eIFL doesn't stand still in supporting developing country research!

The latest newsletter from eIFL, see http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/news/newsletter/no32, leaves an impression of whirlwind activity around the world in support of scholarly information exchange.

As well as supporting libraries, developing consortia, encouraging educational and training material, and bringing new countries into the network (Kenya and Nepal are the latest to join), eIFL has a strong Open Access programme. Item 5 of the newsletter outlines the aims of eIFL-OA as:

"a.. builds networks of Open Access repositories, Open Access journals, Open Access education materials;
b.. provides training and advice on Open Access policies and practices;
c.. empowers library professionals, scientists and scholars, educators and students to become open access advocates."

eIFL will attend the important up-coming Open Repositories 08 Conference at the University of Southampton, UK, see http://or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.html, April 1-4, 2008, and is also organizing a workshop on Institutional Repositories in Nigeria. The newsletter says:

"Nigerian University Libraries Consortium, Department of Library and Information Science, Ahmadu Bello University and eIFL.net will organise a workshop Open Access Repositories: New Models for Scholarly Communication on April 28-29. Hosted by the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the workshop will address Open Access state-of-the-art, policies and recommendations; subject and institutional repositories, and case studies on Open Access institutional repositories in developing and transition countries."

A lot of people must be working very hard in eIFL-net!