No. 33 - May/June 2008

Attached file: eifl_newsletter-may-june_2008.pdf

 

 

1. eIFL-related News

Welcome Ethiopia

Following first contacts during the IFLA conference in Durban, and a short visit and workshop in December, the consortium of Ethiopian academic libraries CEARL are partnering with eIFL in strengthening their consortium and exploiting more fully access to electronic resources, as well as becoming actively involved in the eIFL-FOSS program. We give a warm welcome to Derib Erget, head of the university of Addis Ababa faculty of technology library as the eIFL country coordinator, to the CEARL chairman Ato Girma Makkonen, the director of the AA university library, and to the Ethiopian library community at large. Ethiopia already has access to a range of e-resources through INASP, and we look forward to partnering with the consortium in making the most of these and new resources. We also acknowledge with gratitude the contribution made by Heidrun Bayer and her organisation, the Engineering Capacity Building Program of the GTZ, the German Development agency, in getting us off to a good start. CEARL has just recently held a successful workshop on Greenstone (see section 6).

If you had a magic wand…

Where would you wish eIFL and your consortium to be in 5 years time? What will be the new technologies that will affect access to knowledge and thus our programs and services? What are the long term trends in the open knowledge society? How will the eIFL network continue to fit into the big picture and provide value? How do we leverage, strengthen and expand the power of our network? How do we build on what we have achieved and expand to serve those who need us most?

These are some of the big questions the board and staff will address at the next board meeting beginning of July. A number of key 'thinkers' and experts have been invited to this meeting to 'vision' eIFL's future, and preparations are in full swing, for example to prepare an 'environmental scan' of key issues (what is the future of libraries...... a prize for anyone who has the answer!). Mark Surman from IDRC Canada and a research fellow of the Mark Shuttleworth Foundation is the facilitator of the meeting.

While we cannot bring all of you to this meeting, we definitely want you involved in evolving the eIFL vision. We will post the results of the meeting online for your comments and additions in August. The meeting results and comments will feed into a discussion paper that we will bring to the next eIFL GA.

Bulgaria in the Spotlight

After the exciting story about the achievements and guiding principles of the Ghana national consortium CARLIGH our new Spotlight features the Bulgarian national consortium. BIC activities aim to embrace libraries across the country in the latest trends of the profession. The story shows how member libraries are successfully taking advantage of the latest technologies, by organising the so-called “Technology Days”, “Good Library Practices” and many other knowledge sharing events. BIC started 5 years ago by three enthusiastic libraries and consists today of 38 member libraries. You can read the full story at www.eifl.net.

eIFL Spotlight wins UNESCO IFAP Success Story grant

In March 2008, the UNESCO Information for All Programme (IFAP) invited UNESCO Member States, NGOs and professional groups to share their stories and good practices in using information for development in all parts of the world. The stories collected provide practical examples to inspire others and raise the visibility of the critically important role that information plays in development. eIFL.net submitted stories from its Spotlight series, which highlights achievements from eIFL members.

We are delighted to announce that the eIFL Spotlight "Open Source Software brings a new lease of life to libraries in Palestine" was today selected by the Bureau of the Information for All Programme (IFAP) to receive project funding support of US$5,000 in order to replicate the story. Five stories, out of a total of 34 submissions, were selected to represent each UNESCO region (Africa, Arab States, Europe and North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific).

To read our story, please go to: www.eifl.net or IFAP Success Stories www.unesco-ci.org.

eIFL.net on Open Access, Open Education, and Creative Commons

In April, eIFL.net was interviewed by Ahrash Bissell, Executive Director of ccLearn, a division of Creative Commons dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Rima Kupryte, eIFL.net Director and Iryna Kuchma, Program Manager of eIFL-OA (Open Access) discussed open access, open education and the common goals of eIFL and Creative Commons. Read the interview here: creativecommons.org

Article about eIFL.net and national library consortia in the Balkans at SEE Science eJournal

SEE Science Journal is part of the wider WBC-INCO.NET project devoted to providing information on issues of science and technology policy in the region and to assisting the Information Office of the Steering Platform on Research for the Western Balkan Countries (see-science.eu). The journal is fully dedicated to informing about the coordination of research policies between the European Union and the Western Balkan countries; its last issue of April 30 includes the article “eIFL.net: Access to Knowledge in the Western Balkans”. You can access the journal at www.wbc-inco.net

eIFL Program inserts available in English, Portuguese and Spanish

In addition to the general eIFL brochure, we have produced one page leaflets for every single eIFL program, in order to give an eye catching overview of the goals and activities that characterise the program areas Negotiations, Consortium support, eIFL OA, eIFL IP and eIFL FOSS.

In order to reflect the diversity of the eIFL network and reach out to other communities, we are providing translations of the inserts in different languages. To date, those in English, Portuguese and Spanish are already freely available at www.eifl.net. We would particularly like to thank Aissa Issak, eIFL country coordinator for Mozambique, for having translated the inserts into Portuguese. Thanks to her, we will also have the general pages of the eIFL site translated into Portuguese very soon.

News about members’ library consortia

Belarus The Belarussian Library Association, the National Library of Belarus and the Fundamental Library of the Belarussian State University held the seminar «New Technologies for Information Needs of Science and Education» at the National Library of Belarus on April 18. Petr Lapo, eIFL coordinator invited all Russian speaking eIFL country coordinators to come to Minsk and share country consortium experiences. Ausra from Lithuania, Aleksander and Irina from Russia, and Oleksii from Ukraine were able to join Belarusian colleagues. In total, 32 librarians and information professionals participated in the event. See more at www.eifl.net.

China Zhang Xiaolin, eIFL country coordinator in China, became a member of the Steering Committee for the Inter Academy Panel (IAP) Program on Promoting Access to and Use of Digital Knowledge Resources and Infrastructure: Focus on Countries with Developing and Transitional Economies. He will participate in the first meeting of that Steering Committee, which will take place in Shanghai, China on May 28-29. The meeting is organized by the US National Academy of Sciences and Computer and Network Information Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Lithuania We are glad to announce that Ausra Vaskeviciene, eIFL country coordinator for Lithuania, Head of Administration of the Lithuanian Research Library Consortium (LMBA) and Head of the Electronic Services Department of the Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania has been nominated the Best Librarian of the Year 2007 in Lithuania. Full news and a photo of the event can be viewed at www.eifl.net.

Malawi Margaret Ngwira, MALICO secretary and Board Member for UbuntuNet Alliance reports a very successful 2nd Council of Members Meeting of the Alliance in Lusaka on April 18 where 4 new member NRENs were received into full membership. NRENs in construction were represented from Botswana, Ethiopia, Somalia and Namibia and full details are at www.ubuntunet.net. As always, Margaret encourages the Library Consortia in these countries to make their existence known to the NREN team, and to identify themselves as core Content Providers.

In addition, we are glad to announce that Mr. Gray Nyali, Director of Malawi National Library Service and MALICO Board member has been distinguished with the prestigious 2008 International Library and Information Group (ILIG) Award. Please read www.eifl.net.

Mongolia Mongolia is the second biggest land-locked country and Ulan Baator the coldest capital in the world...... and in partnership with eIFL it is set to leap-frog into the e-Mongolia knowledge economy! Congratulations to the Mongolian Library Consortium that has just received its official registration as an NGO from the Ministry of Justice, has set up its board and defined its mission, and started outreach to the library community at large - some near and some very far - in a workshop on Information for Development run by the World Bank and the Open Society Forum with participation from eIFL.

Palestine PALICO members from the West Bank have participated in a one day workshop organised by one of the PALICO institutions, Bethlehem University, on: "Reading and Technology at the Service of Everyone" which was held on April 10. Diana Sayej-Naser/ country coordinator / West Bank -Palestine presented a paper on: "Promoting- Managing, and Marketing E-resources in Higher Education Institutions".

In addition, PALICO members from West Bank universities played an active role in serving on the organizing committee and presenting papers at the 1st International Conference on: "Libraries from a Human Rights Perspective" which was held in Ramallah from March 31 till April 2, organised by the Center of Human Rights in cooperation with IFLA FAIFE Committee and SIDA.

Ukraine 33 students and young researchers from all over Ukraine presented their papers about Open Access and Socially Balanced Intellectual Property Rights on April 25 in one of the biggest Universities in Ukraine – Kyiv Polytechnic University. These papers have been submitted to the national competition of young researchers on Open Access and Socially Balanced Intellectual Property Rights organised by the International Renaissance Foundation and the Journal “Intellectual Property”. Yuri Radchenko, UAFOSS director, and Iryna Kuchma, eIFL Open Access Program Manager, gave key-note presentations.

Zimbabwe Call for Papers: The Zimbabwe University Libraries Consortium (ZULC) is organising the International Conference on Open Access and Quality Assurance in Higher Education Libraries on September 25-26. Full details about the sub-themes for the call and important information for authors are available at www.eifl.net Deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 16.

2. Upcoming eIFL Events in May-June 2008

On May 1, Teresa Hackett presented at the lecture series Bridging the digital divide: how libraries are enabling access to knowledge, for PhD computer science students at Trinity College Dublin, and academics and professionals from outside Trinity. Students learned about the innovative use of computer science and its practical application in a variety of settings.

On May 7 Emilija Banionyte, eIFL Advisory Board member, organised a high level visit of David Prosser from SPARC Europe to meet with the Lithuanian Ministry of Higher Education and Science to discuss Open Access policies.

On May 14-15, eIFL is organising a workshop on Open Access in Tbilisi, Georgia to be hosted by Ilia Chavchavadze State University

On May 27 Rima Kupryte and Monika Segbert will meet with Peter Burnett, new director of the INASP library program, to discuss closer cooperation.

Copyright in the Digital Environment, Kaduna, Nigeria, June 2-4. Laurence Bebbington and Ayo Kusamotu will present at the annual conference of the Nigerian Library Association. The conference theme is "Libraries without Borders: Globalization of Library and Information Services".

On June 3-5, Susan Veldsman will attend the South African Online Users Group meeting, at the CSIR, in Pretoria. A product/database demo session is being planned for June 6 at the CSIR conference centre, as many publishers will be exhibiting during the SAOUG meeting.

On June 4-7, Iryna Kuchma will present a poster “ETDs in Developing and Transition Countries: Results of eIFL.net Activities” at the ETD 2008: Spreading the Light, the 11th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK. The website of the conference is www.rgu.ac.uk

On June 9-13, Iryna Kuchma will give a presentation “eIFL-OA Program: Promoting and Advocating for Open Access in Developing and Transition Countries” at the Open Access Seminar of the Crimea 2008: 15th Jubilee International Conference Libraries and Information Resources in the Modern World of Science, Culture, Education, and Business, Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine.

On June 10-11, the first workshop of the eIFL-FOSS ILS project will be held at Yerevan, Armenia. Randy Metcalfe, eIFL FOSS manager, Tigran Zargaryan, eIFL FOSS coordinator, librarians with FOSS expertise from Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, Malawi, Mali, Palestine and Zimbabwe and resource persons Dan Scott, Henri Damie Laurent and Repke de Vries will participate in the event.

Institutional repositories managers from Azerbaijan will pay a study visit to Ukraine on June 18-20

eIFL OA will be holding an Open Access awareness raising workshop on June 23-24 in Moldova.

On June 25-29, Iryna Kuchma will co-organise an Open Access seminar during the General Meeting and 7th International Congress of Ukrainists "Preparing the Future of Ukraine" of the International Association for the Ukrainian Studies (IAUS), Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine.

On June 27 the International Relations Roundtable of the American Library Association (ALA) will organize a half-day pre-conference at the ALA Annual Conference. The topic for the 2008 conference will be Collaboration & Resource Sharing in the Digital Age. Rima Kupryte has been invited to speak about eIFL resource sharing and consortium-building programmes. In addition, eIFL.net will be present at the poster session with the poster “800 million reasons why eIFL is a good idea” at the ALA conference on June 29. Come and meet eIFL during ALA.

3. Update on new Content and Renewals

The program manager, Susan Veldsman, visited the London Book Fair where she held a series of meetings with publishers listed below.

Variation agreements

The following offers will have to be renewed by the end of 2008 as they will expire: Sage, Wiley/Blackwell, and Cengage (former Thomson Gale). Discussions have started and members expressed an interest in moving to an e-only model.

Ongoing negotiations for 2008

Nature Publishing will consider a new pricing model for eIFL as the previous offer did not attract much interest from the consortia. Palgrave/MacMillan collection is also being considered within this package as an option.

Continued discussions are taking place with ISI Web of Science, as it is a database of importance and still very expensive for member countries.

Negotiations with AMP are progressing and coordinators will receive pricing soon. New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and ScienceOnline are reviewing eIFL licenses and shortly we hope to sign agreements with both of them.

Taylor and Francis reference works will be sending their offer through to eIFL soon. A number of eIFL countries are trialling the databases.

Discussions with the World Bank also took place in order to include the World Bank e-Library in the eIFL suite of offers. eIFL members fit into their pricing categories for developing countries and this will be valuable addition to eIFL offers.

Negotiations FAQs and more usage statistics at the eIFL Web Site

A new “frequently-asked-questions” section has been added to eIFL web site to assist country coordinators when completing licenses, accessing databases and searching for information regarding eIFL offers. And in the MEMBERS ONLY sections there are now more usage statistics available.

Series of training events

The first 2008 e-resource training event, in a planned series of workshops, took place in Mozambique on the 26 April, in Maputo. This event was attended by 22 delegates from different universities and polytechnics in Mozambique. The event “HOW TO USE, MANAGE AND PROMOTE YOUR E- RESOURCES EFFECTIVELY” covered a number of areas:

  • Accessing and managing your e-resources;
  • How to use your e-resources effectively followed by a practical hands on session;
  • Promoting your e-resources, collecting and analyzing your usage statistics;
  • Exploring eIFL web site and discovering free resources.

eIFL will start analyzing different aspects of usage and participation in eIFL offers in order to determine which countries will benefit from such similar events.

eIFL.net and Google Scholar cooperation

eIFL.net and Google Scholar have a long-standing relationship and country coordinators had a chance to hear about the latest developments during the last two General Assemblys. Google Scholar has expanded the functionality of their Library Links' feature, and users of eIFL's member consortia are now able to access electronic subscriptions to EBSCO host Fulltext and Gale Academic OneFile databases. This provides an additional entry into electronic subscriptions for all libraries in a participating consortia and helps to increase usage of these resources. For example, if you were at a library in Georgia or Estonia and performed a search on Google Scholar, you would see additional links in the search results that would let you get full text access to articles available through the subscription. Feel free to contact us if links do not show up for your country.

Through this partnership, eIFL.net countries were able to place links to their union catalogues and attract more users to visit libraries and check on resources available locally.

4. Update on eIFL-IP

Many countries, one goal: eIFL-IP global conference

The first eIFL-IP global conference took place in Istanbul, Turkey on April 4-5 attended by librarians from forty countries from all eIFL regions. The first day focused on practical issues faced by librarians in their daily work, such as copyright and library services and the role of copyright in digitisation projects. The second day looked at international policy issues and advocacy, especially recent developments at the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva. Experienced speakers came from Moldova, Egypt, the UK and the US. The conference was characterised by questions and lively discussion and everyone - participants and speakers - learnt from each other.

The half day tour of the Old City under clear blue skies proved a welcome respite from discussions about exceptions and limitations and risk management. Once the 2008 conference is wrapped up and evaluated, we will be thinking forward to 2009!

Press release: www.eifl.net

Conference webpage: www.eifl.net

“Copyright for Librarians: a Distance Learning Course” expert meeting

eIFL has partnered with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School to develop a distance learning curriculum in copyright. It is aimed specifically at librarians, is written from the perspective of enabling access to content and will look beyond traditional boundaries, as well as providing a solid grounding in basic principles. An advocacy component will help those who wish to become involved in policy aspects of copyright.

Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, Berkman Fellow and Project Lead, has been consulting with the eIFL community (eIFL General Assembly 2007, Belgrade and eIFL-IP conference 2008, Istanbul), as well as with wider interest groups. A meeting hosted by the Berkman Center took place on April 17-18 to advise on the structure, methodology and content of the course, as well as its sustainability. Participants were invited for their knowledge of libraries, copyright, distance education and developing countries. eIFL is extremely grateful to everyone for their valuable and constructive contributions over two days.

The course content will be freely available online (and in offline format) and translations and re-use are encouraged. The challenge is to identify suitable delivery platforms and host institutions to integrate the content into existing curricula and to offer a fully tutored course to individuals.

Libraries and trade agreements: COCUREL at regional dialogue on European Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA)

Alexis Eyango Mouen, Country Coordinator for the Consortium of Cameroon University and Research Libraries (COCUREL) attended a Regional Dialogue on EPAs, Intellectual Property, Innovation and Sustainable Development co-organised by Geneva-based International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) in Yaoundé, Cameroon April 28-29. A representative of COCUREL gave a presentation on the topic of developing a positive agenda on copyright issues for the EPA negotiations in CEMAC countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon).

Bilateral trade agreements (everything that’s happening outside the WTO) usually have an IP chapter and the copyright provisions, when translated into national law, can have a great impact on access to knowledge and the operation of library services. While they are increasingly controversial in areas such as agriculture and environment, they are often the little known about amongst copyright stakeholders, including libraries. So it was great that COCUREL and libraries were on the agenda at this regional dialogue.

More information: www.iprsonline.org

5. eIFL-OA/IR News

Open Access Workshop in Nigeria

On April 28-29 eIFL.net partnered with the Department of Library and Information Science, Ahmadu Bello University and Nigerian University Libraries Consortium to organize the first Open Access workshop in Nigeria. 74 policy makers from Universities and Research Institutes, scholars and researchers, editors-in-chief of peer review scientific and scholarly journals, University librarians/systems librarians and University and Research ICT experts from 45 institutions participated in the seminar.

Currently there are two pilot open access institutional repositories in Nigeria run by Ezra Shiloba Gbaje, Ahmadu Bello University, and Emmanuel Babatunde Ajala, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan. There are 11 Open Access Journals from Nigeria in Bioline International and 20 additional Open Access journals published by Nigerian Academic Journal publishers.

Press release: www.eifl.net

More on the workshop program and presentations go to: www.nulib.net

Upcoming eIFL workshops on Open Access: New Models for Scholarly Communication in Georgia and Moldova

GILISC and eIFL.net will organise a workshop Open Access: New Models for Scholarly Communication on May 14-15. Hosted by the Ilia Chavchavadze State University the workshop will address Open Access policies and recommendations and highlight the benefits of Open Access journals and Open repositories. Management issues, copyright and open content licenses will be discussed as well as how to choose an institutional repository platform and how to launch a new Open Access Journal or to convert a subscription based journal to Open Access. Contact person: Irakli Garibashvili, eIFL country coordinator, igar[at]hotmail.com.

A similar workshop is planned in Moldova in partnership with Consortium eIFL Direct Moldova to take place in Chisinau on June 23-24. The contact person is Natalia Cheradi, eIFL Open Access country coordinator, cheradi[at]lib.ase.md.

Upcoming study visit of Open institutional repository managers to Ukraine

On the request from Khazar University, Azerbaijan, Oleksii Vasyliev, eIFL country coordinator for Ukraine is organising a study visit of Open institutional repository managers to Ukraine on June 18-20. There are 7 pilot open access institutional repositories in Ukraine.

We invite open repositories managers from nearby countries to join us in this knowledge-sharing event.

eIFL OA becomes the moderator of the BOAI Forum

The BOAI Forum is a discussion list to support the Budapest Open Access Initiative. It was launched on February 14, 2003. This discussion list was moderated by Peter Suber, Senior Researcher, SPARC, Visiting Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School, Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College. As of March 31, Iryna Kuchma, eIFL Open Access Program Manager, took over moderation of this list. More information about the BOAI Forum: www.soros.org

News about the Academy of Sciences South Africa (ASSAF)

Susan Veldsman, Program Manager for Negotiations and Licensing, was nominated by ASSAF to serve on two committees: 1) Committee on Scholarly Publishing in South Africa and on the 2) National Platform Task Team. She attended these both meetings first time on the April 22. The ASSAF has secured a three-year grant from the department of Science and Technology for the Academy’s Scholarly Publishing Programme. The Programme is in essence the implementation of the ten recommendations of the 2006 ASSAf Report on a Strategic Approach to Research Publishing in South Africa.

6. eIFL-FOSS Programme

Upcoming First Workshop of eIFL FOSS ILS Pilot Project

Following a Call-For-Participation in the eIFL-FOSS ILS project that went out to eIFL-FOSS country coordinators in February, the ILS project pilot institutions were selected in April. The response was heartening, with applications from 12 countries representing 11 language groups. The majority of applicants were keen to investigate the Koha ILS. For this reason the number of Koha pilots in the project has been increased. However, all institutions that submitted applications were invited to join the project email discussion list in order to benefit from the experiences of the pilot sites throughout the life of the project. Those participating as pilot sites will install either Koha or Evergreen, participate in an initial training workshop, and contributing throughout to develop support documentation for the installation, evaluation, and migration to either of these FOSS ILSs. The following institutions will be conducting pilots as part of the eIFL-FOSS ILS project:

  • Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences, Armenia;
  • National Scientific Library, Georgia;
  • National Library Service, Malawi;
  • Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistery, Universite of Bamako, Mali;
  • Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Nepal;
  • Midlands State University Library, Zimbabwe;
  • An-Najah National University Library, Palestine (West Bank).

Case studies of each pilot's experiences will be published on the eIFL.net website during the life of the project.

The initial training workshop for the eIFL-FOSS ILS project will take place on 10-11 June in Yerevan, Armenia. It is generously being hosted by the Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences. We are also fortunate to have two experienced software developers as facilitators for the workshop. Dan Scott is Systems Librarian at Laurentian University in Canada. He is one of the principal developers of the Serials and Acquisitions modules of Evergreen and has been instrumental in the process of adding internationalization support for Evergreen's codebase. Henri-Damien Laurent is a Koha developer working for BibLibre in France but also with considerable experience working in Africa as well. He currently serves as the Quality Assurance officer for the upcoming Koha 3.0 release. We greatly appreciate Dan and Henri-Damien's contribution to this workshop and their interest in seeing the eIFL-FOSS ILS project succeed. More details about the project, the pilot sites, and forthcoming training workshop can be found in the eIFL-FOSS program area of the website: www.eifl.net

Feedback on the Greenstone Southern Africa Pilot Project

With the organisation of the third national workshop in Lesotho on February 26-29, the first phase of the one-year project has been successfully completed with the training of 73 specialists from 10 countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe) in basic Greenstone use and digital library techniques, and with further advanced training for 13 of them from 4 countries. Each of these workshops has been a learning experience for the organisers and the southern African resource persons, so that there is now a pool of technical and methodological expertise to extend the training effort throughout Africa.

The national project centres are now in the process of developing their own initial digital library applications and organizing basic Greenstone training to support the development of national Greenstone networks in their own countries and in neighbouring countries. A southern African user discussion list is providing a lively technical exchange forum to facilitate these developments, backed up by the Greenstone team at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

The Malawi national project centre at the Bunda College of Agriculture Library led by Geoffrey Salanje has progressed well in its project, cosponsored by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), to build a "Malawiana" collection of documents on Malawi and by Malawians. The Greenstone software has been installed on a new computer bought with project funding. 250 documents have been scanned, and the prototype digital library collection will soon be online. Following the national Greenstone training workshop in November 2007, the Postgraduate Committee of the University of Malawi decided to use Greenstone to build an institutional repository for theses and dissertations. This is being piloted at one of the constituent colleges of UNIMA, with the technical support of two of the workshop participants.

The National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) in Tanzania and the Malawi College of Medicine have embarked on an ambitious joint project to preserve and facilitate sharing of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (ATM ) information. The idea is to collaborate with different stakeholders such as Ministries of Health to collect documents that are in the public domain, organise them and make them accessible to everyone on line. The project has a grant from UNESCO and is being implemented by a multidisciplinary team of 10 persons led by Africa J. Bwamkuu, a trainee in the Malawi workshop. Related to this effort, planning is in final stage to organise training for institutions that may have interest in sharing their research information through the project.

The southern African pilot project has facilitated a radiation of expertise in Greenstone to other areas of Africa. In Ethiopia, a 5-day Introductory Greenstone Training Workshop and a 3-day Advanced Greenstone Training workshop were organised in Addis Ababa from April 29 to May 7 by UNESCO in cooperation with the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries (CEARL) and the African Union (AU). 25 trainees participated in the introductory workshop and 12 in the advanced workshop. The lead instructor was Professor M. G. Sreekumar, coordinator of the South Asia Greenstone support effort (greenstonesupport.iimk.ac.in). This training event aimed to support digital library capacity building of information managers, librarians and archivists, working in public and private universities in Ethiopia, as part of a larger initiative that seeks to strengthen the CEARL network and to facilitate the exchange and use of information resources (CEARL is the focal point for the eIFL.net consortium in Ethiopia). The workshop will also serve to launch an Amharic Greenstone localization project.

In Seychelles the Seychelles Bureau of Standards (SBS) has scheduled a Greenstone training workshop for May 19-22 with UNESCO support. In addition to national participants, there will be one trainee each from Madagascar and Mauritius. The lecturers will be Amos Kujenga of the NUST Library in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and Elisha Chiware of the University of Namibia (UNAM) who taught the December training workshop organised in Bulawyo by the eIFL pilot project. Although the workshop will be given in English, several of the participants including the international trainees will be French speakers; the updated French interface of Greenstone will be distributed with the available French documentation, and it is expected that the trainees will in turn be in position to organise French Greenstone applications and training activities in their countries.

In the second phase of the eIFL pilot project now underway, a survey of potential and actual Greenstone users will be organized by UNAM, and the national centres and Greenstone users in southern Africa will consider how to continue and reinforce their cooperation as a sustainable sub-regional network. Based on this consultation, the project will be evaluated and follow-up decided at a project leaders' meeting to be held in Johannesburg in July 2008. Readers are referred to the project website at www.sagreenstone.unam.na for up-to-date information on the project.

The eIFL Team

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