MELA Notes

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Introduction to the Special Issue: Nūshāfarīn Anṣārī: Books, People, and Institutions

Editor's note

Biography of Nūshāfarīn Anṣārī

Bibliography of Nūshāfarīn Anṣārī

Nushafarin Ansari (b. 1939), librarian, educator, and long-standing secretary of the Children's Book Council of Iran, is a central yet largely unexamined figure in the feminist history of librarianship outside Western contexts. This paper argues that her career, spanning outreach to psychiatric patients, rural communities, refugee children, and the visually impaired, constitutes a feminist practice of democratic care that systematically refuses to treat the library’s excluded readers as private problems or institutional afterthoughts. Drawing on Joan Tronto’s framework of “democratic care”, the paper reads Ansari’s institutional practice as a sustained effort to move librarianship in Iran from a profession organized around an imagined normative public toward recognizing and responding to the full range of lives it is meant to serve. The paper traces this movement across three dimensions: her outreach practices as a form of structural critique that translates individual exclusion into institutional accountability; her investment in participatory reading cultures, and her model of collective professional culture as an enactment of caring from within the institution. Situated against the broader feminization of the profession, and traced through the trajectory of her policy-making in knowledge dissimilation, Ansari’s work exemplifies the shift from a feminized space to a genuinely feminist institution that works democratically, relationally, and in accordance with a politics of care.

The present study examines the impact of Noushafarin Ansari on increasing women’s cultural participation in Iran. With more than half a century of sustained professional activity, Ansari has played a significant role in articulating the concept of the social librarian and has left a lasting impact on Iran’s cultural and librarianship landscape. Through her positions as a faculty member and head of the Department of Library and Information Science at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran; secretary and board member of the Children’s Book Council; member of the governing council of the House of Children’s Librarians and Reading Promotion; Iranian representative of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY); and member of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia for Children and Young Adults, she has profoundly influenced reading culture, the community of librarians, and women’s cultural participation in Iran.

The main objective of the present study is to analyze the ways in which Ansari’s activities and approaches have contributed to women’s empowerment and the expansion of their participation in librarianship, education, and cultural initiatives. The central research question asks how Noushafarin Ansari has facilitated women’s engagement in cultural activities.

This study adopts a qualitative approach and employs interpretative phenomenological analysis. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with a number of Ansari’s students and colleagues and were analyzed using thematic content analysis through three stages of open, axial, and selective coding.

The findings indicate that Ansari has played a central role in empowering women. By serving as a role model and supporting women’s presence in scientific and cultural spheres, she has contributed to strengthening their self-confidence. Through participatory management, she has also created environments in which women are able to develop a sense of identity and play active roles within institutions such as the Children’s Book Council and the House of Children’s Librarians and Reading Promotion.

The results of the study demonstrate that Ansari functions as an inspiring intellectual guide for women—one whose influence is not limited to a particular period and continues to inspire new generations. Her legacy in advancing women’s cultural participation extends beyond the field of librarianship and presents a comprehensive model linking knowledge, culture, and social justice.

Modern librarianship in Iran emerged relatively late and, from its inception in the 1960s, was largely shaped by an emphasis on technical services such as cataloguing, classification, and resource organization. This orientation, reinforced by key academic and institutional centers, led to the marginalization of public services and the social dimensions of librarianship. Against this dominant trend, a parallel and less visible movement gradually developed, focusing on libraries’ social responsibilities and their role in fostering equity, inclusion, and community engagement. This article examines the emergence of social librarianship in Iran through the life, thought, and professional practice of Nūshāfarīn Anṣārī, widely regarded as the pioneer of this approach. Drawing on historical analysis, professional documents, and testimonies of colleagues and students, the study explores Anṣārī’s commitment to the principle of “Books for All,” her advocacy for public libraries as democratic and inclusive institutions, and her sustained efforts to redefine librarianship as a socially engaged profession. Particular attention is given to her pedagogical innovations, curriculum development, emphasis on reference and public services, and her six-decade involvement with the Children’s Book Council of Iran (CBC) as a practical embodiment of social librarianship. The article argues that Anṣārī’s enduring legacy lies in institutionalizing social librarianship in Iran and demonstrating that the professional legitimacy of librarianship is grounded not in technical sophistication alone, but in its meaningful integration into the social and cultural life of the community.

Nush-Afarin Ansari (born 1944) is a prominent figure in the fields of librarianship, library and information science education, and children’s literature in contemporary Iran. Despite the breadth and diversity of her scholarly, educational, and institutional activities, much of the existing writing on her career has remained descriptive or commemorative, with limited attention to systematic analysis of patterns of influence and impact.

This article seeks to address this gap by analyzing the role of Ansari’s scholarly and educational career in the formation and development of such fields as library and information science education, the social history of libraries, children’s literature, and reading promotion in Iran. Rather than adopting a biographical approach, the study focuses on identifying patterns within her activities and scholarly output. The primary corpus of analysis consists of Ansari’s published articles, translations, research projects, supervised academic theses, and international scholarly engagements, examined collectively as the empirical basis of the study.

The research employs a documentary and comparative analytical method, situating individual works and activities in relation to one another and within their historical and institutional contexts. The findings indicate a trajectory that begins with translation and the circulation of specialized concepts, becomes institutionalized through university teaching and the professionalization of librarianship, expands through historical research and sustained engagement with children’s literature, addresses issues of cultural equity and access policies, and ultimately extends into international arenas of cultural mediation.

The article argues that the significance of this career lies not in individual publications alone, but in the overarching pattern of activities that connects academia, libraries, and society. This pattern has contributed to the sustainable development of librarianship and reading culture in Iran and offers an analytical framework for examining comparable scholarly and cultural careers in the contemporary Iranian context.

This article examines the institutional role of Nush-Afarin Ansari in the formation, consolidation, and long-term sustainability of the Children’s Book Council of Iran (CBC) as one of the most enduring civil-society cultural institutions in contemporary Iran. Drawing on an analytical reading of Ansari’s biography, the works of Parichehr Nasrin-Pay, and materials from the Oral History Project of the Children’s Book Council, the article argues that the CBC’s success resulted from the convergence of three key factors: multicultural formative experiences, professional librarianship, and an ethical approach to cultural management. Rather than offering a linear biographical narrative or an event-based institutional history, this study focuses on institutional mechanisms, the model of organized volunteerism, and the logic of “quiet power” in leadership.

The article also addresses the limitations and costs of this model, demonstrating that volunteer-based structures grounded in ethical commitment and human capital, while sustainable, are labor-intensive and difficult to replicate. Ultimately, it argues that the experience of the CBC should be understood less as a transferable operational model and more as an analytical framework for examining cultural institution-building under conditions of limited resources, political instability, and lack of formal support in Iran. This experience has endured not only in the organizational structure of the CBC but also in the collective memory of the pioneering women whose sustained participation shaped its institutional identity.

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