2015
HIV/AIDS Video Archive
University of Cape Town
Boosting Sustainability Research at the TWAS Annual Conference
The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS)
African Journal Capacity Building
African Journal Partnership Program
Teaching & Research in Natural Sciences for Development in Africa
University of Malawi
Maria Musoke Health Information/Health Impact Book Grant
Makerere University
Boost South to South Marketing
STM/Research4Life
2014
Consumer Health Literacy in African Public Libraries
Network of African Medical Librarians
In the wake of recent African health scares and widespread misinformation, this grant will address public health literacy. Its aim is to improve access to and use of freely available, relevant, up-to-date and evidence-based consumer health information in public libraries across seven sub-Saharan African countries. The project targets the consumer health information gaps in personal health concerns, medical treatment and infectious diseases across seven sub-Saharan African countries: Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Coordinated by the NIH-founded Network of African Health Librarians (NAML), each of the seven in country health librarians will target three public libraries. They will undertake an assessment of librarians’ training needs, develop training content, deliver workshops to public librarians, develop project plans together with the public librarians, and finally provide monitoring, evaluation, and dissemination of lessons learned. One of the project’s key goals will be to establish and sustain linkages between academic health sciences libraries and public libraries to improve the overall health literacy of patrons and prevent non-communicable diseases.
Forig Library: Digitization of Indigenous Knowledge in the Forestry Sector in Ghana
CSIR Forestry Research Institute of Ghana
Indigenous knowledge (IK) refers to the large body of expertise and skills that have been developed outside the formal educational system. IK is firmly embedded in communities, forming the basis for local-level decision-making in agriculture, human and animal health, food security, education and natural resource management. In developed countries, IK is often used as a resource to fuel industries ranging from energy, food, pharmaceuticals and chemical products. Like most African countries, Ghana has historically disregarded these resources as a foundation for business development. In this grant, the CSIR Forestry Research Institute of Ghana will establish a library system for recording, documenting and preserving indigenous knowledge on forest foods and medicinal plants. The project will use digitization for sharing, exchanging, educating, and preserving IK through a clear design of metadata standards and procedures, multimedia technologies, and appropriate structures for access and use. While training researchers, librarians and information managers, the project team will explore the importance of indigenous knowledge systems in livelihood and socio-economic development in Ghana.
Librarians Without Borders® E-Library Training Initiative
Librarians Without Borders® /Medical Library Association (LWB)
Since 2007, the Medical Library Association (MLA)/Librarians Without Borders® (LWB) E-Library Training Initiative has worked to improve access to high quality STM information through Research4Life by increasing the quantity and quality of usage in low use areas. With support from the Elsevier Foundation, LWB has delivered on this goal, providing 55 workshops in 32 countries and 6 distance learning courses to more than 1800 participants, while developing a systematic and robust training infrastructure across the Research4Life programs. In 2015 – 2016, LWB will continue offering ‘Train the Trainers’ workshops, cross-program modules, distance learning courses and facilitating the formation of Research4Life country users’ groups.
Transforming Scholarly Communication and Academic Production in Eastern DRC
Université Chretienne Bilingue du Congo (UCBC)\
The eastern Congo is described by the UN Development Programme as “the least developed on Earth.” With absent infrastructure and poor organization, universities in this region are isolated from each other and the international scientific community and deeply limited in their ability to inform policy and funding decisions with local expertise and research. Key data, ideas, and perspectives from within Congo are rarely integrated in research informing national and regional policy decisions. This project aims to strengthen eastern Congo’s research and publishing ecosystem by working closely with UCBC’s librarians. Key activities will include library science and research capacity building, faculty training, the establishment of a thesis repository and harvester to improve the discoverability of local research; and finally, engagement in community research. By equipping faculty and students with up-to-date technology and providing access to qualified librarians, this grant aims to empower researchers to better address local problems in a systematic, scientific way. The ultimate goal is to promote a rigorous, relevant research culture in eastern Congo and provide a model for institutions facing similar challenges.
Eye Health Information Impact Grant
SEVA Foundation
Building on a successful 2012 – 2014 grant to improve learning resource centers across eight leading eye care institutions in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, SEVA will work with these partners to establish critical indicators and methodology for mapping utilization of health information and its impact on improved health outcomes. SEVA, the Association of Vision Science Librarians (AVSL), and resource center partners will tackle questions such as: what constitutes robust measurement parameters? How can we measure our activities vis-a-vis external data available for eye institution partners?
Health Information Research in Uganda,
Maria Musoke, Professor of Information Science and University Librarian, Makerere University
Maria Musoke is researching the accessibility, use, needs and sources of health information and its effect on health outcomes in Uganda. A recipient of funding for the 2010-14 Elsevier Foundation project “Enhancing access to current literature by health workers in rural Uganda and community health problem solving,” Professor Musoke has been awarded one of the Foundation’s new health evaluation impact grants to support her research. She will aim to track health information in Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa, examining the trends in behavior, the value of information and its effect on health information activities and outcomes over the past fifteen years. Her analysis will be facilitated by the advances in information technology, the involvement of the HINARI team, and a sizeable amount of research on information user studies, health information, behavior and interventions since 2000.
2013
Towards the Collaborative repository for Ethiopian academic and research institutions
Consortium of Ethiopian of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries (CEARL) and African Digital Library Support Network (ADLSN)
Over the past few years, Ethiopia has enjoyed substantive growth in both the number of academic institutions and research output. However, the accessibility, usability, management and quality of the research output has proven increasingly challenging. The Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries (CEARL) and the African Digital Library Support Network (ADLSN) propose to scale up some of the exiting institutional repositories at the Addis Ababa University and Forum for Social Studies, to build the Ethiopian national digital repository. By increasing the discoverability and usage of Ethiopian academic research results nationally, regionally and internationally, the goal is to foster collaboration and a global research culture. The project will train a core of Ethiopian librarians to establish and operate digital repositories while providing deep information literacy skills to researchers. This project provides an African approach conceived by librarians and IT experts and demonstrates great promise both in country and as a model for African library development in general.
Author Capacity Building in Africa
Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University
USA Building on access to Research4Life and TEEAL (The Essential Agricultural Library) and on-going information literacy training, the Author Capacity Building project aims to boost research output in sub-Saharan Africa. Critical skills training in citation management, research literature review and scientific paper writing will be delivered to young faculty in agricultural and biological sciences, senior researchers, and librarians at universities in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Malawi. Librarians from Cornell’s Mann Library will lead the first Ethiopian workshop and train ITOCA (The Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa) to sustainably deliver these in Nigerian and Malawian universities. A key focus will be on training up African faculty and librarians as in house trainers to provide on-going coaching to researchers to develop the research output skills they need to succeed.
Library Information Resources to Enhance the University of Ghana
School of Public Health Program, Morehouse School of Medicine, US & Ghana
As African research develops, “Big Data” poses an increasing challenge to institutions. This project will tackle this through the creation of a Library Translational Clearinghouse of Ghana’s Primary Health Data, Secondary Datasets and Databases. In effect, it will bring national epidemiological data into the University’s Public Health Library and train librarians to provide services covering both published information and data. In most public health institutions globally, published information and data are held separately. Bringing the two together with a single-point of service allows for greater access to reliable and authoritative health information and data with the potential to positively impact health outcomes. Researchers, clinicians, and epidemiologists working in the field of communicable diseases will be more able to identify national disease outbreaks and plan rapid interventions. This project is the product of a longstanding partnership between Morehouse School of Medicine and the University of Ghana, building on an established foundation with a commitment to its sustainability after the funding period.
Developing a Globally Connected LIBRARY 4 SAFE SEAFARING (L4SS) Infrastructure for Local Maritime Schools in the Philippines to Enhance Education and Training of Competent and Safety Conscious Seafarers
Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation, Philippines
US & Ghana Maritime disasters are a continuing cause of global concern despite safety-conscious systems established by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Maritime safety or the preparedness, competence and ongoing education of shipping crews are crucial to the industry and global distribution of goods and services. Since the 1990s, the Philippines has become a major source of seafarers worldwide – one out of every five sailors is Filipino. The Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation (MPCF), a leading maritime institution in the Philippines will develop the “Library for Safe Seafaring” as a globally connected evidence based learning and advocacy facility providing sailors with a continuing education to research the latest maritime trends, relevant references, teaching tools and learning materials. The end goal for the L4SS project is to institutionalize the use of the upgraded library as a valuable learning facility for quality education and training at the MPCF to produce more safety-conscious and trained, licensed officers and crew– compliant with international quality standards on maritime safety.
Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative
University of Michigan Taubman Library
This project aims to create an integrated, evidence based information skills curricula to enable the Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative (GEMC) to strengthen the research and clinical care capacity of emergency care services in Ghana. It builds on the collaborative GEMC project, a partnership between Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), the Ghana Ministry of Health and the University of Michigan’s Departments of Emergency Medicine and School of Nursing. Beyond creating a sustainable Ghanaian model for information skills training of emergency faculty and information professionals, it will provide a template for assessment, training and retention in emergency and trauma care that need to be enhanced in lower and middle income countries.
2012
Enhancing access to research for academic and research institutions in Central and West Africa Information Training & Outreach Centre for Africa, ITOCA, South Africa
This Elsevier Foundation grant addresses a very real problem – how to encourage more institutions in West and Central Africa to register for and make use of the 18,000 international journals, books and databases that are now freely available through Research4Life . Out of 7,000 institutions registered for Research4Life, 3,000 are from Sub-Saharan Africa, but less than 300 have registered from Angola, Chad, DR Congo, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. ITOCA, an African NGO will deliver experienced and focused outreach, community-building and information literacy training which will ensure that researchers and higher education students can fully benefit from these free resources.
E-Library Training Initiative in Asia and Latin America
MLA/Librarians Without Borders
Through a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the MLA/Librarians Without Borders® (MLA/LWB) program will provide critical information literacy training supporting the usage high quality STM information in low use Asian and Latin American areas. Since 2008, MLA/LWB has created multi-language, online distance learning courses, cross program and discipline training and train-the-trainer sessions across the developing world. This project will have strong multiplier effects as the training and instructional material developed will be shared by users at all Research4Life eligible institutions.
Nepal Knowledge Nexus
Dhulikhel Hospital / Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences
In Nepal, 57% of the population lives on less than $3 a day. Despite Research4Life eligibility, access to and usage of medical literature is inadequate due to a lack of infrastructure and expertise. Dhulikhel Hospital (DH) and Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences (KUSMS) have a unique reach across Nepal, providing health care degrees and extended care to 12 affiliated health centers and 20 community outreach centers in rural areas. The proposed multi-purpose learning facility will not only allow students and staff from DH/KUSMS to access Research4Life, but also staff at the rural centers across Nepal. Basic telemedicine capabilities with specialists at DH/KUSMS will further improve the quality of health services at these rural centers. This project has the potential to go far beyond a small infrastructure building grant to provide serious research on the effect of enabling access to major scientific, technical and medical information resources and how this affects health outcomes and the shift from print textbooks to online journals.
Strengthening professional’s skills in evidence based health care in Tanzania
Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania
Over the past ten years, access to critical health research has vastly improved across Africa, but this has yet translated into improved patient outcomes on a comprehensive scale. Today most patients in Tanzania benefit from medical treatment, but would benefit far more if health professionals provided care based on the latest scientific knowledge now available to them. With a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, Muhimibili University aims to build the skills and awareness necessary to create an evidence-based medical treatment culture across Tanzania. The training process will be matched with a national study measuring the results of providing information access and EBHC training, and to correlate these to changes in health care practices and eventually to health care outcomes.
2011
A Solution in Sight: Eight Developing Country Resource Centers Improve Access to the World’s Ophthalmic Information
Seva Foundation, US
80% of the world’s blindness is avoidable through treatment or prevention. The WHO’s Vision 2020: the Right to Sight campaign targets curable blindness in their global campaign to impact vision loss. The Seva Foundation has proposed a compelling project aimed at benefiting hundreds of eye hospitals that lack organized resource centers and trained librarians. Eight collaborating resource centers in major recognized eye care institutions: Al Noor Magrabi Foundation in Egypt; Visualiza in Guatemala; Aravind Eye Care System, LV Prasad Eye Institute, Sadguru Netra Chikitsalaya, & Vivekananda Mission Asram Netra Niramay Niketan in India; Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology in Tanzania; and Lumbini Eye Institute in Nepal will work with the Seva Foundation and the Association of Vision Science Librarians (AVSL) to provide training, mentoring, and tool development to significantly enhance the librarians’ ability to make relevant scientific, technical, and medical information available to eye doctors and health care workers locally, regionally, and globally.
Strengthening Agricultural Researchers and Extension Staff’s Skills for Access to, Use and Sharing of Agricultural Information Resources in Tanzania
Sokoine National Agricultural Library, Tanzania
While information and communication technologies have become more widely available in many developing countries, the skills needed to take full advantage of e-resources are still under-developed. The work of agricultural researchers and extension staff, who play a central role in economic development, is significantly enhanced by tailored training in the search, use and sharing of the information that is now accessible through these technologies. Sokoine National Agricultural Library, a university and national library with a mandate to disseminate agricultural information to Tanzania’s diverse stakeholders, has developed a project with the potential for major impact on food production and security. It will strengthen the agricultural network within the country and will specifically target farmers–the most challenging link in the information literacy chain.
Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare
Library Training, Royal Tropical Institute
Evidence Based Health Care or Medicine (EBHC) is major priority in medical faculties, schools of public health, national ministries in wealthier countries and in the WHO. This project focuses on the key role played by information specialists in the practice and implementation of EBHC in the developing world. Medical doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers across eight African countries will be taught the skills of searching and retrieving, evaluating and implementing medical literature and evidence into clinical and public health to improve patient care. Courses will be conducted in medical schools, schools of public health and libraries in Ethiopia, Burundi, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, with a continuously growing group of partners. The project is driven by the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands (KIT), the central partner in the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA), a network of faculties of medicine, schools of public health, ministries and NGOs that support an African healthcare system based on informed and evidence-based decisions. CEBHA will also provide the expertise to adapt the program to issues that are commonly found in the developing world such as feasibility, limited resources, medication compliance issues and alternative and complementary medicine.
Nuclear Claims Tribunal Records Preservation
Nuclear Claims Tribunal
On March 1st 1954, Bravo, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested by the US government, was detonated in the Marshall Islands. One thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, it led to significant radiological contamination and international concern about atmospheric thermonuclear testing which continued in the Islands for another four years. With a grant from the Elsevier Foundation this project will preserve the library of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). The Tribunal was established in 1987 as part of a settlement agreement between RMI and the US government. It gave the Tribunal exclusive jurisdiction to settle all claims arising from the Nuclear Testing Program. The library contains unique holdings with hundreds of scientific and medical reports, papers, articles and other documents relating to the nuclear weapons testing program conducted in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958. The goals of the proposed project are to organize, stabilize, and digitize the library holdings and official files of the Tribunal in order to ensure that those records can be made available to future researchers, students, decision-makers, and other interested parties.
Improving Library Resource Sharing Through the Union Catalogue among Laotian Libraries
Central Library, National University of Laos, Laos
With a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the National University of Laos will provide the Laos Library and Information Consortium (LALIC) with a unified and comprehensive open source digital library information system to increase library staff and users’ access to scientific, technical, and medical information and materials. Researchers from across the 20 member library consortium will be able to access one search engine that compiles all metadata from the library collections’ network and electronic databases; access library collections across member libraries; and specifies the location (e.g., university, library) to access publications.