Annual Report PAM International Relations Committee 2002-2003

Members: Sunita Barve, Christina Birdie, Nancy Diana Gómez, Uta Grothkopf, Zahra Kamarei (chair), Elizabeth Knight, and Jeanette Regan

This year was again a busy one for IRC. At the beginning of the year the committee took on the challenge of organizing a session called “Professional Development in Developing Countries”” for the 2003 SLA Annual Conference.  Zari Kamarei and the IRC committee made this session happen.  The session was on June 11th 2003. Zari was the moderator, and there were 3 speakers. Umran Kandemir spoke about “what is happening in Turkey for the professional development of librarians”.  Read Umran's paper or view her presentation slides.    Winston Atkins of Duke University talked about “his experience when he trained in Cuba”.  Kim Duckett shared "Tales from Grassroots Library Development Projects in South Africa", under the World Library Partnership volunteer programs.

The IMA award activities started in October of 2002. We sent the announcement on SLAPAM-L, and with the help of the PAM’s public relations committee, it was announced all over the world. We received an overwhelming number of applications.  Out of all the applicants, eight had a science background and could be considered for the award. The winner of the PAM-IRC award was Ümran Kandemir of Turkey. Ümran is a science and engineering reference librarian at Koç University, Suna Kıraç Library.

IRC members Christina Birdie, Zari Kamarei, and Ümran Kandemir attended the SLA conference in New York, June 8-13, 2003. Christina Birdie won the Diversity Leadership Development Award.  Along with other colleagues, she organized a national level round table on the consortia models in Indian libraries in November 2002.  This was the first national level meeting on consortia held in India.  Ms. Ann Okerson from Yale University Library was the key note speaker in the round table.  FORSA (Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy & Astrophysics) is the only consortium from India to join the ICOLC (International Coalition of Library Consortia) and Christina is one of the coordinators of this forum.  Christina attended the 24th IATUL Conference on Libraries and Education in the Networked Information Environment, held at Ankara, Turkey in the month of June, 2003.  Christina also coauthored another paper with Erika Linke from Carnegie Mellon University on Identifying and Selecting Content for the Million Book Project’ which was presented at IATUL meeting.

On October 29, 2002, Sunita Barve, our 2002 IMA award winner, gave a lecture in Pune librarian’s forum about SLA, its divisions, activities of PAM division, and awards available for developing country librarians.  She also presented an “Introduction to Microsoft Access” in a forum given by Pune Librarians Alumni Association for librarians who do not have software for automating library activities.  Sunita won the “Bibliothek Information & International “ grant to attend the 69th IFLA conference which took place in Berlin, Germany, August 1– 9, 2003.  It is important to mention that only 25 out of 600 applicants won this award. On August 23, 2003 she reported in Pune librarian’s forum on “IFLA conference”.  Nancy Gomez has been selected as the liason for Division II of the Special Libraries Association for the Conference in Buenos Aires 2004.  She may be speaking at the Science & Technology division’s session.

We thank Elizabeth Knight who finished her term at IRC for her service to this committee.

Submitted by,
Zahra B. Kamarei (Zari) 

Page last updated: Oct 2003