Download - Sister Libraries
SISTER LIBRARIESMeaghan O’Connor
Program Officer, IREX
Saturday, April 2, 2011
“Becoming a sister library is an opportunity to build relationships with libraries in other cultures that can help us learn, understand, and better serve our own community.”
-Sarah Ann LongALA President
1999-2000
Why Sister Libraries?
• Community focus• Increase cultural
awareness• Create connections across
the globe• Explore the heritage of
community members
• Staff focus• Broaden views of the
library profession• Share information,
resources, expertise, and training
• Share techniques and technologies to help solve problems
SAMPLE PROJECTS
Academic LibrariesTecnológico de Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico) & University of Maryland (College Park, MD) planned a joint conference that took place in Monterrey, October 2008
http://www.lib.umd.edu/MCK/tecprogram.html
Public LibrariesDes Plaines Public Library (Des Plaines, IL) and Biblioteca Benjamin Franklin (Guadalajara, Mexico) have exchanged staff, gifted books to each other, and have coordinated children’s programming.
http://www.dppl.org/about_dppl/sister_library_projects.shtml
Special Libraries
http://calarts.edu/library/aboutus/sisterlibrary
California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) is supporting the foundation of the library at the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center (Kigali, Rwanda).
Considerations• $$ Funding $$• Language• Library needs & resources• Institutional support• How formal should the partnership be?• Community support• Flexibility
SISTER LIBRARIES WIKIhttp://wikis.ala.org/sisterlibraries/
Other routes to partnership• Sister Cities• US Embassy / American Corners• Demographic information
WHAT’S THAT URL AGAIN?http://wikis.ala.org/[email protected]