Full Circle: Memoir of A Vietnamese-Canadian Librarian

In Full Circle: Memoir of A Vietnamese-Canadian Librarian, Vinh-The Lam tells the story of his journey from American-trained librarian in South Vietnam to Librarian Emeritus in Canada. After becoming the first US-educated President of the Vietnamese Library Association (VLA) in 1974, Lam worked alongside a team of fellow American-trained librarians to modernize and expand the South Vietnamese library system. He even founded the country’s first library science department at Vạn Hạnh University. But after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, the VLA and all of Lam’s achievements were lost. He spent the next six years in poverty, before emigrating to Canada in 1981 and rebuilding his life and career. With a new start in North America, Lam made valuable contributions to the library community, eventually retiring as Librarian Emeritus from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. When Vietnam appealed to overseas intellectuals to return and help the country move forward in the aftermath of the collapse of the Communist system, Lam and his former VLA team answered the call, ready to help Vietnam thrive in a new era of innovation and progress. This is the personal memoir of Lam’s full journey, from Vietnam to Canada and back again.

A graduate from the Master of Library Science program at Syracuse University, he came back to Vietnam and served as Head of the Library Science Department, Van Hanh University, until the fall of Saigon in May 1975. In 1981, he emigrated to Canada. After having worked as a government librarian for 15 years, he joined the University of Saskatchewan, as Head of Cataloguing Department (1997-2000) and then Head of Technical Services Division (2000-2003). He has published both in Library Science and in History. He took retirement from the University of Saskatchewan in July 2006 with the rank of Librarian Emeritus.