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Our
Sister Library in Latvia
The Robert M. Fales Health Sciences Library at
Coastal AHEC has a sister library in Latvia. Our sister library is the
Medical Library of Latvia and it is located in Latvia's capital city,
Riga. This relationship is a
result of a three year pilot project of the US Medical Library
Association. Dr. Joseph Daugman (1908-2002)
was the inspiration for the sister library partnership with the Medical
Library of Latvia. He spent the first 36 years of his life in Latvia. He
fled from his beloved country in 1944, eventually settled in North
Carolina, and was a university professor of German and Russian languages
at East Carolina University during the 1960s and 1970s.
These accomplishments have been made thus far for the
Medical Library of Latvia:
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Organized donations
of over 12,000 current medical books and journals from over 100
US and Canadian libraries. |
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Note the human chain
to get the books and journals from the first floor to the third
floor - they have no elevator. |
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Partnered with the Latvian
Doctors and Dentists Association. |
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Partnered with the Latvian
Welfare Organization for the shipping of materials
from the United States to Latvia. |
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Mirzda Zoltners, of
the Minneapolis Latvian Welfare Association, arranged for the
shipping of medical books and journals to
Latvia. |
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Arranged for over 40 US and
Canadian libraries to provide free, electronic delivery of
interlibrary loans. |
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Solicited support from
vendors to provide much needed electronic resources such as MD Consult, STAT!Ref, and UpToDate. |
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Improved access to health
information through the resources above and increasing
physicians' awareness and use of library services. |
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Obtained monetary funds to
complete the renovations of the Medical Library of Latvia (See
pictures below) |
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Velta Poznaka, Director of the Medical Library of Latvia says, "Thanks
to the Project we have made friends and have benefited from all the
material support. Nothing in the history of
our library has improved our library so dramatically. We are very glad
and proud that now we can offer qualitative
and up-to-date information, new databases, and so many more medical
journals and books to our users. The library's prestige has been raised
in the medical community of Latvia."
All of the accomplishments continue to this day with
the sister library relationship of the Coastal AHEC Medical Library and
the Medical Library of Latvia.
The Medical Library Association's International
Section's website about this program can be found at
http://www.ics.mlanet.org/sister.htm.
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