Librarians/Bibliotecarias: On Our Way to the Dominican Republic!

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It all happened because of a very colorful woven market bag.

 About a year ago, my colleague, Valerie Malzacher, library director at the Chalmer Davee Library at UW-River Falls, came to a meeting with this very cool bag.  I had to ask where she got it as I suspected it was from Latin America. I am attracted to all things colorful and Latin American! She told me she got it in Nicaragua. Since I had lived in Costa Rica for almost six years I was very interested in hearing about her experience in Costa Rica's neighbor to the north.   She told me about her experience with Farmer to Farmer and her assignment to a Nicaraguan agricultural library. Intrigued, I told her that I would love to do something like that, especially since I speak Spanish and I am a librarian.

Fast forward to today. I have the honor to have been selected to participate in the Farmer to Farmer program in the Dominican Republic. As library director at the Rebecca Crown Library at Dominican University, I of course, am eager to share my expertise with our Dominicano colleagues.  ( I have also learned that I need to be careful to call the Dominican Sisters (founders of Dominican University (formerly known as Rosary College)) Dominicas instead of Dominicanas (those from the Dominican Republic).

Valerie and I are headed to Santiago and we have been assigned to work with the library at the Universidad ISA. We will be working with Pavel Corniel, Library Director at Universidad ISA. Our agenda for this assignment includes coordinating an inventory of the library collection, meeting with librarians from around the region to talk about collaborative and consortial programs, database management, and discussions about digital and institutional repositories.

We will begin our journey in Miami, arriving in Santo Domingo Sunday evening, and arriving in Santiago bright and early Monday morning.

Both Valerie and I are excited about our assignment and eager to meet our colleagues. And of course we hope that they will be just as excited to meet us!

Hasta la proxima!

Comments

  1. MarceFriday, October 26, 2012

    Great Blog! We hope you have a successful and enjoyable trip to the Dominican Republic. We are looking forward to hearing all about it!- FTF DC Staff

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSaturday, October 27, 2012

    Wonderful news for me to relay to the team at Alpha'a this am. RuthAnn and Steve are still in Spain but will follow you also on this blog. I need to catch up with your life it's moving fast and far. Hope you voted before you left. Safe travels. Mo

    ReplyDelete

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