A Special Sister Library Program Crosses the Ocean (US and Latvia)

1. A Special Sister Library Program Crosses the Ocean (US and Latvia) by Velta Poznaka Donna Flake Library Director Library Director Medical Research Coastal AHEC Library of Latvia Wilmington, NC, USA Riga, Latvia

2. Sister Library Partnership of the International Section of MLA AND The Medical Research Library of Latvia

3. Dr. Joseph Daugman

4. Vicki Croft

5. Medical Research Library of Latvia

6. Holberton Hospital Medical Library Antigua, Caribbean Library Director The Library

7. Our Sister Library Initiative

8. Nordic Association

9. Latvians in the United States • Latvian Welfare Associations • The American Latvian Association • The Latvian Association of Physicians and Dentists

10. My Library – Coastal AHEC

11. Lessons We Learned • Dedication of all people involved • Administrator who oversees library needs to be supportive • Only select one Sister Library at a time • Get support of a group that has a vested interest in the country, or geographic area of the Sister Library.

12. Lessons We Learned (Cont.) • Thank the library vendors who supported the project many times in many ways • I was personally enriched by this program • Making lifelong friendships

13. The Greatest Deal project idea was not just forgotten and left on paper, but is being implemented with great enthusiasm

14. 1999 • the number of electronic books – 0 • data bases – Medline on CD • some journals on CD • the average time to obtain a journal article from another library through interlibrary loan - 14-60 days • place for reading room 32m2

15. Free Electronic Document Delivery • medical libraries in the US and Canada • in 2 – 4 days

16. ILL - I am pleased • 46 medical libraries in the US and Canada • in 2 – 4 days

17. ILL Difficulties • Technical problems • Checking time

18. Databases for our Library: • MDConsult • Stat!Ref • UpToDate

19. DB and Users • Branches without Internet • are not taught information literacy • less fluent in English

20. DB and librarians • Having these databases makes our librarians study more, to learn how and what we can get from each database so we can teach our users to use them. • We are finding ways to break our doctors’ wall of indifference, and to become interested in electronic sources of information. • We tell them about the enormous possibilities they now have, but we are mindful not to show that sometimes we know more than the doctors know.

21. Shipment of Medical Books and Periodicals • 170 boxes of books and periodicals -200 books and 5800 periodicals 2001 Science Citation Index Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine. • All was paid by Latvians in the USA. (Milwaukee and Cleveland )

22. New shipment

23. Shipment of Medical Books and Periodicals duplicate copies

24. changes

25. Measuring Can we measure the friendship by the amount of money donated, or the number of books or databases? Each time when we take a look at the books, journals or we tell about databases, we with thankfulness and fondness are thinking about people, who have worked so hard and so unselfishly to help our library

26. We are thankful for the tremendous and incredible job the MLA Sister Library Initiative has done, and for spreading goodwill and for sharing knowledge