"We have a million books in boxes in Liberia..."

Comment of the day at the Comparative and International Education Studies conference at Teachers College in New York after our session on village libraries. Seems to be more on the way, too:

Bush declares Liberia safe, gives more books - Feb 22, 2008
United States President Bush, has pledged one-million text-books to the Liberian school system to provide learning opportunities for some ten-thousand children for the next few years.

Problem is, apparently there is no plan or budget for how all these books will be funneled into institutions that will make use of them. I think there is one simple question to ask in these cases: In ten years time, who will be paying the salary of the librarian responsible for the books? If the answer is "I have no idea" then the project is in trouble!