Issue 73 (Summer 2000)

APLIC-INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATOR
Summer 2000, Issue #73

The APLIC-International Communicatoris published several times yearly by the Association for Population and Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers, International. Mailing address: c/o Family Health International Library, P.O. Box 13950, RTP, NC 27709 USA. ISSN 09-9847
Editors:
Gretl Cox, Librarian, John Snow Inc., 1616 N. Ft. Myer Dr. 11th Floor, Arlington VA 22209. Phone: (703) 528-7474. Fax: 703/528-7480. E-mail: gretl_cox@jsi.com.
Diane M. Rubino, Gender, Family, and Development Program Population Council/USA, 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, NY 10017. Phone: 212/339-0657. Fax: 212/755-6052. E-mail: drubino@popcouncil.org.

Table of Contents

President’s Message – Peggy D’Adamo
Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs

    • Lisa Newman, APLIC Membership Secretary who was unable to attend at the last minute due to an illness in her family.
    • Susan Jamison of PATH – Seattle whose mother was ill. Susan did a great job planning our visit to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library and located one of our speakers, Emily Bergman of LAPNET.
    • Susan Pasquariella of POPIN, who was unable to attend this year. We hope she’ll be able to be there next year.
    • and Jean Sack, former APLIC president, who recently moved to Bangladesh with her husband.
    • Chris Cahill of Harvard Center for Population & Development Studies. Chris was at the DC conference in 1998 but missed New York in 1999.
    • J. J. Card, President of Sociometrics Corporation who also gave a great presentation on Sociometrics data sets.
    • Judy Dye, new Associate Director for Information Services of the Carolina Population Center, who came in spite of recent foot surgery.
    • Yan Fu, new librarian at the Population Studies Center of the University of Michigan.
    • Pearl Johnson also of the Population Studies Center of University of Michigan.
    • Sheila Proudman, new Director of Information Services at the Hopkins Population Center, JHU School of Public Health.
    • Ryuzaburo Sato of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan
    • Miho Iwasawa, also of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan.
    • Lisa Newman – for making all the arrangements with the hotel, including the catering
    • Kay Willson – for being the contact person for all the speakers
    • Ellie Gossen – for handling all the introductions, being the “just-in-time” translator for Silvia Texidor, for doing the name tags and conference packets
    • Julia Cleaver – for organizing an excellent series of break-out sessions, for doing some serious thinking about next year’s conference theme and presenting her ideas to the rest of us, and for graciously volunteering to be APLIC Vice-President
    • Anil Kumar – for his efficient Treasurer’s Reports, for handling the travel scholarships, for inviting Sunny Fox to be our first speaker, and for organizing a great APLIC banquet for the second year in a row.
    • Maryann Belanger – for doing the publicity for the conference, for chairing a break-out session
    • Zuali Malsawma – for desiging a great program for the conference
    • Susan Jamison – for organizing the field trip and finding one of the conference speakers
    • Anne Ilacqua – for chairing a break-out session and bringing the APLIC gavel
    • Wendy Brand – for taking great notes at the meetings
    • Gretl Cox – for chairing a break-out session
    • Nika Bareket, former APLIC co-VP, resigned from her position at University of Michigan in November. She wanted to spend more time with her child and has found a part-time job that allows her to do that. Thanks to Nika for helping identify and get commitments from two of the speakers at this year’s conference. She did a great job.

    • Wendy Brand, librarian at University of Wisconsin Center for Demography and Ecology Information Services will also be leaving her job ad CDE and her position as APLIC Recording Secretary in August 2000. Due to cuts in NICHD funding, her half-time position will be eliminated. Wendy is busy looking for another half-time position. She will be replaced by John Carlson, who attended the Los Angeles conference this year.

    • Carol Knopf, a sustaining member of APLIC since 1980, and former APLIC president is retiring in July. Carol works at Brown University Demography Library in the Population Studies & Training Center. We are glad that Carol was able to attend the 2000 conference and understand that she’s plannning to do some traveling with her husband after retirement. Good luck and best wishes to Carol.

    • Lisa Newman, APLIC Membership Secretary and the real backbone of the organization for a long time, will be leaving her position at UPenn at the end of June. Lisa joined APLIC in 1987 and has been Membership Secretary for as long as I can remember. She is currently the Librarian at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Lisa is moving into a new house and plans to spend some time with her two sons and husband.

    • APLIC has successfully planned and organized another conference and elected a new set of officers and board members for the years 2000-2001. The conference was well-attended in spite of the fact that APLIC does not have any members in the Los Angeles area. There were some last minute problems, but overall everything went as planned. The APLIC board worked successfully as a committee to organize the entire event and did a very good job. Each board member took responsibility for a particular part of the conference planning and the board intends to use the same model for the 2001 conference in Washington, DC.

    There were 26 attendees at this year’s conference and five speakers. Four of the attendees and one of the speakers were international APLIC members — two new members from Japan, Silvia Texidor from Argentina (speaker and participant), and Francoise Meunier from France.

    We also had a couple of members who were unable to come to the conference at the last minute and they were very much missed:

    Prior to the meeting, the board made a decision to use funds for travel scholarships for current active APLIC-I members, and free conference registrations for APLIC-I members who would be attending their first conference. We were able to offer travel scholarships to Silvia Texidor of the CENEP Library, Wendy Brand of Wisconsin and Julia Cleaver of INTRAH/PRIME as well as free conference registration to Silvia.

    I’d like to thank other APLIC members for attending the conference, and especially those whom we don’t always see, or those who are new to APLIC. Welcome to APLIC and we hope to hear from you on the listserv and in the newsletter during the year, and see you in Washington DC next year.

    Finally I would like to thank all the APLIC members who worked very hard to make this year’s conference a success. I certainly could never have done what you accomplished by myself:

    Thanks to everyone for their efforts!

    During this year APLIC will say goodbye to some of its most active members. I’d like to take a moment to mention them and thank each one of them for their support of the organization:

    Even though APLIC will be going through a number of changes during the coming year — getting both a new Recording Secretary and a new Membership Secretary — I’m sure it will come through alive and kicking. Our new VP, Julia Cleaver, has already presented some great ideas for next year’s conference and the board is on its way to planning. Our Fall Board Meeting will be held in Chapel Hill, courtesy of Julia, in early October, 2000. At the 2001 Conference, Eleanor Gossen of University of Albany will take over as Membership Secretary. We are still looking for a new Recording Secretary, but we have our eyes on someone. Margie Doggett of Family Care International is our new Archivist. And we have a number of ideas on the drawing board.

    Peggy D’Adamo

Spring 2000 Board of Directors and Annual Business Meeting Summaries
by Wendy Brand, APLIC-I Recording Secretary

During the 33rd Annual APLIC-I Conference in New York, two meetings were held. On Monday, March, 20th the Board of Directors held their Spring Meeting, and the Annual Business Meeting was held on Wednesday, March 22nd. What follows is a summary of the reports, discussions and decisions that were made at these meetings. Any comments should be sent to the person in charge of the issue or to President, Peggy D’Adamo.

Election results
Peggy D’Adamo presented the slate of officers which was approved by the membership. Peggy agreed to serve as President for a second term. We welcome new officers and board members.

Treasurer’s Report
Anil Kumar He reported that we changed the fiscal year to coincide with the calender year. We had a $2,900 surplus for 1999 with total assets just under $30,000. The organization has $25,000 in a CD and he expects $1,000 in interest. Last fall the Board decided to use some of the surplus for travel subsidies, which will probably cause a small deficit for this year. Recipients of the 2000 subsidies were Julia Cleaver, Wendy Brand, and Sylvia Texidor.

Membership Report
Lisa Newman presented an interim membership report as she is still accepting membership renewals. She reported that from her preliminary figures the organization should have about the same number of members as last year.

Archives
Peggy D’Adamo expressed concerned that our current archivist Edith Ericson is difficult to get a hold of. She has not responded to phone calls or email for
information about the status of the archives. Margie Doggett volunteered to take over this position. The transfer should be made by the Fall Board Meeting.

DUPS Program
Lisa Newman presented the DUPS report. The email system continues to go well. The DUPS listserv has 27 subscribers. Since September, 26 lists have been posted.

Communicator
Diane Rubino and Gretl Cox discussed the progress of the Communicator. They hope to make the Web site more user friendly and be more consistent about the timing of publication. They are always open to ideas for articles.

Union List of Serials
Peggy D’Adamo reported that Mike Zimmerman is not interested in helping update the APLIC-I Union List of Serials. A decision about the future of Union List will be made at the Fall Board meeting after evaluating its current use from the APLIC-I Membership Survey. Please send any comments you have about the usefulness of the Union List to Peggy.

APLIC-I Brochure
Diane Rubino and Laurian Carroll updated the text of the APLIC-I Brochure. Peggy D’Adamo had someone at her organization do a draft layout. The Brochure will be produced and made available to members and others interested after a few minor changes. Thank you to Diane, Laurian and Peggy for putting it together.

APLIC-I Survey
This Winter Lisa Newman sent out a Membership Survey to all APLIC-I members. Completed surveys should be sent to Kay Willson. It is hoped that the information will give us a better sense of who our members are and what they do, and how well APLIC-I is meeting their needs. The results will be posted to the APLIC-I Web Site. If you did not get a survey, please contact Lisa.

2001 Conference
The 34th Annual Conference will be held March 26-28, 2001at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, DC. Julia Cleaver led a discussion of possible topics. A preliminary schedule of a tour and the Board Meeting on Monday, speakers on information in an international context with one breakout session on Tuesday, and the Business Meeting, a session on Census 2000 and an additional breakout session on Wednesday. If you have any ideas for speakers, breakout session topics, tour or banquet locations, or would like to help with other conference planning activities please contact Julia.

Fall Board Meeting
Julia Cleaver volunteered Research Triangle Park as the location of the Fall Board Meeting location. Dates will be announced at a later time. All members are invited to attend, and we hope to see you there or at the next year’s Conference in Washington, DC.

A Note From the Soon-To-Be Membership Secretary of APLIC-I
By Ellie Gossen

I will be taking over as APLIC membership secretary at the Washington meeting next March. Until then, Lisa Newman has graciously consented to continue as membership secretary while I am on sabbatical leave from the University at Albany Libraries and the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis (CSDA), where I spend 25% of my time as Director of its Information/Data Services Core. We are trying to run a nearly “virtual” library, providing services to our associates and affiliates but relying on the collections of the University Libraries and the resources available on the Internet rather than building up a large collection of our own. So far it has worked remarkably well.

My sabbatical will be spent in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my husband will be a Resident Scholar at the School of American Research. He will be working on a book on the new artistic and social forms which have arisen from the Maya Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. My part in this project will focus on the ways the Zapatistas have used electronic media and the Internet to disseminate information and enlist international support for their movement. I will also work on a project of my own, based on statistics collected by the University Libraries’ Interlibrary Loan Department and periodical cancellation lists from the past ten years try to assess the impact of those cancellations on faculty and student research. I also will have the opportunity to work part-time in the library at the School of American Research, which is small but intensely focused. It should be a big change from the University Libraries!

I will miss the October Board meeting, but hope that Lisa Shaffer, who works half-time in the CSDA library, can come in my stead. I have greatly enjoyed my participation in APLIC, particularly its small size, friendly people, and the opportunity to get to know librarians who work in other than large academic libraries.

A Message from an APLIC Member
By Carol Knopf, Brown University

In 1978, when I was hired by Prof. Sidney Goldstein to organize the Population Studies and Training Center library at Brown University, a part of my job was to relocate the collection to new quarters. They were moving and needed to become more professional. I helped unpack and shelve every book and paper and journal! Because I knew nothing about the subject of demography, I spent the next two years rearranging everything. My job began on a very part-time basis. As time passed, I worked more and more hours until in September 1979, I was hired on a regular basis and have continued to work two-thirds time since then.

In 1980 a new graduate student, who had formerly been employed in the library at the East-West Center, came in and introduced herself. She asked if I knew about APLIC. The Association was new to me. She wasted no time in having someone get in touch with me. The next thing I knew I was on my way to my first conference. This was the 15th annual meeting, in 1981, the only year that APLIC met without PAA. It was held at a retreat center in Pawling, NY. What a wonderful first experience with the members of APLIC! Since this was a retreat there was plenty of time to get to know each other as we ate, hiked, and talked. One night sitting around the fire we even came up with a list of song titles having to do with family planning. We thought this was hilarious. However, no one was organized enough to write them down and the next morning no one could remember them. Could it have been the wine?

APLIC began in 1968 with 15 members and by the time I joined there were about 150 members. Then, as now, there were international members. I agreed to become a board member, of the Class of 1985. Some of you know how that works. I “moved” my way up the ladder and was annual meeting chair for the Toronto conference in 1990, then on to President.

Along the way, there were memorable board meetings, annual meetings, and programs. Locations ranged from New Orleans to Cincinnati to Washington DC, to New York, and San Francisco. The topics were always informative and included “Women in Development,” “Accessing Public Information,” “Information Needs and Sources in Family Planning,” and “World Population Year”. Everyone worked so hard to provide us with programs that were useful and interesting. We had some really great meals and camaraderie at the Annual Banquets.

Best of all, was APLIC member networking. While this sounds very “businesslike”, it was far from that. It also allowed me to make new friends. The field of librarianship has changed dramatically over the last decade and my job has evolved into a very different one over the years. I don’t think I could have survived without the support of APLIC colleagues, in person, on the phone and, more recently, the APLIC-I Listserv.

As I retire and look forward to having a lot of leisure time and doing some traveling during my husband’s sabbatical, I’d like to say “Thank you all for your help and friendship and I’ll miss each and every one of you.”

New CD-ROM Titles
By Jean Sack

CD-ROM on Status of Africa’s Women
The UN Economic Commission for Africa
Ms. Josephine OUEDRAOGO, Chief, African Centre for Women:
P.O. Box 3001
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tel: (251-1) 518919 (Direct)/51 72 00 Ext. 33700
Fax: (251-1) 512233 (Direct)/512785
E-mail: eca40th@un.org
‘The Status of Women in Africa,’ contains comprehensive gender-disaggregated data on African development to provide statistical data on the status of women in Africa by country and by gender, where the latter existed. The CD-ROM features audio and video as well as user-friendly searchable data, was enriched by feedback from participants at the Sixth African Regional Conference on Women held in Addis Ababa in November, convened by ECA to assess the progress made in implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action since 1995. The content is guided by the 12 critical areas of concern in the platform, and by the need to develop a clearer picture of the impact of implementation on the lives of African women. The CD-ROM will be updated annually.
HIM Helping Involve Men
Available free for developing country health agencies from
POPLINE Digital Services
Center for Communications Programs
Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health
111 Market Place, Suite 310
Baltimore, MD 21202
E-mail: popline@jhuccp.org
The 10,000 pages of journal articles, case studies, operations research reports, technical papers and books in this ‘essential library on men and reproductive health’ CD-ROM examine the meaning of “male involvement” and address an essential question: “How do we involve men in a way that is beneficial to them, their partners, and their children?” This question reflects concern that men are not only already involved in reproductive health, but also that men dominate in their positions as policymakers, providers, and partners, shaping the reproductive lives of women. The full text literature included here presents a wide spectrum of information and ideas, in view of the fact that certain approaches will be more appropriate in some settings than others. Materials also highlight future research needs for grant writers.
System requirements: Windows 3.1, 95, 98, or NT, Acrobat Reader (3.1 on CD) CD-ROM drive
Infection Prevention: Multimedia Package with Training CD-ROM and Reference Booklet
Available free to practitioners in developing countries
AVSC International
440 Ninth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Email: info@avsc.org
An essential training and reference package for health workers in low-resource settings: hand washing, gloving, aseptic technique, instrument processing, use and disposal of sharps, housekeeping and waste disposal. The easy-to-use interactive training modules provide 2-4 hours of training for improving facility infection prevention practices, with culturally appropriate animation and graphics.
System requirements: Pentium 133 minimum (166 MHZ or higher recommended), Microsoft Windows 95/98, 32 MB of RAM, CD-ROM drive. Video graphics adapter of 256+ colors, sound card, QuickTime (QuickTime 4 will install automatically if not already loaded).
UNFPA Project & Technical Publications (The preview edition, 2000)
Free to practitioners and libraries in the developing world
David Rose
UNFPA Library
220 East 42d Street
Room DN1743
New York, NY 10017 USA
212-297-5068 fax: 121-297-4909
212-297-5069 email: rose@unfpa.org
Produced by the United Nations Population Fund, this “archive of experience” CD-ROM contains over 115 full text documents from dozens of agencies funded by UNFPA. Text word searching yields a wealth of data, analysis and insights into issues of population and development, and reproductive health, especially in the context of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and Beijing+5 resolutions on reproductive health and development.
System requirements: Windows 486 or Pentium processor, CD ROM drive, Windows 95, 98 or Windows NT, at least 10-16 MB available RAM. Adobe Arobat Reader 4.0 can be installed from the CD-ROM.

Battelle Seattle Research Center
Jan Schueller, Manager, Library and Information Services

Battelle Seattle Research Center (BSRC,) a unit of the Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI), is an interdisciplinary research center. Our parent organization, BMI, develops new technologies and products that serve industry and government. BSRC’s divisions include the Human Factors Transportation Center, the Environmental Technology Division, and the Planning and Operational Effectiveness Group. The BSRC division most relevant to APLIC-I is the Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation, which has researchers in Seattle, Arlington (VA), Baltimore, Atlanta, Durham (NC), and St. Louis. Due to the overall diversity of topics that staff address, transportation, environmental policy, including environmental health issues, ergonomics, epidemiology, and other social science areas, as well as population, especially fertility, Library and Information Services functions more as a “service” and less as a collection. Aside from maintaining a small reference and journal collection, we specialize in obtaining materials needed for research by whatever means is most appropriate. We are blessed by proximity to the University of Washington Libraries, a 22-branch system, which includes a major health sciences collection. Beyond that we use online services such as ProQuest, ILL, document delivery, phones, faxes, and e-mails. DIALOG, PubMed, and POPLINE are the major tools for literature searching and the web is in constant use.

As for me, I have either had an interesting and varied 24-year career – or can’t keep a job very well! I have established a criminal justice library and information center, been a health sciences reference librarian, served as special projects librarian in the regional medical library, worked on a contract with the US Forest Service, and been at Battelle for ten years, first as research librarian and now as the Manager of Library and Information Services. I am a member of MLA, SLA, my state and regional medical library groups (WMLA and PNC/MLA), and now APLIC-I.

Lisa Trodella, Assistant Librarian and Information Services, Pathfinder International

People always ask, “What is Pathfinder International?” The response is that we are a non-for-profit development organization that assists private sector organizations, and non-governmental organizations in providing family planning, reproductive health, STD,and HIV/AIDS services for women, men, and adolescents. We provide technical and financial assistance to organizations that want to improve the quality of their services. We offer a variety of contraceptive and reproductive health services. Though based in Watertown, Massachusetts, we have field offices in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Peru, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia. We also have an office based in Washington, DC, which is dedicated to a project called FOCUS on Young Adults. FOCUS, a collaborative effort between Pathfinder, the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and the Futures Group International, examines, evaluates, reports on, and makes recommendations regarding adolescent reproductive health programs in developing countries.As for me, I’m the lucky Assistant Librarian who takes pride in my work. Its always a challenge. I provide references and research assitance to all our field offices, using Popline, Medline, other on-line databases, and the Internet. I’ve been the Assistant Librarian for year and a half and have imported into our database over 1500 new titles–books, information, journals, and newsletters–gathered and donated by Pathfinder staff from around world. I then categorize this information and enter it into a searchable database. I also do all the labels, shelve new publications, and create and post new acquisition lists.

South to South: Developing Countries Working Together on Population and Development
A Review by Jean Sack- Medical Informatics Consultant and
Partners in Population and Development Secretariate, Dhaka, Bangladesh

In South to South, editor Jyoti Shankar Singh has pulled together a unique collection of contributions from real practitioners and experts with hands-on experience in South-to-South cooperation. The publication builds upon a seminar held in Tokyo with the support of Japanese organizations. The experiences are case studies of the issues and opportunities for integrating South-to-South cooperation into reproductive health and family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, and gender equity. In addition to the case studies, Mr. Singh and other authors provide a historical perspective on the growth of South-to-South cooperation in these fields and insights into the opportunities and challenges for the future.

Many of the case studies included in South to South are drawn from the experiences of the countries that belong to Partners in Population and Development (Partners). At the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, ten developing countries with exceptionally successful family planning and reproductive health programmes announced their decision to pool their experience and resources and to find new ways of making what they have learned available to other nations through South-to-South cooperation. Since that date, six other developing countries, with strong commitments to reproductive health and rights, have joined the group. Partners’ sixteen member countries now encompass over half of the world’s population. They have established their own Internet web site www.south-south.org which will feature more of the best practices and experiences gained from their South to South collaborations and training.

(Singh, Jyoti Shankar [Ed.] 2000. Washington, DC: Population 2005. $21.00 paperback ISBN: 0-9700060-0-4) Copies may be ordered from Population 2005, 107 Second Street N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002

Cyber Librarianship: Using Internet Technologies To Meet Health Research Needs in Developing Countries
by Jean Sack, Medical Informatics Consultant and
Partners in Population and Development Secretariat, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Like other APLIC-I members, I have been actively involved in web and electronic resource development in the hope that the Internet can provide an avenue for translating research into action. Shortly after arriving in Bangladesh, I traveled to Malawi to help teach a Fogarty Medical Informatics course. When I returned to Dhaka, visits to many libraries (the Dhaka Public Library, the National Medical Library, a development library, two agriculture libraries, a research consortia collection, and several NGOs) revealed a gap between expectations for electronic resources and the realities of poorly funded, pitifully updated, and just barely managed print libraries in this country. Many agencies did not have working photocopiers or on-line catalogs and most were not using the Internet for information retrieval, as many developed country-based researchers would expect.

Most Bangladesh medical institutions and universities do not use computers in their teaching, research, or patient records. In contrast, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee’s (BRAC) community-based libraries in village settings, the agricultural libraries (such as Bangladesh Rice Research Institute and the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Centre) and the ICDDR,B Dissemination and Information Services Center are encouraging IT initiatives through small grants. GIS computerized data and mapping endeavors can be observed in several institutions, such as BRAC and ICDDR,B. In the private sector, dozens of high-priced computer training schools of questionable quality have sprung up all over Dhaka. Some institutions, like the World Bank and ICDDR,B’s Centre for Health and Population Research, are investing funds for improved computing and connections to the rest of the world. Recognizing that Internet connectivity may enhance the potential for collaboration, it appears that ICDDR,B will be able to extend its new Singapore VSAT connections to my new place of work, which is located close to their Centre in Mohakhali, Dhaka. (VSAT is an acronym for very small aperture terminal and acts as a ground station to contact communications satellites.) Since our Partners in Population and Development ISP is currently through a telephone modem, connectivity is highly irregular and very slow.

In fact, my new part time job in the Secretariat of Partners in Population and Development (Partners) here in Dhaka depends upon my ability to locate electronic resources on the web. Partners’ new portal site will offer more links to South institutions and full-text how-to documents. (A portal site offers a wide range of resources and services, like e-mail, electronic forums, and search engines.) With an all-in-one, searchable interface like Yahoo, we hope that this new South-South portal site can help our 16 partners countries mount their websites and documents. This is the right time. It is no secret that many developing countries are competing for new Internet Service Providers, winning contracts to program and test software, and making forays into e-commerce. Can health sites be far behind?

Just as Bangalore, India has become the “silicone valley” of the developing world, Bangladesh’s Minister of Science and Technology is planning an IT village (where connectivity will be constant) in the “backyard” of ICDDR,B and it’s partner agencies. A local firm, Dohatec, has also written management programs and developed CD-ROMs for PAHO and WHO. Unfortunately, public sector Internet technology professionals in Dhaka are lagging behind the business community in their ability to finance electronic resources. As I write this IT status report from my flat in Dhaka, I am connecting to my e-mail through Grameen Bank’s Citechco ISP which still does not have the requisite telephone lines promised by a government ministry. Most NGOs are poorly connected to Internet services, restrict employee access in order to avoid paying large ISP bills, and have yet to create their own websites. They cannot afford the latest technology. Donors’ requests for proposals and training announcements reach the privileged web-connected agencies weeks before snail mail. The convenience of on-line conference applications, airline schedules, distance education, on-line consultations (e.g. information sharing with Thai-based scientists about the latest Dengue outbreaks in Bangladesh), which are routinely handled via e-mail, put the unconnected developing world at a disadvantage. Opportunities to share in information gleaned from the XIII International AIDS Conference, held in Durban, South Africa, July, 2000 are being missed. WHO authorities fear that the 10-90 gap (a term that refers to the fact that 10% of health research funds are devoted to 90% of the world’s health problems) in research and health infrastructure is being exacerbated by the web haves and have nots. IT can help translate research into action and change health policies when results are smoothly communicated to stakeholders, the media, and government decision makers.

We in APLIC-I need to be IT cheerleaders for South affiliated agencies! Peggy D’Adamo has taught computer research skills in north and west Africa and Susan Pasquariella is making a tremendous difference in website development in Latin America. Perhaps we should again invite overseas APLIC-I members to visit our computerized information centers before or after our conferences. Certainly Diane Rubino has insights about web connectivity in Vietnam. In response to this inequity of connectivity, the Partners secretariat is attempting to offer their country affiliates new research materials and resources and “how to” manuals by mounting full text documents, linking to rich websites, and encouraging participation in on-line training. This July, Partners, with Management Sciences for Health, offered an on-line course on communicating with donors, drafting concept papers, and proposal writing. The Partners team included Beatrice Bezmalinovic<beatrice@ppdsec.org>.

Training is an area in which APLIC-I members could participate. When we teach computer literacy to international students visiting our universities, we are building capacity when they return to their home country institutions. Staff from the Bangladesh Center for Communications Programs (Yasmin Khan and her computer assistant, Ravi) and I are teaching ICDDR,B researchers to expeditiously use the web in their work. The ICDDR,B integrates hands-on computer exercises with their international training programs and is sending their support staff to the new BRAC IT University for Microsoft Office training. Although Bangladesh currently has only a handful of Microsoft certified engineers, the BRAC curriculum will enable administrative staff members to learn spread sheets, databases, and time-saving word processing shortcuts. Progress is being made and connectivity is improving in research institutes here in Bangladesh, despite the gloomy impressions I had after my initial visits to Dhaka libraries.

I am grateful for the experience I gained at Johns Hopkins and through resources made available by APLIC-I colleagues. Bravo to Susan Pasquariella’s POPIN efforts around the world, Peggy D’Amado’s weblinks, and Zuali Malasuma’s POPNET. Julia Cleaver’s Webliography, the RHO web and Rhgateway are on my hotlinks, as is POPLINE. New e-journals are being accessed. CD-ROMS like David Rose’s UNFPA Archive, the Hopkin’s Center for Communications Program’s Helping involving Men (HIM) and Condom, and the JHPIEGO Reprolearn tutorials are being used in Dhaka. Population resources abound for web connected agencies.

Partners in Population and Development is an inter-governmental alliance of 16 developing countries, created for the specific purpose of promoting and improving the transfer of knowledge, expertise, and skills in population and reproductive health through South-to-South collaboration. Partners members believe that by sharing their expertise, they can transform reproductive health goals outlined in the ICPD Program of Action into reality. The current members of Partners and Population and Development are internationally recognized as having developed effective population policies, programs, and services, and as being strongly committed to implementing the ICPD Program of Action. Members are Bangladesh, China, Colombia, Egypt, the Gambia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Thailand, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe. We are hoping to develop our website into a useful tool for practitioners and policy makers, helping these professionals to share their experiences in digital documents, on listservs, with virtual conferences, web-based training, and useful links. The new websites for Partners are www.south-south.org and for ICDDR,B www.icddrb.org.

Conference & Events Calendar

  • September 6-8, 2000: “The role of the United Nations in the 21st century.” The Millennium Summit.
    This special United Nations session in New York will invite Heads of States to discuss goals for 2015 to cut in half the number of persons who earn under a dollar a day and reducing from 20% of the world to less than 10% without potable water. Another goal to be offered is that “all children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.” Convening just prior to the opening Assembly of the UN, representatives from 188 member states will divide into four separate groups of 47 for private discussions.
  • September 13-16, 2000: Reproductive Health 2000
    www.arhp.org/2000regform.htm
    Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, Chicago, Illinois. For more information call Amy Swann, conference coordinator at 877-444-ARHP, or send e-mail to conferences@arhp.org.
  • September 17-23, 2000: Third International Entertainment-Education Conference for Social Change, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    http://www.entertainment-education.nl/

  • September 18-20, 2000: Online World 2000, San Diego, CA
    http://www.onlineworld2000.com/

  • October 8-17, 2000: CALL FOR ACTION! MADAGASCAR 2000!! Third International Conference on Women in Africa & the African Diaspora (WAAD III)
    In the tradition of WAAD conferences, WAAD III focuses on issues relating to women of African descent but more than before, the meeting in Madagascar will draw attention to the urgency and pertinence of a sense of history as participants engage simultaneously in stocktaking and mapping forward-looking strategies for future engagements. The first conference (WAAD I), which was held in 1992 in the rural Igbo town of Nsukka (Nigeria), brought together over 700 men and women from all continents. The sub-theme of WAAD I, “Bridges across Activism and the Academy,” underscores the conference’s primary goal of providing an arena for the equal participation of researchers and grassroots women, men, and organizations. The second conference held in the American city of Indianapolis in October 1998 gathered hundreds of participants from 35 countries and 48 national and international organizations to examine issues related to the health and human rights of women of African descent. This third conference, to be held in the historic and beautiful island of Madagascar will examine, in cross-disciplinary terms, women in relation to history and development. There will be keynote/plenary speeches, panel presentations, workshops, forums, town meetings, art exhibitions, photo/slide presentations, and a film screening. Because the conference is designed to encourage maximum participation from students and grassroots men, women, and organizations, we will create an environment conducive to a free flow of information and exchanges. For more information, contact: Obioma Nnaemeka, Convenor, Third WAAD Conference, Women’s Studies Program, Cavanaugh Hall Room 001C, Indiana University, 425 University Boulevard, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA. Phone:(317) 278-2038, (317) 274-7611 or (317) 274-0062 (messages), Fax: (317) 274-2347, E-Mail: nnaemeka@iupui.edu
  • October 10-13, 2000: International Conference on Health Research for Development
    World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank, the Global Forum for Health, Research (GFHR), and the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED). Bangkok, Thailand
    www.conference2000.ch
  • October 15-18 2000: INCLEN Global Meeting XVII
    Research Networks in the New Millennium: Developing Countries’ Contribution to Global Knowledge”
    Organized by Thai Clinical Epidemiology Network (Thai-CLEN)In collaboration with Southeast Asian Clinical Epidemiology Network (SEA-CLEN) Supported by International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) Inc., Bangkok, Thailand
    http://www.inclen.org/meeting.html
  • October 16-19, 2000: Global 2000 Worldwide Conference on Special Librarianship, Brighton, UK
    http://www.slaglobal2000.org/

  • October 23-26, 2000: ARMA International, Las Vegas, NV
    http://www.arma.org/
    ARMA is the Association for Information Management Professionals.
  • October 25-29 2000: 8th International Cochrane Colloquium, Cape Town, South Africa
    http://www.mrc.ac.za/conference/cochrane.htm
    charleen.daries@mrc.ac.za
  • November 2-4, 2000: ISA Research Committee on the Sociology of Migration, International Migration in Latin America Enters a New Millennium. November 2-4, 2000, Buenos Aires, Argentina
    http://www.isn.ethz.ch/conferences/
  • November 10, 2000: AAMMM (Action des Academies contre la Mortalite Maternelle dans le Monde). High level meeting to evaluate the WHO international strategy to reduce maternal mortality in countries of the South. Paris, France
  • November 6-8, 2000: Symposium: Cervical Cancer Problem in SE Asian Countries
    Organized by The Royal Thai College of Obstetrician and Gynecologists; Royal Thai College of Pathology; Depts of Health and Dept. of Medical Services, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. Sponsors: JHPIEGO Corporation; International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and PATH. Venue: Royal Thai College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Bangkok, Thailand. Participants: Obstetricians and Gynecologists from SEA Countries (Brunei, Laos, Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand). Some observers from region may apply. Contact: Dr. Suwanna Vorakamin at suwanw@health.moph.go.th
  • November 12-16, 2000: APHA, Boston MA
    http://www.apha.org

UNFPA’s new Project and Technical Publications CD-ROM : The Preview Edition 2000
By David Rose

UNFPA proudly announces its new way to tap into the rich resources found among publications issued by our many projects around the world in all sectors, regions and genres. We have issued the first version of an electronic collection of many of these previously hard-to-find programme and research publications. The PTP CD-ROM features a very user-friendly point-and-click interface to find and display its documents. Every publication is given in full-text facsimile version using PDF technology, which has become the de facto world standard for electronic document delivery.

UNFPA views this CD-ROM as a part of our commitment to knowledge sharing among colleagues both within and outside the UNFPA house. It also supports UNFPA’s accountability to its donors and supporters. The initial release contains 115 full documents. One can extrapolate from this number to a much larger critical mass of documents in the future which will shed valuable light on UNFPA’s programming and evaluation activities.

This CD-ROM is very attractive and is sure to find a receptive audience among anyone interested in the work of UNFPA, including population programme professionals, researchers, government ministries of development, health and population affairs, donors and media representatives.