Airmen complete ‘Books for Baghdad’ drive

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ROME, N.Y. (AFPN) --  The company grade officer's council at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Rome research site here is sending a text message to Baghdad University.

Nearly 5,000 books, predominantly textbooks and university-level literature, have been collected from laboratory people and others in the community since the project began in early 2004.

"I was listening to the radio on the way to work back in mid-January, and I heard a report on Baghdad University," said 2nd Lt. Scott Robertson, the project manager. "It talked of how the students of Baghdad University were in the process of taking finals at the end of the first year of classes since Operation Iraqi Freedom, but [they] were somewhat despondent about the quality of their education due to the lack of books.

"The university's library was (destroyed) during a firefight on the night when U.S. troops were ambushed on the university's campus," Lieutenant Robertson said. "What little survived the fire was subsequently looted. The few books they have are as 'current' as the 1960s."

The project began in early February with donation boxes placed in the lobbies of four laboratory buildings. It was expanded in March to the nearby Rome Free Academy and two local churches.

A team of about 15 military and civilian people said they plan to have the books sorted and packed by the end of April. They will then send them to the Al-Sharaka Program for Higher Education in Iraq, a consortium of Iraqi and Oklahoma universities dedicated to rebuilding higher education in Iraq.

"Can you imagine trying to get a good college education without books and without a library?" Lieutenant Robertson asked. "All these books that had been stashed in a corner of the attic, in a closet or a garage can now make a real difference in the lives of some Iraqi students."