When Wanna Net returned to Cambodia after attending the iSchool, his close friends asked him what he had studied in America. “I said library and information science and they just laughed,” says Net. “They said, ‘Why did you do that? Why not economics, law, politics, any other field?’ ”

Librarians – and libraries – are underappreciated in an impoverished country that has known decades of destabilizing terror and violence, including fighting between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge that left Net an abandoned orphan at age 1 or 2. His long journey into scholarly learning was hard-fought. Today, he is one of the top leaders championing library and information science in the country.
 
“I want library work to be a key profession in comparison to other professions in Cambodia,” says the 2008 Master of Library and information Science graduate. “But this work is not high-profile work here. It is low-paid. There are few job opportunities. So it is not an attractive job for most people. That is a big challenge.”

So is the underutilization of libraries. Few Cambodians today understand the value of libraries and information services in a largely oral, non-reading culture. Many, says Net, are simply “too poor to read.”

“People are trying to make sure they have enough to feed their family, so they don’t really have time to do reading, or think about reading. They don’t see anything in a library that can help them.”

Even the college instructors where he works – Net is senior librarian at the Royal University of Phnom Penh’s Hun Sen Library – rarely use library resources, he says. “The majority of the university-level teachers in Cambodia work at more than one university. They are running around from one school to another to make enough money to survive. They don’t have time to spend on research. That is the reality right now.”

Net was the first of only two Western-credentialed library science professionals in Cambodia. “There is not even a library school here to train library science professionals,” he says.

He took on studies at the iSchool with the vision of one day improving educational opportunities throughout Cambodia. He had heard about the school from American friends. “They told me that the UW was among the best universities in the U.S., and that the iSchool was ranked very high among library schools,” says Net, who secured a partial scholarship covering his tuition fee through a partnership between the UW School of Social Work and the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

His iSchool studies focused on library management and cataloging, a skill unknown in much of Cambodia. He also earned an international development certificate from the UW Evans School of Public Affairs. “What I have done and what I can do would not be possible without the skills and the knowledge that I gained from the iSchool,” he says. “That credential has opened the door for me.”

At the Hun Sen Library, named for Cambodia’s long-term prime minister, Net’s many roles include head of publicity, decision-maker, strategic planner and teacher. The library, opened in 1997, is stocked with roughly 100,000 books, many donated from overseas relief organizations. Most books are in English. So are the materials he uses to train a new generation of Cambodian librarians, who speak the native Khmer language. “I have to teach in Khmer and all the materials need to be translated,” says Net. “It makes the training difficult.”

He is a leader in multiple library organizations, national and international. He is country coordinator for the Cambodian Electronics Information for Library Consortium, which provides access to millions of online articles worldwide. He also serves as secretary general for the Cambodian Librarians and Documentalists Association, helping train members and organizing an annual book fair that spotlights library work and promotes the fledgling publishing industry in Cambodia.

iSchool graduate Greg Bem, who went to Cambodia for nine months of directed fieldwork in the fall quarter of 2013, sees Net making a significant impact in his country. “He promotes libraries and coordinates how resources are directed to them, both on a government level and in dealing with international organizations. He is all over the place.”

iSchool MLIS Academic Advisor Marie Potter connected Bem with Net, who graciously made connections and created opportunities for the iSchool student. “Wanna basically unrolled the red carpet of Cambodian librarianship to me,” says Bem.

Net’s remarkable story begins in 1979, when a farmer and his wife, fleeing fighting between the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge, found the malnourished child alone in an ox-cart in the jungle. There was fighting all around, and his new adoptive family raced to several refugee camps on the border with Thailand – densely populated, fenced-in places where displaced Cambodians lived in makeshift structures of bamboo and thatch and often lacked adequate food or medical treatment. “The border camp was terrible. There was no way to get out,” he says. “Sometimes there was shooting, fighting. It’s terrifying when you are young.”

His camp did have schools, though they were frequently evacuated during shellings. “You had to run to underground shelters,” says Net, who left camp in 1991 after the Cambodian-Vietnamese War ended. The young adolescent went to live with monks to pursue his education, but was relegated back to the fifth grade. “I had to start all over. I was the oldest one in the class, but I had enough patience to be calm and focus on my goals. I knew I could do much better than planting the rice. I had a passion to learn.”

Despite his passion, Net wasn’t sure he would be able to complete high school. A chance acquaintance with a kind foreigner when he was in 10th grade changed everything. His new friend, a New Zealander working for an NGO, took him in, supported him, and paid his school fees. He also introduced him to another foreigner who aided Net through his post-secondary studies in Phnom Penh, where Net attended a top Australian language school and learned English. Teaching English full-time allowed him to earn a business degree at the National University of Management in Phnom Penh.

Libraries weren’t always underappreciated in his country, he points out. At Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world, libraries were an integral part of temple structures. “We have a long history of libraries. But so many later historical events have vanished that work. It became invisible to people in terms of the value.”

Especially devastating was the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s, when the Khmer Rouge destroyed anything ‘Western.” Along with executing about a quarter of the country’s population, the Khmer Rouge banned education systems, books, and destroyed libraries. At the end of the brutal regime, only about 40,000 of the hundreds of thousands of books in the country had survived. And most of the intellectuals who could generate new ideas and information – scientists, artists, doctors, lawyers – had either fled or been slaughtered.

Rebuilding collections, rebuilding a culture of reading and writing, rebuilding a country where an estimated 2 million people live in poverty all present monumental challenges for Net and the handful of other leading librarians joining him in his educational mission.

The iSchool graduate, father of two, works tirelessly. He leaves his home outside the city at around 6:30 in the morning, six days a week, to commute to work. He doesn’t arrive home until 9 or 9:30 p.m. “My kids often wait until I arrive home before going to sleep. I really want to spend more time with them, but it has not been possible,” he says.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done.”