SISTER LIBRARIESMeaghan 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 President

1999-2000

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

SAMPLE PROJECTS

Academic LibrariesTecnológico 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 LibrariesDes 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

http://calarts.edu/library/aboutus/sisterlibrary

California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) is supporting the foundation of the library at the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center (Kigali, Rwanda).

Considerations• $$ Funding $$• Language• Library needs & resources• Institutional support• How formal should the partnership be?• Community support• Flexibility

SISTER LIBRARIES WIKIhttp://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/sisterlibrariessister.libraries@gmail.com