An ACKU Station was established at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) on the 28th of February 2016. Dr, Sharif Fayez, founder of AUAF, kindly graced the occasion with his presence, and a warm welcome was expressed by Dr. Rebecca Miller, AUAF librarian.
A brief summary of the long history of ACKU, beginning in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1989, was given by Nancy Hatch Dupree who said she was most pleased that ACKU has been flexible enough through the years to shift from the original rather narrow goal of providing information for humanitarian aid workers to avoid duplication of efforts to the wider goal of sharing information for nation building encompassing all Afghans, rural and urban, as well as supporters abroad. “It is all very well to arrange documents neatly on the shelves,” she said, “but they are useless unless they are taken off the shelves so the information can be used practically.
Waheed Wafa, Director of ACKU, then introduced ACKU’s online database by saying that ACKU continues in the spirit of its history but now has an enriched collection of more than one hundred thousand documents in Afghan and European languages, most of which are directly related to Afghanistan. He added, over thirty thousands of these documents are digitized and are available online in ACKU’s database. A lively question period followed in which students asked many technical questions indicating their interest in using the ACKU Station. A student from AUAF asked whether ACKU is planning to come up with phone application for its database. Questions and comments from students gave ample feedback for ACKU’s staff.
