Time Has Come

The time has come to report that in 10 days, I will be on a plane bound for Dar es Salaam. After my first trip to Tanzania back in 2004, I vowed to return in a professional capacity. Well that time has come. I am partnering with a colleague at Dartmouth College, Fred Pond, to provide training and expertise to the staff at the Library of Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS). The project is funded by Abbott Fund and coordinated by the Global Health Initiative at the Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College. Our planned activities at the MUHAS Library for the period March 17-28 include the following:

1. Perform Customer Service Workshop, plus in-house, one-one training with key personnel; based on result of workshop, future follow-up training expressed in a planning document.

2. Review recent reference desk installation re: staffing issues, collection resources to support reference service.

3. Follow up on biomedical literature searching training performed in January 2005; focus areas determined via brief survey of MUHAS Reference staff. Include directories for free sources of e-journals.

4. Investigate & make proposal for MUHAS-based research database at MUHAS, e.g. abstracts of faculty-produced research.

5. Review IT equipment inventory for planned ICT Classroom, completed in Excel document, suitable/conformance for submission to granting organization.

The Director of the MUHAS Library, Rehema Chande-Mallya visited Dartmouth and the University of Vermont last week as part of an exchange program. While here Rehema worked with Fred and me to finalize the plans for our training and consulting effort. In addition, we worked together on a draft proposal to convert records to create a comprehensive online catalogue for the MUHAS Library.

Rehema is the author of "Assessment of the use of information and communication technology in the improvement of performance and efficiency in the banking sector: a case study of the National Micro Finance Bank (NMB) Dar es Salaam", which appeared in the University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal, vol. 7(2) 2005: 27-42. Read the abstract.

Fred previously visited the same library back in 2005 to provide ICT (Information and Communication Technology) training as part of the Dartmouth/Boston University AIDS International Training & Research Program.