Nomiin San - Library

The library in this two-year old college is relatively newly established, but part of the problem is the lack of available literature. Of about thirty books on the shelf dedicated to architecture, only three small A5 titles are in Mongolian. These are basic technical drawing textbooks, published about 1995. Very few of the books seem to be dated after independence in 1992. About twenty of the substantial bound volumes about architecture are in Russian, and there are quite a lot of old professional journals also in Russian. There are several books and magazines in Japanese and Chinese, and none in English or German.

There is a specialist book on English for builders and architects translated in 2006 by Nomuundari, Bolor and Enebish, from the Russian by Bezruchko. There are no books on Mongolian architecture and the one Russian title on Mongolian Architecture I have seen (in a shop at the Choijin Lama Temple) is not in the school collection.

The director talks of a list of new books due in the near future, but the list of titles is not available to see. There is no catalogue of the books and the librarian's computer is not attached to a network or printer. She writes the names and numbers of books loaned on the borrower's card.

One of the most potentially practical titles on the shelf is the two-part handbook "Stroitelbnoe Projektirobanie" which is the Russian 1965 translation of the Neufert's Architects Handbook (like an AJ Metric handbook). No contemporary equivalent is said to be available, but I will be interested to see what practitioners in architects offices are using for architects data.