Donna Flake and Diane Darrow of the SEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington are providing help and consultation to the Danylo Halytskyi Scientific Medical Library of the National Medical University in Lviv, Ukraine.
They traveled to Lviv, Ukraine in June 2009 to work with medical librarians. They visited the two locations of a Medical Library and met with the Deputy Director (Ludmilla Lutsky) along with Medical University officials. Furthermore, they provided training to the medical librarians, doctors, and medical residents.
(Photo: Donna Flake (middle) with Diane Darrow (far right) and the librarians from the Scientific Medical Library, Lviv, Ukraine)
Before the trip they requested and were very generously provided with STAT!Ref and Anatomy TV, as well as EBSCO’s Dynamed for this library for one year period. In addition, three other U.S. medical libraries, plus SEAHEC Medical Library, agreed to supply the Ukrainian medical library with 30 free electronic interlibrary loans. The four U.S. medical libraries are listed as below:
• Hirsh Health Sciences Library at Tufts University in Boston
• Houston Academy of Medicine Texas Medical Center Library in Houston
• Louisiana State University – Health Sciences Center – Shreveport Medical Library in Shreveport, LA
• Fales SEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington, NC
During Lenny Rhine’s excellent (and free) HINARI training at MLA in Honolulu in May 2009, Donna Flake met Triza Crittle from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. After each of the HINARI participants provided an overview of his/her work with international medical libraries, Triza told Donna that she wanted to help with their new partnership in Ukraine. Triza contacted Ukrainian Associations based in the U.S. to try to find one that would help to ship current medical books and journals to Lviv, Ukraine. The librarians from SEAHEC Medical Library are excited about Triza’s help with Ukraine.
(Photo: Donna Flake and Diane Darrow with the
librarians from the Scientific Medical Library, Lviv, Ukraine)
Donna and Diane also have contacted two other medical libraries in Ukraine for cooperation. The two Libraries include
the National Scientific Medical Library of Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine and Dnepropetrovsk State Medical Academy in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. They also arranged for these databases to be available to these two libraries:
• STAT!Ref
• Anatomy TV (through STAT!Ref)
• Dynamed (through EBSCO)
The medical librarians from Lviv certainly want them to return to Lviv for further cooperation. This partnership with the Medical Library in Lviv is really a “hybrid” partnership. This medical library partnership contains U.S. librarian leaders from NC and Nevada; Interlibrary loan support from Boston, Houston, Shreveport, and Wilmington; and database support from STAT!Ref and EBSCO.
Third visit to Moldova - The NC-Moldova Medical Library Partnership update on activities.
Donna Flake and Diane Darrow lead the NC-Moldova partnership. All the NC Academic Medical Libraries and some of the NC AHEC Libraries participate in the partnership.
Donna and Diane visited the Scientific Medical Library of the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University of Moldova in Chisinau, Moldova for ten days in June 2009. This was their third visit in four years.
They taught HINARI at the library to 23 health professionals including physicians, residents, medical students, medical school faculty members, medical librarians, and representatives from the Ministry of Health. Benefited from Lenny Rhine’s excellent “Train the Trainer” HINARI class at MLA in May 2009, Donna taught a HINARI class in Moldova, which was the first HINARI class of this magnitude taught in Europe. Silvia Ciubrei, Deputy Director of the Scientific Medical Library, advertised the class, registered participants, and created certificates of completion. Other classes were taught during their time in Moldova.
• Dynamed
• STAT!Ref
• Anatomy TV
• Evaluating Medical websites
• Friends of the Library Program
• The Reference Interview
• Marketing the Medical Library
• Integrating the Library’s Electronic Resources into the Electronic Medical Record
(Photo: Donna Flake with librarians and physicians from the Scientific Medical Library, Chisinau, Moldova. Donna taught HINARI to this group.)
While in Moldova they had several meetings with the Medical University’s President and several faculty members. They brainstormed how to improve the medical library and how to expand their partnership. One big accomplishment is that a course will be developed which integrates HINARI and medical database instruction into the curriculum of the Medical University. Prior to their visit, the librarians in Moldova advertised their databases but did not offer classes to the doctors, residents, medical students, and medical faculty members. Also the President of the Medical University has mandated that the medical library develop a marketing plan. This appears to be a direct result of the course they taught on marketing the Medical Library. Other accomplishments of the partnership include sending 20,000 current medical books and journals to this library. These were delivered in three shipments over a four year period. The books and journals were donated by the NC libraries, but the vast majority of the donations came from two medical libraries: the Laupus Health Sciences Library at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, and the SEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington, NC. In addition, all the NC medical school libraries and all the AHEC libraries furnish electronic document delivery to the Moldova medical library.
During the visit, Donna Flake was invited to a dinner at the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Moldova. Unfortunately, Diane Darrow had to return to the U.S. before this dinner. In attendance at the Ambassador’s home was also the Minister of Health, the President of the Medical University, and others who had helped our Medical Libraries partnership.
The partnership has been very successful – more successful than they ever anticipated.
Partnership with the Medical Library of Latvia
From 1999-2003 International Cooperation Section had an international medical library partnership with the Medical Library of Latvia in Riga. As this MLA pilot project ended, SEAHEC Medical Library became the permanent sister library to the Medical Library of Latvia. They still are partners and communicate regularly. Latvian Welfare Society, based in Illinois, U.S., is so gracious and generous that they are willing to ships current medical books and journals to the Medical Library of Latvia with free of charge. These donations are from SEAHEC Library in Wilmington, Diane Olson from Loyola Health Sciences Library in Chicago, and several other U.S. libraries. In 2003 when the MLA sister libraries pilot project ended, forty U.S. and Canadian medical libraries were providing free interlibrary loans to the Medical Library of Latvia. Today, thirty of the original forty libraries continue to provide free electronic interlibrary loans.
Velta Poznaka, a longtime friend of Donna Flake and tremendously capable Director of the Medical Library of Latvia, expressed that economic problems were mounting for her library, just as it is happening in many libraries worldwide. Velta has had to decrease hours and staff and buy much less. “Fortunately,” she says,” it is a great comfort and support to have a sister library with much assistance from other U.S. medical libraries for interlibrary loans and gifts of current medical books and journals.”
Donna Flake
Robert M. Fales Health Sciences Library
SEAHEC / South East Area Health Education Center
Email: Donna.Flake@seahec.net
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