LATIN-AMERICAN REGIONAL GROUP REPORT

2003-2004

María Clara Ramírez Jáuregui, Coordinator.

This report presents the main activities of the Latin-American Regional Group of IAMSLIC from 2003-2004.

INTRODUCTION:

Executive Board of IAMSLIC approved the formal acceptance of the New Regional Latin-American Group, on August 2003.

* The regional group will have as main objective, to strength the Cooperation between libraries in Latin America. To accomplish this purpose the experience and mechanisms of IAMSLIC will be used along with other mechanism that will accomplish our objectives.

MEMBERS:

*The group is formed by institutions and people from Latin America. MEMBERS of IAMSLIC who are interested in joining a Regional Latin American group. Its members will represent governmental and private academic institutions related with the aquatic and marine environment as well as other related disciplines.

At the beginning as Latin-American Regional Group, we initiated with 22 members from 10 countries of Latin America.

Actually, we are 32 members from 11 countries:

1. Argentina (3)2. Barbados (1)3. Brazil (3)4. Chile (3)5. Colombia (2)6. Cuba (2)7. Ecuador (3)8. México (11)9. Panamá (1)10. Perú (1)11. Venezuela (2)

E-MAIL LIST AND WEBSITE:

In order to have a better communication with the all the members of this Latin-American Group, we have created two e-mail lists:

1. For the Latin-American Group. Biblio_latino@ola.icmyl.unam.mx 2. For some institutions that can join to IAMSLIC, in a near future.

Biblio_inst@ola.icmyl.unam.mx

The first listserv is only for the Latin-American Group members. The Second one is mainly encouraging institutions to join IAMSLIC.

The Mazatlán Academic Unit of the Institute of Marine Science and Limnology, U.N.A.M., at Mazatlán, Sinaloa, now hosts the Latin-American Regional Group of IAMSLIC web site. The website address is: http://ola.icmyl.unam.mx/larg

The website manager is Carlos Suarez. He is working as a volunteer for the Group. He is working with the web page site and with the two List servers.

Communication between members of the group is going slowly, but we must to consider some factors: the long distances, some institutions do not have the enough and necessary equipment and technology for this kind of communication. Also some of them have few staff and a lot of work to do. We hope that in the next months the communication will be growing and it will be faster, become closer and dynamic.

WORKING COMMITTEE:

The Latin-American Regional Group comprises the President, Treasurer, three secretaries and three vowels. This working committee is seeking funding to prepare an inventory of Latin-American libraries needs, as a diagnosis. Also, to get support for software and equipment necessary to establish a bibliographic document electronic delivery, for the Regional Latin-American Group. With this support the Latin-American institutions will be able to share their holdings for all the IAMSLIC members, ODINCARSA/IOC, UNESCO and EPCOR. It is very important:

To share Latin-American collections (articles, technical documents, book chapters, grey literature, etc.) that is distributed in the different institutions of the Regional Latin-American Group.

To transform the print information into electronic format for an easier and more economic transfer.

The promotion of the bibliography in the communities in Latin –America.

We are working together and taking the decisions with the following working committee:

ALEXANDRA SMITH (Chile) Vowel biblioteca@shoa.cl

AMELIA CHAVEZ (México)Treasurer achavez@cicese.mx

CATALINA LOPEZ (México)Secretary catalina@uabc.mx

CATALINA PUENTE (México)Vowel cpuente@ipn.mx

CLARA RAMIREZ (México) President biblio@ola.icmyl.unam.mx

MARTHA LUCIA RUIZ (Colombia)Vowel  mruiz@invemar.org.co

MYRIAN TAMAYO (Perú) TERESA BARRIGA (México) Secretary  Secretary naylamp@dhn.mil.pe tbarriga@ipn.mx

LOGO:

Our logo as Regional Latin-American Group-IAMSLIC, is the following:

German Ramirez designed it. He is collaborating as volunteer for the Latin-American Regional Group and ODINCARSA/IOC, UNESCO.

He cooperated with ODINCARSA in the Feasibility Assessment CARSA libraries network. This Feasibility assessment intends to determine and approach to the existent problem with tentative solutions using limited resources on the basis of existent abilities.

GRANTS, SPONSORSHIPS AND COLLABORATIONS:

*The regional group will work to close links with other regional associations in progress, obtaining mutual benefits, such as ODINCARSA, the Latin American Fishermen Group and other regional initiatives.

We are working and collaborating with IAMSLIC, ODINCARSA/IOC, UNESCO, and EPCOR.

We have obtained support from ODINCARSA/IOC, UNESCO, for the amount of 2,400. U.S.

We bought one ARIEL full license and we are trying to buy some scanners for some countries. We have some technical problems with the scanners models in some countries of South America, it is not easy to obtain them and the cost is higher. We are sending a proposal to the working committee for the assignation of scanners to some countries. As soon as we have the final decision, we will send the money directly to those countries. We will send the ARIEL to one country that it has the necessary scanner. By the moment, some countries only will receive the scanners and they can initiate with PROSPERO and with some old version of ARIEL as a donation.

We submitted two project proposals for the project “electronic delivery document service”:

1. IAMSLIC approved and send us a grant of $700.00 U.S.

2. EPCOR, a grant of $5,000.00 U.S. was approved for the next October.

We obtained a total support of $3,100.00 U.S.

ATTENDANCE TO THE 30a. ANNUAL IAMSLIC CONFERENCE:

*The regional group must try to attend and show its achievements, projects in any of the fields during the International IAMSLIC Conference.

For this year, only 4 Latin American will be attending and participating in the 30a. Annual IAMSLIC Conference.

PROJECTION FOR NEXT YEAR:

*The regional group will have a first year of consolidation, when short and medium term goals can be defined, as well as the search for funding

to execute at least an annual or biannual meeting of its members to exchange ideas, experiences and capacity building.

-Projects of common interest are expected to be continued and undertaken by members of the group next year.   -Annual Meeting. We will try to have in 2005 our First Regional Latin-American Group Meeting. We will submit some proposals to obtain economical support to do it. We will coordinate together with the working committee the options and the organization of this first meeting.

-Software ARIEL. We have the proposal to obtain as donation the old versions of the software ARIEL from those countries that have the latest version. We hope that some institutions can donate the software to those countries of the Latin-American Regional Group that don’t have any license of ARIEL.

-We would like to continue collaborating with ODINCARSA/IOC, UNESCO and EPCOR, for the mutual benefits with the projects: Electronic Delivery Document (information and data exchange project) and with the implementation of a regional network of bibliographic electronic catalogues and other projects.

- We will continue to promote the cooperation and interaction ofthe group with IAMSLIC, as well as the related projects in the region such as ODINCARSA/IOC,UNESCO, EPCOR, etc.

- We will keep in touch with the members, promoting the mutual cooperation, the knowledge and experience transference in information and libraries management.

-We will be the direct link of the group with IAMSLIC, to get fellowships and capacity building opportunities for members of the group.

- We will try to get more members to the group and IAMSLIC.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

We recommend that IAMSLIC, ODINCARSA/IOC, UNESCO, EPCOR continue to supporting Latin-American Regional Group activities, especially on projects mutual benefits and regional group meetings.

We consider very important that more Latin-American members attend IAMSLIC´s annual conference.

We also recommend that IAMSLIC can offer in the futures annual conferences, can offer in the future the translation service in Spanish.

Submitted by María Clara Ramírez Jáuregui, Latin-American Regional Group Coordinator.