International Relations Committee
By Nisa Bakkalbasi
The 2007 SLA PAM International Relations Committee panel entitled, “International Issues in Developing Countries,” will take place on Monday, June 4th, 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 Muhammad 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 Pakistan by providing online access to high-quality scholarly information. 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 this program (and others) and what a commercial publisher can expect in return. Daviess will also address the broader question of corporate responsibility and charitable giving.
There will be ample opportunity for questions, answers, and discussion after the presentations. I look forward to your participation in what promises to be a lively session.
PAM IRC thanks Elsevier for sponsoring the panel entitled “International Issues in Developing Countries” and East View Information Services for sponsoring the 2007-2008 International Membership Award.
Moderator: Nisa Bakkalbasi,Electronic Collections Librarian, Yale University Library
Speakers:
Daviess Menefee is currently the Director of Library Relations for the Americas at Elsevier. Other positions held at Elsevier include the Development Product Manager for ScienceDirect in Dayton and Director in the Amsterdam office. Prior to Elsevier, Daviess worked for 10 years at OCLC developing online products such as Electronic Collections Online and databases for FirstSearch. Before OCLC, he worked in libraries, including The Ohio State University Libraries and Rice University in Houston. His education includes a library degree from Columbia University (now defunct) as well as advanced degrees in Classics from Northwestern University.
Muhammad Shahid Soroya is the PAM International Membership Award (PAM-IMA) recipient for the two year period 2007-2008. Muhammad is currently a Librarian at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Government College University in Lahore, Pakistan
Evviva Weinraub is the Program Support Librarian for OARE - Online Access to Research in the Environment. She works with partners at the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Health Organization as well as with most major scientific publishers to provide access to on-line materials to institutions in some of the least developed countries in the world. Evviva completed her MLS from the University of Maryland in 2006 before joining Yale University to work on this project.* To foster information exchange between SLA members and special librarians worldwide, especially those in the developing world.
