E-Library Action

During the late 1990s, researchers in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had become increasingly isolated from the access to high-quality international research.

Launched in 2002, the first phase of the programme involved consultation with universities, research institutes and scientific about the current availability of scientific literature and how access to eresources and document delivery could best be provided in each country. 

In response to the consultation, INASP negotiated with academic publishers for country-wide access to a selection of over 5,500 full-text online journals and an additional 12,500 titles for document delivery via the British Library academies in Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

When a lack of awareness and low capacity to access and use eresources was identified, training on ‘Using the Internet’, ‘Registration for Resources’ and ‘Electronic Resource Use and Management’ was also rolled out by INASP, and some publishers ran resource specific session for institutions.  

Although the programme was successful, lack of ICT infrastructure was a significant factor in most of the participating institutes.

Achievements

• Availability of over 5,500 full-text journals from key international publishers including Blackwell Synergy, Cochrane Medical Library, EBSCO, Emerald, Mary Ann Liebert, Oxford University Press, Royal Society and Springer.
• 36 institutions registered to access resources with 5525 full-text articles downloaded in Armenia, 3844 in Belarus, 4002 in Moldova and 2675 in Uzbekistan.
• 374 participants from over 200 institutions trained in ‘Using the Internet’, ‘Registration for Resources’ and ‘Electronic Resource Use and Management’. One person is possibly INASP’s oldest ever participant at 84 years old!
• 28 training modules containing presentations, speakers note, exercises and supporting materials available in Russian and English under Creative Commons licence.
• Capacity building with 15 local partners to enable them to facilitate workshops leading to independently run follow-on workshops using INASP materials/methodology.
• Networking and experience sharing enabled via travelling workshop methodology.