Grant to Train Librarians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America

Since May I've been the Chair of the Librarians without Borders (LWB) task force for the Medical Library Association.  This stems from my tenure as a member of an earlier MLA group, the Global Initiatives Task Force (2003-2005).  The Global Initiatives Task Force set the stage for MLA to become a more active association internationally.  MLA actually has a long tradition of international involvement, but the Association still perceived a need to strengthen its ties with overseas colleagues.

The current Task Force will work until May 2008, at which time we will submit a final report to the MLA Board.  We are specifically interested in ways that trained librarians can assist with information support following natural or man-made disasters.  Hence, "without Borders" in the same spirit as Doctors Without Borders.

This week LWB and MLA announced a major training initiative that will fund 8 in-person workshops and one distance education program for librarians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  There are many great resources available to librarians in the developing world, but the people who could use them are often unaware of their existence. 

Funding for the training, $80,000 in total, comes from Elsevier, a major global publisher.  One of the LWB Task Force members is Tony McSean, the Director of Library Relations at Elsevier. Certainly librarians and Elsevier have had their share of tense moments, and that will continue. But everyone can agree that this is a worthy cause; it is only appropriate that it was announced during the holiday season.

This is an exciting project that grew out of LWB, but was not envisioned by our group initially.  As the Chair of the group, I had the pleasure of watching this planning unfold among task force members. Everyone selected for the task force cares about world libraries, and they want to make things happen rather than just talking about the terrible divide between rich and poor countries. Who knows? By May 2008, hopefully more unforeseen projects will come to fruition.