Innovative Libraries Grants

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.

2010

HIV/AIDS Audio-visual Archive
University of Cape Town, South Africa

With a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the University of Cape Town Library will undertake a unique archival project to safeguard and make accessible a decade of critical ‘primary source’ knowledge on the social and political aspects of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Three thousand hours of video footage generated since 1998 by the Community Media Trust will be curated and archived to ensure that the largest audio-visual collections on the AIDS experience in Africa will not become lost to South Africa, the country with the largest number of HIV positive individuals—or to researchers and policymakers around the world.

Egyptian National Cancer Database
International Network for Cancer Treatment and Research (INCTR), UK and Egypt

Evidence-based strategies are needed to address the growing cancer epidemic in developing countries. The Eastern Mediterranean Region is predicted to experience a dramatic spike in cancer over the next twenty years representing 27% of the global increase in cancer incidence. Egypt alone will experience increases in cancer incidence of between 100-180% during the next twenty years. This Elsevier Foundation grant will enable the National Cancer Institute in Cairo (hosting the largest cancer hospital in the Middle East) to build evidence-based cancer care in Egypt. They will work in close collaboration with the National Cancer Institute in Cairo and Cairo University to provide Egypt’s scientific leadership with a comprehensive and maintainable national record of cancer research with which to begin planning their national research agenda.

Health Information Delivery in Rural Guatemala using Telemedicine
University of Pennsylvania Libraries, USA and Atitlán Hospital Library, Guatemala

This Elsevier Foundation grant will enable the University of Pennsylvania to expand their “Guatemala Health Initiative” to deliver a medical library needs assessment and telemedicine pilot in rural Guatemala. The newly constructed Hospitalito Atitlán will host the library and serve as the project hub supporting surrounding rural healthcare providers with sustainable information resources, point of care clinical databases, mobile devices and content, technical support, and user training. A key element of the program is local training and capacity building to ensure the sustainability of the program.

Library Infrastructure Boost
University of Hargeisa, Somaliland

Somaliland is ranked as 161 out 163 of the least developed countries in the world. Most hospitals were destroyed during their protracted civil war (1988 -1991) which resulted in a devastating brain drain of health professionals. With this Elsevier Foundation grant, the University of Hargeisa will establish a complete ILS or library automation system using KOHA open source software, training librarian staff, hardware acquisition and gaining access to online databases and journals. The new ILS will be an important step to helping the University of Hargeisa to serve the desperately needed trained professionals to regenerate its institutions.

2009

Developing a Service-Oriented Database of Cases of Emergency Management
JINAN University Library, China

This Elsevier Foundation grant will create the first of its kind large scale online “Service-Oriented Database of Cases of Emergency Management” (SODCEM) for use by Chinese researchers, students, policymakers and the public to raise the level of national expertise and reduce the losses caused by disasters. In 2008 alone, natural disasters caused a direct economic loss of 1.1752 trillion Yuan, while manmade disasters resulted in 1.01 billion Yuan and over 91,000 deaths in China. Partnering with the Illinois Fire Service Institute (IFSI) Library of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, SODCEM will be a multimedia subject database which contains 400 cases constituted by more than 2000 records of images and multimedia documents, using a web 2.0 environment to improve accessibility and analysis.

“Librarians Without Borders®” E-Library Training Initiative Grant
Medical Library Association

This Elsevier Foundation grant will enable hundreds of information professionals and researchers in developing countries to gain the necessary skills to exploit the wealth of information within the Research4Life programs locally through HINARI training workshops and the online distance learning course. Building on 2007 Elsevier Foundation grant, this renewal award ensures that the momentum established in research skills outreach over the last few years is sustained an continues to boost scientific scholarship in the developing world. Watch the Story

Transformation of ICIMOD’s Traditional Library into a Mountain Learning and Information Centre
Library of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal

Dedicated to sustainable development, poverty alleviation, and environmental conservation, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, ICIMOD, is supported by the eight countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas (HKH): Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan as well as other sponsor countries. This Elsevier Foundation grant will enable the ICIMOD Library to transform a highly specialized regional traditional print library into a mountain development research portal on climate change, watershed, biodiversity, conservation, gender, medical plants, and the market serving researchers, NGOs, policymakers and rural mountain communities.

Supporting Research Communities in Writing, Publishing and Sharing their Works in Thai Nguyen University and the Northern Mountainous area of Vietnam
Thai Nguyen University, Vietnam

This Elsevier Foundation grant will enable the Thai Nguyen Learning Resource Center, the central library of Thai Nguyen University, to substantially boost Vietnamese scholarship and Scientific, Technical and Medical information exchange at the regional, national and international levels. Faculty, researchers, administrators, information and library professionals, technologists, and postgraduate students will be provided learning opportunities for enhancing effective scientific writing skills and the use of online tools and digital repositories through a series of seminars and targeted training events. This project represents an innovative and scalable model in both Vietnam and the developing world providing a freely available and localizable training module for the developing world.

Enhancing Access to Current Literature by Health Workers in Rural Uganda and Community Health Problem Solving
Makerere University, Uganda

With a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, Makerere University will combine information services with targeted rural medical outreach and reporting, demonstrating how librarians in developing countries can impact rural health workers and health outcomes. Critical medical information on rural health issues (infant mortality, HIV/AIDS etc.) will be repackaged to meet the information needs of Ugandan health workers. A team of doctors, nurses and midwives will provide hands on training and treatment for specific rural health crises which will be reported in expanded issues of the triannual medical digest produced by Albert Cook Medical library.

Increasing access to relevant health information for primary healthcare providers through the development of local resources and effective health sections in Kenyan public libraries
Book Aid International

This Elsevier Foundation grant supports Book Aid International’s project to improve access to health information to primary care health workers and consumer health information users. In partnership with the Kenya National Library Service network and Healthlink Worldwide, the project will develop the skills of 30 library staff across 15 key public libraries and will effectively repackage and communicate critical content from medical books to two underserved Kenyan communities: healthcare providers and users.

2008

Collaborative Digital Reference Service System (CDRSS) for University Libraries in China: An Exploratory Study
Shanghai Jiao Tong University

The Elsevier Foundation grant will help to lay the groundwork for China’s first real time virtual reference system offering universities an opportunity to share information resources and staff expertise across CALIS, a consortium of 1,000 Chinese university libraries. This grant will address China’s critical lack of well-organized collaborative digital reference systems which represent a significant barrier for university libraries seeking to offer users a high quality reference service and diffuse knowledge more broadly.

Information and Library Needs Assessment to support the Orotta School of Medicine, Physicians for Peace and GWU Medical Center Training project in Eritrea
George Washington University Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

This Elsevier Foundation grant will assess and evaluate the present Eritrean clinical, medical and health information infrastructure to build an integrated information system grounded in evidence-based practice decisions. The immediate goal is to develop recommendations identifying the opportunities and barriers for dissemination and delivery of health information services to Eritrean health care professionals. Recently emerging from a 30 year struggle for independence from Ethiopia, Eritrea has no more than five physicians for every 100,000 people. This grant addresses “brain drain” in the long term by contributing new capacity for the first on-site graduate medical program in Eritrea. It also serves as an exportable model for other developing countries seeking to create sustainable clinical information systems to meet country-specific healthcare training and service needs.

Building on an operational health network to develop a health information library network in Cameroon
Centre International de Reference “Chantal Biya” (CIRCB)

The Elsevier Foundation grant will be used to develop a central library system to collect, document, and disseminate relevant HIV/AIDS research from the Centre International de Reference “Chantal Biya” (CIRCB) hub based in Yaoundé to outlying health institutes in seven of the country’s ten provinces with extremely limited access to information. The CIRCB plays a leading role in strengthening regional research capacity and the prevention, treatment and management of HIV/AIDS, a highly prevalent disease in sub-Saharan Africa. The grant will leverage the strength of existing health, training and previous funding networks to share information on the latest literature and advances in HIV/AIDS treatment across the region.

Creating an Integrated Library System (ILS) Using Open Source Software KOHA for BRAC University Library
Ayesha Abed Library BRAC University

A grant from the Elsevier Foundation will enable Bangladesh’s BRAC University to implement a complete ILS or library automation system using open source software to enrich their infrastructure, serving as both a local resource and model for other Bangladeshi university libraries. BRAC or the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee is one of the world’s largest NGO’s working in the field of poverty alleviation, rural health care and education. The ILS project will facilitate internal processing activities, migrate and preserve data from the existing library systems into standard format, provide staff training, and ensure timely access to the information resources of the BRACU library’s national and international resources.

2007

Information/Library Needs Assessment for Medical Research and Health Care Delivery Initiatives in Botswana
University of Pennsylvania Libraries

An Elsevier Foundation grant will fund a comprehensive assessment of library and information services to support medical education and improve HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment in Botswana, a country with the second highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. The program draws on the University of Pennsylvania Libraries to contribute expertise to an established partnership between the University and the Government of Botswana, part of the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS partnership led by the Gates Foundation and the Government of Botswana. Because Botswana is regarded as a testing ground for policy and practice in this area, this grant has the potential to be ground-breaking in identifying ways libraries can contribute to improved outcomes for HIV/AIDS patients in the developing world. Watch the Story

Strengthening Usage Skills in Access to Online Resources in the Niger Delta Universities of Nigeria
University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

An Elsevier Foundation grant will establish the capacity in the Niger delta region of Nigeria to deliver ongoing training on access to online resources, and will serve all four of the major universities in the densely populated Niger Delta region. There is currently very low use of online library resources at the universities due largely to the lack of training and awareness of the availability of online resources among librarians, faculty, and graduate students. Under the proposal, the universities would establish and equip a permanent Elsevier E-Library Training Room, and fund the launch of a series of training programs targeted at librarians responsible for the health sciences, agriculture, pharmacy and science; academic staff; graduate students, and the wider university community. It has the potential to serve as a very concrete and replicable model for other countries and regions. The Training Room and course program would be maintained in subsequent years by the University of Port Harcourt, which has benefited from past support from the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, which includes the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. Watch the Story

Creation of a Latin American Virtual Library on Health and Disaster
Regional Disaster Information Center for Latin America & the Caribbean (CRID), Pan American Health Organization, National Library of Medicine

An Elsevier Foundation grant will improve the use and deployment of scientific, technical and medical information for disaster relief and reduction. The project will reinforce the efforts and initiatives taken by CRID in Central America and in the Andean countries to develop a “Latin American Virtual Library on Health and Disasters” to compile and share information on disasters, thus strengthening national and local capacity to manage and use health and disaster information. The grant will create a network of six centers in Central America and the Andean countries, which have among the highest incidence of disasters of any region of the world with major consequences for human life and economic development. The Elsevier Foundation grant will build the capacity of librarians to anticipate information needs during a disaster, deploy technologies for finding and disseminating disaster information, and participate more effectively in disaster-preparation and policy. It will also align standards and information management methodologies to allow for more extensive and efficient information sharing on disasters. The project has the potential to further demonstrate that the effective use and distribution of scientific technical and medical information, especially health information, in anticipation of and during disasters, has significant potential to save lives.

FARM-Africa Training and Advisory Unit Co-ordination and Digitisation Project
FARM-Africa (Food and Agriculture Research Management)

The Elsevier Foundation grant will extend the use of scientific, technical and medical information in East and South Africa in ways that will have a concrete impact on agricultural development. The grant will fund the grant will fund an audit of a large array of agricultural science and technology resources developed or acquired by FARM-Africa, a well-regarded organization with a 20 year track record in the region in support of community forest management, smallholder farmers, and pastoralist development. The long-term goal of the project is to compile and digitize extensive but geographically dispersed resources into a much more accessible web-based portal for use by farmers, NGOs, governments and the private sector across the region. The FARM-Africa website is already well visited for such a site in this region, so adding this new content has the potential to greatly increase access to important content across the region.
Watch the Story

Capacity-building for Vietnamese Science and Technology University Librarians in Reference and Information Services
Vietnam Development Information Center

A grant from the Elsevier Foundation will fund a highly focused and locally managed program to develop reference services at science and technology universities. References services are poor at these institutions and the library profession in Vietnam is viewed as an administrative function, rather than as value-adding and proactive. The project aims to use traditional training techniques and accepted materials to train librarians thoroughly in reference services and serve as seed professionals to spread knowledge to other librarians in their home institutions. The program provides essential training to address a basic need, which has the potential to have an important impact on science and technology in Vietnam.

E-library Training Initiative
Medical Library Association – “Librarians without Borders”®

The grant will extend for one year an existing program of workshops and curriculum development on the use of online resources, including Hinari, Agora and Oare, aimed at researchers, clinicians, government officials, and librarians in developing countries in Asia and Africa. It will also provide for the further development and deployment of an email training course that provides a less expensive channel for delivering training and that is scaleable to participants in other countries where distance and resource constraints prevent users and trainers from attending workshops. The grant will facilitate the development of a ‘users survey’ that will assist in establishing future training priorities. The Medical Library Association/ Librarians without BordersSM program conducted eight 4-day workshops on the use of HINARI in Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria and Tanzania, resulting in significant increases in usage. Watch the Story

2006

Guangxi University of Technology Library, China
Developing a virtual reference service

This grant will create a real-time virtual library reference service at Guangxi University of Technology, a comprehensive university focusing on engineering in Liuzhou City, China. By empowering librarians to take an active role in providing services for students, this program will not only promote public access to knowledge, but it will also serve as a model to other institutions in the region. The benefits will reach over 17,000 students, who will now be able to interact with librarians and find reference solutions any time, any place.

Hanoi Agricultural University, Vietnam
Enhancing librarian knowledge and information literacy

This project is focused on preserving and disseminating content in agriculture, fishery and forestry by enhancing professional knowledge and information literacy for librarians in agriculture, fishery and forestry universities in Vietnam. It will also establish a network of information literacy librarians who will contribute to the goal of producing high-level agricultural thinkers.

Hanoi Medical University, Vietnam
Promoting research in traditional medicine

Traditional medicine has a very special place in the fabric of Vietnamese culture. This grant aims to preserve and sustain traditional thought in medicine by building a database for disseminating traditional medicine research results at Hanoi Medical University for use in combination with modern medicine in disease prevention and treatment.

National Information Technology Park, Mongolia
Digitizing the first research library in Mongolia

This grant will result in the digitization of the first research & development library in Mongolia with the aim to digitize all doctors’ theses and R&D. This project will mark the first digitization of medical information in Mongolia, making material available for wider use and dissemination and providing access to this information for scientists, students and the general public.

Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand
Fostering local science and technology research

This grant will allow Suranaree University of Technology to begin constructing self-learning, computer-based modules to preserve and teach local and traditional knowledge focusing on science and technology for secondary schools in Nakhon Ratchasima, where Suranaree University is located.

Zhejiang University of Technology Library, China
Improving library service via e-resource reorientation

Zhejiang University of Technology will use a survey technique to identify researchers’ usage patterns, which will enable the libraries of Zhejiang to better meet the needs of their users. By filling in the gaps in use of A&I databases, the grant aims to increase the efficiency and value of A&I research in China.