Annual Report PAM International Relations Committee 2001-2002

This year was a busy year for IRC again.

At the beginning of the year the committee took on the challenge of organizing a session for the annual conference called “Information Access in Developing Nations” for the 2002 SLA Annual Conference. Brenda Corbin, Zari Kamarei (with consultation of IRC committee) made this session happen.  The session was on June 9th 2002. Zari was the moderator, we had 3 speakers. Zari Kamarei spoke on the subject of  “Obstacles to doing research in the third world countries, case of Iran”. Elizabeth Knight spoke on the subject of “The Importance of Cultural Context in Information Provision”.  Sunita Barve spoke on the subject of “FORSA libraries and their experience of information access, and what future will bring them”.

The IMA award activities started in October of 2001. We sent the announcement on SLAPAM-L, and with the help of the PAM’s public relation committee, it was announced all over the world. We received an overwhelming number of applications.  Out of all applicants, there were 6 applicants, that had the science background, and we could consider them for the award. The winner of the PAM-IRC award was Sunita Barve of India. Sunita is currently Head Librarian at the National Center for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune, India. Sunita has been in charge of the NCRA library for the past 10 years.  She has a Masters degree in Library Science from University of Pune, her Bachelors degree is in Electronics.

IRC members Sunita Barve, Christina Birdie, and Zari Kamarei attended the SLA conference in Los Angeles June 8-13, 2002. Christina Birdie attended the 23rd IATUL conference on “Partnership, Consortia & 21st Century Library service” held at Linda Hall Library of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, June 2-6, 2002 and presented a paper on Consortia of FORSA libraries. Sunita Barve attended Library and Information Science in Astronomy conference IV which was held in Prague July 2-5, 2002. She presented a poster paper during the conference entitled "Analysis of publication pattern of radio astronomers from India, during the last 12 years (1990-2001)”.

We thank the members who finished their term at IRC Barbara Chu, Maria Eugenia Gomez, and Jean Poland for their service to this committee.

Submitted by,
Zahra B. Kamarei (Zari)

Page last updated: July 2003