MLA Librarians Without Borders® Grant

Written by Daniel Dollar

The International Cooperation Section is pleased to announce the creation of a MLA Librarians Without Borders® Grant. The grant will support health science librarianship in Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) eligible countries*, by funding training opportunities and/or the purchase of materials that further the use of biomedical resources for education, research or clinical practice. Over the next three years, one $5,000 grant will be awarded per year. A recipient for 2009 has already been identified and will be announced later in 2009. Following the MLA 2009 conference, an application form will be posted on MLANET for prospective grantees to apply for awards in 2010 and 2011.

The grant was made possible through the efforts of Min-Lin Fang of the University of California, San Francisco who secured a $15,000 donation to support international outreach from the FlySheet Med-Informatics Company of Taipei, Taiwan. FlySheet is an information provider and solutions aggregator offering a wide range of services and technological support related to healthcare information for the Chinese library community. A task force including Min-Lin Fang, Carla Funk, Donna Flake, Lenny Rhine, Alicia Livinski and Daniel Dollar drafted the grant application and award criteria.
The grant will be administered by the International Cooperation Section of the Medical Library Association.

Questions: please contact Daniel Dollar (ICS Section Chair), daniel.dollar@yale.edu

*for a listing of HINARI eligible countries, http://www.who.int/hinari/eligibility/en/