APLIC-INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATOR

Fall 2001, Issue #74

President's Message

I have also requested publications that were offered through the dups listserv. It is clear that I would not have been able to accomplish what I have in six months with out all of you being willing and able to back me up. This is what APLIC-I folks do for each other, and it is great. As one of our dear members who is retiring just wrote "I'll regret leaving APLIC since it's one of the nicest and most interesting professional organizations around!"

I must send out many heartfelt thanks to all of you who did so much to make our conference in DC a success this year. We continued the new tradition of having the APLIC board share in the conference planning and preparations, which the vice-president coordinates. This method worked extremely well, thanks to the dedicated work of many board members, and a few other loyal members. I am not going to name you all, as I will forget someone, but please pat yourselves on your back and know how much I and all the conference participants appreciate your efforts. You can read all about the conference in this issue of the Communicator. Planning is starting already for the 2002 conference that will be held in Atlanta May 6-8. You will be hearing more on this from our Vice-president, Margie Shiels, in the coming months.

APLIC-I has a new look on the web. Many thanks for the redesign to Natalie Maier of JHPIEGO. Thanks also to Peggy D'Adamo and Tonya Allen for the coordination and ongoing updates to the site.

From my seat APLIC-I feels strong and healthy. We have two Chapters that have started holding meetings. The newly formed Seattle area Chapter has had a couple of meetings under the enthusiastic leadership of Lisa Sanders. The Southeastern (at least the NC members) Chapter met this week for the first time in many years. Keep up the networking! Thank you for helping to keep this job fun and rewarding.

Julia Cleaver Resource Services Associate Ipas Resource Center 300 Market Street, Suite 200 Chapel Hill, NC, 27516 USA tel: (919) 960-5636 fax: (919) 929-7687 cleaverj@ipas.org

From JSI to FHI - Gretl Cox Has New Acronym

On February 1, Gretl joined Family Health International, HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Department in Arlington VA. Her title is Information Resource Manager. She is working closely with Bill Barrows and Margie Shiels who are at the FHI library in Chapel Hill, NC.

Unfortunately, her move was prompted by the closing of the library at John Snow Inc. and the elimination of her position. Even though the decision was made for financial considerations, it is difficult to understand how one could get along without a library when research is one of the deliverables. That library was maintained and built up for more than 15 years and contained many excellent publications. Who knows what will happen to them?. The position will not be filled. Of course, this is not an isolated case, we have several APLIC members with similar stories.

Gretl has spent many years working on population and reproductive health issues. The move into HIV/AIDS Care and Prevention seems a very good logical next step. She still has much to learn but will do so happily.

On a personal note: Thank you to all APLIC members who were concerned, supportive and extremely helpful during this stressful time.

Princeton University’s Population Research Library: Alive and well in a new space

Princeton University’s Population Research Library remains one of the world’s renowned population research collections. In August of 2000, the library moved from its home on Prospect Avenue to Wallace Hall, the new social sciences building on campus. Wallace Hall has been officially described as a “vibrant juxtaposition of granite, slate, limestone and glass” whose “centerpiece is the light-filled, glass-walled library which combines the collections of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Office of Population Research (OPR)”. In April 2001 the combined libraries were renamed The Donald E. Stokes Library, in honor of Donald Stokes, former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, with which OPR is affiliated. The library is popular with students, faculty and researchers not only because it is new, bright, and has a friendly, open atmosphere, but also because it has excellent collections with ample room for study and research. All seating spaces in the library are networked and wired to accommodate the use of laptops.

The Stokes Library has a total staff of 2.5 librarians and 5 support staff. Of this total, 1.5 librarians and one support staff primarily serve the information needs of OPR. Elana Broch (ebroch@princeton.edu), Assistant Population Research Librarian; and, the most recent addition to the staff, Chengzhi Wang (chengzhi@princeton.edu), Population Research Librarian, provide expert research assistance and collection development activities. Michi Nakayama (michinak@princeton.edu), Special Collections Assistant, processes course reserves, locates journal articles upon request, maintains the journal collection, assists with reference activities, coordinates the table of contents service and orders materials.

The population research collection within the Stokes Library is shelved separately from the Woodrow Wilson School collection to allow for continuity of use by OPR constituents. It now numbers over 40,000 bound volumes as well as more than 17,000 locally cataloged reprints, technical reports, manuscripts, working and discussion papers from other centers of population study, and more than 300 journals. Several new journals dealing with obstetrics and gynecology, child health and welfare, education and environment have been added to the collection in the past year. The library adds approximately 1,200 items annually. The subjects covered include vital statistics, censuses, general works about demography, population policy, immigration, family planning, child welfare and public health. Sixty percent of the collection consists of statistical materials (censuses and vital statistics) from all over the world. A microform collection of approximately 3,300 microfilms and 2,000 microfiche consists primarily of U.S. and international censuses. The library also maintains an extensive collection of material from the World Fertility Survey and the Demographic and Health Surveys. This collection contains material in book format, as well as documentation for all data files, tapes, and data cartridges, including questionnaires, codebooks, and printed tabulations of frequency distributions.

Services provided to the researchers and students in OPR include research consultations and reference assistance, a monthly acquisitions list of new material, an SDI service that distributes information based on the interests of individual researchers, the distribution of tables of contents from journals specifically designated by each researcher, and the processing of course reserve readings for specific courses. Document delivery services are also provided through the use of Ingenta, CISTI, the British National Library and our colleagues in APLIC. A Library Oversight Committee, comprised of the librarians, OPR faculty, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students meets regularly to discuss issues and works cooperatively to improve library services and collections.

Following the lead of the former Population Research Librarian, Maryann Belanger, with whom many APLIC members have worked over the years, we all look forward to continuing Princeton’s long relationship with APLIC as active members.

Jackie Druery Head, Donald E. Stokes Library Princeton University jdruery@princeton.edu

Centre for Health and Population Research Receives First Ever Gates Award for Global Health

The annual $1 million Gates Award for Global Health recognizes an organization that has made a major and lasting contribution to the field of global health. The foundation announced the establishment of the award in December 2000. The Centre for Health and Population Research, (formerly known as ICDDR,B - the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh)was established 40 years ago. The center developed the diarrhea treatment(oral rehydration solution)which saves about 3 million lives a year. ICDDR,B has trained many of the population experts now working in APLIC members organizations and continues with joint projects in vaccine, emerging infections, reproductive health and nutrition research with many others.

Melinda Gates had this to say at the award ceremony: "We wanted to call attention not only to the dazzling breakthroughs, but also to the spirit of innovation and collaboration that precedes them. We wanted to recognize how much good science happens on the front lines, where the need is greatest. And we wanted to celebrate an organization that has swiftly moved from one problem to another, always collaborating with others, always sending its discoveries into the world, always helping sufferers and scientists with equal selflessness."

The center's website is at http://www.icddrb.org/

Services and products developed at APLIC-I member institutions
--John Hopkins

POPLINE, the world's largest bibliographic database on population, family planning, and related issues, is now available free of charge at the click of a mouse on the Internet. All 280,000 records, representing published and unpublished literature, can now be accessed at www.popline.org

Internet POPLINE will be updated every two weeks and provides the only complete, up-to-date Internet location for POPLINE records. (POPLINE records are no longer available through the U.S. National Library of Medicine's IGM or PubMed systems). The Population Information Program will continue to distribute POPLINE CD-ROM to selected sites in developing countries twice a year.

POPINFORM, a database containing the most recent records added to POPLINE, has been replaced by Internet POPLINE. Internet POPLINE's current awareness search allows users to easily limit their searches to a particular time period.

--Population Council

Neil Zimmerman has adopted a new way of circulating tables of contents--by electronic means. He gets all TOC from the internet. He has developed a "personal distribution list" for each journal-- a batch of e-mails for interested staff. What is more, he has also extended the service to APLIC-I members. There are currently over 60 journals to choose from.

--University of Michigan

Population Studies Center Library has gathered the submission guidelines for population studies related journals. All links are to "primary sources," that is to publishers or organizations with editorial responsibilities for the titles. The page also provides a link to submission guidelines in the health sciences from Medical College of Ohio. http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/library/submission.html

PAA Annual Meeting History

A timeline history of the PAA meetings is now available at its website. This brief history documents PAA Annual Meeting statistics including meeting places, number of attendees and percent of membership attending. The data goes back to the 1st Annual Meeting at the New York City Town Hall held in 1930.

http://www.popassoc.org/timeline.html

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