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Center of Attention: Librarians Speak Up

“How does your library help users with limited English proficiency access STM information, much of which is in English?”

Aysen Kuyuk, Medical Library Director, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey

Hacettepe University Medical Center Library, the oldest and largest medical library in Turkey, serves information needs of students, faculty, staff and patients of the HU schools of medicine and health sciences. While Turkish is our users' main language, 90% of our electronic sources are in English. Many of our users have limited English proficiency.

Language is also a barrier for library staff. To improve our librarians' ability to use effectively our online resources, we divide the databases among librarians. Each group studies specific databases, learning about their content, features, advanced use, statistics and so on. Later each group organizes a workshop to share knowledge with other librarians. Groups also prepare user guides in Turkish.

This approach has resulted in Turkish-language user guides covering ScienceDirect and other databases. Following such study and workshops, librarians are familiar with all our databases and can help users more effectively, and librarians and users can benefit from the local-language user guides available on our website.
www.hacettepe.edu.tr/english

Layali Khazaal, Head Librarian, Health Sciences Center Library, Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait

To support information needs of Health Sciences Center faculty, staff and students, and other health professionals, the HSC Library

provides a range of services. Notably we provide orientations in Arabic and English. These provide training on how to search different databases and evaluate retrieved information. Printed handouts in Arabic and English give more information on navigating the databases.

The library also provides online and print bilingual dictionaries and encyclopedias covering medical and scientific disciplines. Arabic- and English-speaking staff assist with questions about our print and online resources, as well as reference questions. Patrons needing personal consultations in Arabic or English can register online for training sessions on different databases. Furthermore we sometimes translate specific resources into Arabic. Recently the library purchased translation software, available for use by faculty as well as librarians.

The library’s services help English- and Arabic-speaking patrons become independent learners and problem solvers versus passive recipients of information.
  www.hsc.edu.kw/vpo/LIBRARY/index.asp

Sabina Aneva, Vice Director, Central Library, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

The Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is one of the largest and oldest scientific libraries in Bulgaria. Our major group of

users consists of researchers, professors and students (master’s and PhD levels). Though the percentage of users with limited English proficiency is relatively small, we offer a number of services in two languages: Bulgarian and English.

Our library offers workshops to help users improve their knowledge of how to use online databases more effectively, and we publish brochures giving additional information on specific features of each online product. Our reference librarians support users during their online query sessions and we support a mailing list, via which users get answers in a short time. Further, our website — available in Bulgarian and English — offers a lot of information helpful for users.
www.bas.bg/index-en.html

Irina Kuznetsova, Head Librarian, Academic Library, Samara State Technical University, Russia

At my library, staff members use presentations, user guides and descriptions in Russian from Elsevier's Russian website at www.elsevier.ru. Many thanks to Elsevier colleague Alex Mzhelsky who initiated translations of Elsevier's ScienceDirect and Scopus materials into Russian, and realized the idea of Elsevier's Russian website.

Our library staff members provide our users/students with trainings, giving an overview of resources the university subscribes to via the NEICON consortium. At such trainings, materials translated into Russian and provided by Elsevier are actively used. ScienceDirect handouts in Russian are very popular among the users.

The majority of our professors and researchers feel confident enough with their English to use Elsevier publications in English. Some people require more training on doing searches in English and translating the key words. However, as I’ve mentioned, Russian translations of support materials are highly appreciated and do help our librarians and patrons.
www.samgtu.ru

Telma de Carvalho, Librarian, Faculdade de Odontologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

Our community of users is largely Brazilian. Our 39 SIBi/USP libraries serve about 76,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and among these Portuguese is the first language for 90%. It is very important that while our libraries offer digital resources in English (and other languages), we also offer associated learning guides in our
local language.

Our librarians recently created the “Tutorial de Revistas Eletrônicas do Sistema Integrado de Bibliotecas da USP.” This online interactive tutorial provides details on accessing full-text articles, finding headings such as from the list of serials available from our OPAC, searching in databases provided by publishers and more.

Through this local-language tutorial, our libraries connect with users and show how to use online resources including ScienceDirect. We’re delighted with the results. Thanks in part to the tutorial, we're seeing usage of our libraries' e-resources going up and the number of information queries going down.
www.usp.br/sibi

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