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Sister Libraries. Meaghan 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 .”.
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Sister Libraries Meaghan 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 President1999-2000
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
Academic Libraries Tecnológico 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 Libraries Des 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 California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) is supporting the foundation of the library at the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center (Kigali, Rwanda). http://calarts.edu/library/aboutus/sisterlibrary
Considerations • $$ Funding $$ • Language • Library needs & resources • Institutional support • How formal should the partnership be? • Community support • Flexibility
Sister Libraries Wiki http://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/sisterlibraries sister.libraries@gmail.com