Tuesday, October 24, 2017

This session focuses on two examples of libraries partnering to make an impact on different communities. Kendall draws on 15 years of experience of transferring medical library knowledge and practices to Ethiopia. The volunteer medical staff (including doctors and nurses), in addition to their job responsibilities, provide a thorough knowledge of the electronic resources available to the library and all medical students from the more than 14,000 full-text electronic journals and 20,000-plus ebooks available to Ethiopia from HINARI, the World Health Organization’s electronic library. This inspiring story of partners working with and teaching medical and allied health students is definitely improving the medical situation in Ethiopia. Kendall uses this as an example of how we are all connected in our world and should be doing more for developing countries in their quest to improve their library and other services. Our second speaker discusses a collaborative project to improve tools, curation, and content stewardship for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), a globally accessible full-text database of biodiversity literature. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a cohort of National Digital Stewardship Residents (NDSR), all graduates of LIS or related master’s programs, are placed at five U.S. institutions for mentorship as well as a specific project designed to improve the functionality of BHL. Hear about the development of a best practices guidelines document for digital libraries incorporating transcriptions, image searching, collection analysis techniques and better connections to museums, archives and other relevant databases.