Collaboration & Resource Sharing in the Digital Age: IRRT pre-conference at ALA Annual

ALA International Relations Roundtable Pre-Conference
Collaboration & Resource Sharing in the Digital Age
Anaheim, California
Friday, June 27, 2008
8:00AM – 3:00PM

Please join ALA's International Relations Roundtable for a pre-conference to be held on Friday, June 27, 2008, focusing on resource sharing for international libraries. We will provide a continental breakfast and lunch for attendees. Our speakers are experienced global librarians who work to provide resources to libraries large and small around the world. Learn how to become part of the worldwide information network of libraries.

HINARI – OARE – AGORA are sister programs set up to assist developing countries in gaining access to current scientific information. Three of our speakers will explain how their programs help provide access to current scientific journals for developing countries.

HINARI, Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative, is a program set up by the World Health Organization to provide developing countries with access to biomedical and health literature. Kimberly Parker will discuss how HINARI provides journal articles to health institutions in 113 countries.

OARE, Online Access to Research in the Environment, is an international public-private consortium coordinated jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University, and leading science and technology publishers. It enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of environmental science research. Evviva Weinraub will talk about how this program provides scientific articles to developing countries.

AGORA, Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture, is led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The goal of the program is to improve the quality and effectiveness of agricultural research, education and training in low-income countries, and in turn, to improve food security. Mary Ochs will talk about AGORA which provides free or low cost access to major scientific journals in agriculture and related biological, environmental and social sciences to public institutions in developing countries.

Our fourth speaker is from another resource sharing organization, eIFL, Electronic Information for Libraries. Rima Kupryte will talk about eIFL.net, a multi-country consortium which negotiates affordable subscriptions, supports national library consortia, and maintains a global knowledge sharing and capacity building network. Some of the areas eIFL works on are open access publishing, intellectual property rights, open source software for libraries and the creation of institutional repositories of local content.

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Notes on presenters:
Mary Ochs is currently Head of Information Services and Collections at the A.R. Mann Library at Cornell University. Mann Library is noted for its strong collections and information services in agriculture and life sciences, including several special programs for delivering agricultural literature to the developing world. Mary Ochs coordinates these international programs for the Library, including TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library) www.teeal.org and Mann Library’s partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN for AGORA (Access to Global Online Literature in Agriculture) www.aginternetwork.org . Mary has worked in the Cornell University library system for over 20 years. She has an M.L.S. from Syracuse University and B.S. from Cornell University, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Mary also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Ulysses Philomathic Library, the public library in Trumansburg, New York.

Kimberly Parker is the HINARI Programme Manager at the World Health Organization. Prior to April 2008, she was the Head of Electronic Collections at the Yale University Library where among other things she coordinated the collecting of electronic resources including a broad range of e-resource management life-cycle issues and various digitally related international special projects. Kimberly has an undergraduate degree in Biology/Chemistry, and graduated from the University of Michigan with an MILS degree. She was a National Library of Medicine Associate and the Chemistry & Geology Librarian and Science Bibliographer at the Sterling Chemistry and Kline Science Libraries of Yale University. She was a member of the Digital Library Federation’s original Electronic Resource Management Initiative Steering Group. Recently Kimberly has been working on issues of ensuring appropriate infrastructure to support electronic resource management, examining the role of intermediaries in federated authentication systems, and observing the effect of different kinds of communication in enhancing information literacy in developing countries.

Evviva Weinraub is the Technology Librarian at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. Prior to working at Fletcher, Evviva worked at Yale as the OARE Librarian working with partners at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to launch and manage OARE ¬ Online Access to Research in the Environment.
Evviva was responsible for maintaining the publisher database, implementing SFX, coordinating testing and training as well as coordinating technical work for the program. She has been able to continue with peripheral involvement in the program while working at Tufts. Evviva received her MLS from the University of Maryland and has lived and worked in Daejeon, South Korea and in Bordeaux, France.

Rima Kupryte has a diploma of Vilnius University, LIS department, Lithuania. She established a modern Law Library in Lithuania during the first years of that country's newly gained independence. She worked for seven years as a coordinator and later as a manager of the Network Library Program, Open Society Institute-Budapest, which supported library development in over 30 countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Africa. After one of the OSI's programs spun off and became an independent organization - eIFL.net, Rima Kupryte moved with the new organization and is now Managing Director of eIFL.net. To date the organization is active in 50 countries.

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The pre-conference begins at 8:00 AM for coffee and pastries, with the program beginning at 9:00 am. Lunch will be served and the program will end around 3:00 PM. Registration for this event is $75 which includes the breakfast and lunch. Registration is through the ALA Annual Conference registration at http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2008a/registration.cfm.