians, Dr. Layton “Jack” Horner and Mrs. Marian Horner established in 1989 the Arizona-Japan Horner Fellowship program through an endowment to the Arizona Library Association (AzLA). Since that time, thirteen AzLA members have traveled to Japan and ten Japan Library Association (JLA) members have traveled to Arizona for short-term (1-2 weeks) exchange visits as Horner Fellows. In this poster, the authors - all of whom have served or are currently serving as Horner Fellowship Committee officers - will describe the establishment and evolution of the Horner Fellowship program, the process for selecting Horner Fellows and the benefits and challenges of this type of exchange program. They will also highlight, using photos and other images, some of the exciting and engaging experiences of the Arizona and Japanese library professionals who have traveled with the support of Horner funds. The goal of this poster is to encourage citizen diplomacy in the library community through collaboration between U.S. and foreign librarians. Library associations or libraries considering an exchange program may benefit from the lessons and inspiration provided by the Horner Fellowship example.