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Elsevier and MLA Join Forces to Train Librarians in Africa, Asia and Latin America
Participants engage in discussion and have fun at a
recent HINARI training led by Lenny Rhine (standing)
in Vietnam.
The Medical Library Association and Elsevier, an MLA sponsoring partner, are teaming up to provide skills training to librarians in Africa, Asia and Latin America so they can get greater use from online resources provided via the HINARI, OARE and AGORA initiatives. An Elsevier grant of US$80,000 is enabling MLA’s newly launched Librarians Without Borders program to stage eight onsite workshops and one distance learning course during 2007. New training materials for the workshops and the course are being designed to meet a broad range of HOA training needs.
So far this year, workshops have been scheduled for Cambodia, Nigeria, Tanzania/Zanzibar and Vietnam. A workshop to occur in Latin America will soon be scheduled. These collaborative efforts involve Librarians Without Borders, Elsevier, HINARI, the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa, and the United Nations’ World Health Organization as well as Food and Agriculture Organization.
The pilot distance learning course, called the E-Library Training Initiative, began in March and is utilizing and building upon existing HINARI training materials. Resulting new materials will be translated into multiple languages and provided to instructors throughout the world who will conduct courses in their respective languages. Local-language training has proven to be the surest way of increasing usage of scholarly publications available via HOA, and this training initiative is expected to contribute to more productive access for researchers and students in developing countries.
(Left to right) MLA Director of Financial and
Administrative Services Ray Naegele; MLA Executive
Director Carla Funk; Elsevier Director of Library
Relations Tony McSeán; and University of Florida
University Librarian Emeritus Lenny Rhine
According to University of Florida Emeritus Librarian Lenny Rhine, who’s coordinating the E-Library Training Initiative, “To effectively utilize the Internet in developing countries as a tool to access current health information, users need legal access to biomedical information, sufficient hardware and bandwidth, and training to identify, filter and use the e-resources. Via the HOA program and this training initiative, two key variables to facilitate the optimal use of Internet-based health resources are being put in place."
From Lenny, who additionally serves as an HOA trainer, we also get an inside look at what’s really involved in running HOA trainings. Recently he wrote that the first workshop (of the planned eight in the 2007 MLA program which Elsevier is sponsoring) proved a hit in Vietnam and resulted in add-on trainings. After the scheduled four-day anchor HINARI course at the Centre for Scientific and Medical Information, Lenny taught six additional courses, most organized on the fly and replacing his planned sightseeing tour. The additional stops took him to the Hanoi College of Pharmacy, Bach Mai Hospital, Thai Nguyen University, Hanoi College of Culture’s Library and Information Science Department, and Hanoi School of Public Health. Said Lenny, "In Vietnam, the participants had a real interest in learning and an understanding of how HINARI material can be used in their institutions. This is coupled with a decent and reliable level of Internet access and should result in a significant increase in the use of these electronic resources."
Make it: HINARI, OARE and AGORA rank among highly successful projects bridging the scholarly information gap between developing and industrialized countries. 
www.lwb-online.org
www.mlanet.org/resources/global/index.html
www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/philanthropy
- The Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative provides health institutions in close to 100 developing nations with access to journals in the biomedical and related social science fields.
- Online Access to Research in the Environment provides about 1,200 public and nonprofit institutions in 100 developing nations with access to peer-reviewed environmental journal literature and A&I services.
- Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture provides researchers, policy makers, educators, technical workers and extension specialists with high-quality information in agriculture and related fields.
- All Elsevier journals on ScienceDirect are accessible through HOA, as well as approximately 2,250 journals from other publishers.
