Annual Report PAM International Relations Committee 2006-2007

Members: Nisa Bakkalbasi (Chair), Debra Bailey, Sunita Barve, Christina Birdie, Demissew Tsigemelak Gebreyohannes, Nancy Diana Gomez, Kiem Dung T. Ta, Uta Grothkopf, Zahra Kamerei, Umran Yaman Kandemir, Jeanette Regan, Marie Antoinette Villafor, Mangala Krishnamurthy, Awasom Cornelius Ngang, and Muhammad Shahid Soroya, 2007 International Membership Award Winner.

Based on advice received from past chairs the IMA award activities started early last year. The first call for nominations was made on August 1st 2006, followed by a reminder on September 12th that the deadline for submissions was approaching. The purpose of sending out the announcement early is to finalize the winner by the end of the year and give the awardee enough time to obtain a visa. Currently the processing of visa applications at embassies and consulates around the world can take up to few months. We disseminated the announcement by electronic and print media, targeting areas of the world from which we did not have winners before. We forwarded the call for nominations to several lists as well as to international library organizations. We have also asked colleagues, who are involved in international programs to forward the announcement to their local contacts around the world. The deadline for the nomination was October 31st and was not extended beyond that date. We received 16 applications, of which eight were from India, three from Pakistan, two from Botswana, two from Sri Lanka, one from Kyrgyzstan. We uploaded all applications on a server within a username/password protected folder for the PAM Executive Board to review them. After spending two weeks to review and discuss the candidates, the PAM Executive Board selected Muhammad Shahid Soroya to receive the International Membership Award for year 2007-2008. The winner, Shahid Soroya was notified on November 15, 2006, and accepted the award with a cheerful thank you, stating "I am really very happy to read that my services have been acknowledged by Special Libraries Association.” Currently Shahid Soroya is a librarian at School of Mathematical Sciences (SMS) at Government College University in Lahore, Pakistan. Immediately following the confirmation of the winner, the PAM Chair, Joe Kraus, obtained an official invitation letter from the SLA Headquarters and mailed it to Lahore. In addition, I sent a letter to Consular Officer in American Embassy in Islamabad requesting that they grant a visitor visa to Shahid Soroya to attend the conference in Denver. Shahid Soroya received all the supporting paperwork during the first week in January and submitted his application to the American Embassy. His visa was issued on March 21st following his interview on March 12th. Once we heard the confirmation that the visa was issued, the PAM Treasurer, Bob Noel, finalized all the travel arrangements.

In parallel with the work of selecting the winner, we organized the 2007 SLA PAM International Relations Committee panel entitled, “International Issues in Developing Countries,” which will take place on Monday, June 4th, 2007 from 4:00 -5:30 pm. This year’s theme is “Programs to provide free or low-cost access to scholarly information to promote higher education and research in developing countries.” The panel includes three speakers, each of whom will discuss the motivations in participating on such programs, representing different perspectives. The first speaker Shahid Soroya, 2007 PAM International Membership Award winner, will give an overview of the Digital Library program of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in Pakistan. He will explain the vision of the program and how it strives to meet the information needs of the higher education and research sector in his country. The second speaker Evviva Weinraub, Program Support Librarian for Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), will explain the Yale University Library’s involvement with United Nations agencies and major publishers in developing OARE to enable developing countries to gain access to scientific literature. Our last speaker, Daviess Menefee, Director of Library Relations for the Americas at Elsevier, will present the beginning of the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) project and Elsevier’s role in the initiative. His presentation will focus on the motives for a large STM publisher to become involved in such programs and what a commercial publisher can expect in return. Below are the presentations given by the speakers:

Page last updated: July 8, 2007