Elsevier Foundation Awards 2011

The Elsevier Foundation announced today the 2011 grant recipients for the Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries and New Scholars award programs. In total, $650,000 has been committed to nine institutions around the world in addition to seven ongoing multiyear grants and the Nurse Faculty program.  The Elsevier Foundation is funded by Elsevier, a global provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services.

"Each of the diverse projects supported by the Elsevier Foundation has the potential for an immediate and enduring impact on our health and science communities," said David Ruth, Executive Director of the Elsevier Foundation and Senior Vice President Global Communications, Elsevier.  "We welcome the chance to support these organizations' efforts to foster new ways to leverage science and health information for development and to facilitate career development in STM fields."

Innovative Libraries
The Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries program awards grants to libraries for innovation in improving access and use of scientific, technical and medical information. Past projects include: expanding information resources through digitization and knowledge preservation; training and education for librarians and researchers, and developed-developing world partnerships providing longer term technical assistance and training.  

The 2011 library grant recipients address real developing world issues through the use of STM information resources and include:

• A Solution in Sight: Eight Developing Country Resource Centers Improve Access to the World's Ophthalmic Information,  Seva Foundation, US
• Strengthening Agricultural Researchers and Extension Staff‘s Skills for Access to, Use and sharing of Agricultural Information Resources in Tanzania, Sokoine National Agricultural Library, Tanzania
• Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare, Library Training, Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Netherlands
• Nuclear Claims Tribunal Records Preservation, Nuclear Claims Tribunal, Republic of the Marshall Island 
• Improving Library Resource Sharing Through the Union Catalogue Among Laos Libraries Central Library, National University of Laos, Laos

"With access to scientific information revolutionized in the Global South through diverse access initiatives, embedding the daily use of high quality peer reviewed journals within universities, remains the key challenge," said Jan Donner, President of the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands (KIT). "The Elsevier Foundation's library grants are so important because they emphasize the critical role that librarians play in supporting researchers, doctors and nurses in implementing evidence based work."  

For more information, including more on the New Scholars programme, see the Elsevier announcement.