Discussion on Length of Time for the Cunningham Fellowship

Submitted by Donna Flake

Opinions on the ICS Listserv have been strongly expressed. Using the ICS Listserv in February and March 2009, twelve ICS members expresses dissatisfaction with a three-week Cunningham Fellowship, and two ICS members expressed satisfaction with a three-week Cunningham Fellowship. Also, former Cunningham Fellows expressed their opinions on the listserv.

• Cunningham Fellow Ioana Robu (Romania) had a six-month fellowship in 1997. She expressed dissatisfaction with a three-week Cunningham Fellowship, and said a six-month Cunningham Fellowship was ideal.

Cunningham Fellow Lin Yuan (China) had a four-month fellowship in 2002. She expressed dissatisfaction with a three-week Cunningham Fellowship, and said a longer period is needed “in order to deeply understand the American Medical/Health Science Library services, especially how American librarians work with their customers in the libraries. It will take time to observe… There I have learnt something which will be useful in all my life… All these feelings/activities cannot be done just within three weeks.”
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Cunningham Fellow Anita Verhoeven (The Netherlands) had a four-month fellowship in 1998. She said, “For me four months was better than three weeks. It was just because of this long period and a variation of medical libraries I could get a feeling of the atmosphere and range of activities of these libraries. Furthermore, to get to know the American culture was just as important for me. Three weeks is a holiday, four months is a real stay… I would prefer one person for four months though. It has a greater impact in the end.”

• Cunningham Fellow Vijay Padwal (India) had a three-week Cunningham Fellow in 2008. Speaking of his three-week Cunningham Fellow, he said, “I felt that the time was not sufficient for me to learn some good techniques and skill in these libraries. I would be very happy if I could stay here for a period of three to four months and learn some techniques in details and can easily implement a few of the techniques at my work place in India.”

• Cunningham Fellow Jin Cheng (China) had a three-week Cunningham Fellowship in 2008. She said, “Three weeks for a Cunningham Fellow is just too short for a foreign librarian to obtain some professional and educational experiences in the United States. For a foreign librarian, he or she may need almost one week to be recovered from the jet lag. Then, we can imagine how limited things the fellow can learn for the next two weeks. As my Cunningham program in 2007, after the MLA 2007 annual meeting, I spent only eleven working days in SUNY Upstate Medical University Health Sciences Library and another three days in NLM. I could only have a very general impression about American medical libraries.”

• Cunningham Fellow Alison Kinengyere (Uganda) had a three-week Cunningham Fellowship in 2007. She said, “I stayed only three weeks. I felt that that time was not sufficient for me to learn all that there was to learn.”

• Cunningham Fellow Lisa Kruesi (Australia) had a three-week Cunningham Fellowship in 2008. She said, “My MLA Fellowship was three weeks, in addition to one week at the MLA Meeting. I found that this was a very sufficient amount of time to undertake placements at three outstanding library services.” [Please note that she is the only one of the Cunningham Fellows whose native language is English, and the only one to say that she preferred a three-week Cunningham Fellowship.]

The ICS Officers have made a motion to the MLA Board to do a study of the proper length of the Cunningham Fellowship.