MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Moving Forward

How can we strengthen the section? What are the projects and initiatives needed to fulfill the opening sentence found on our website? It reads:

ICS provides opportunities for participation in international cooperation projects, promotes awareness of international issues, provides a mechanism for addressing and responding to the needs of international members, and fosters communication in the international library area.

Although these are good questions, as someone working in a library with reduced budgets and staffing, as many of us are, I have to wonder where there is time for additional professional activities.

Yet we are still well off, especially when we consider the work environment of Grace Ajuwon, recipient of the 2009 MLA Librarians Without Borders (LWB) Grant. Grace’s library, the E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, used the grant, in part, to increase the number of computers with Internet access to seven, in support of a medical student body of more than 400. There is much we can learn from Grace and her colleagues, who work under difficult financial circumstances and strive to provide the best library services possible. I am also grateful to Min-Lin Fang from the UCSF Library who secured the donation from the FlySheet Med-Informatics Company that made the LWB Grant possible.

We have a lot to be proud of as a section. Even so, in this time of the Great Recession, what are the ideas you have to help build and further work of our section? And what can you contribute to give life to those ideas?

2010 LWB Grant

The International Cooperation Section is pleased to announce the 2010 MLA Librarians Without Borders® Grant. The grant supports health science librarianship in HINARI Access to Research Initiative 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.

Completed applications must be received in the Medical Library Association office on or before December 1, 2009. Maximum funding under the grant is $5,000 (USD). For complete information and application instructions, http://www.mlanet.org/resources/global/lwb_mla_grant.html

Questions: please contact Daniel Dollar

Daniel Dollar
Yale University
Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
Email:daniel.dollar@yale.edu
Voice: (203) 785-2883