Humphrey Kombe Keah – Information Management and Digital Services Specialist at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya – discusses the opportunities and challenges of strengthening the research and knowledge sector in Kenya for the advancement of national development.
This week we brought together higher education and research leaders from across the world to think about how global talent could be harnessed to address global challenges. Jon Harle discusses the importance of working together and the role that INASP can play.
- Dr M. Nazim Uddin is the Head and Senior Manager of the Library and Information Services Section at icddr,b, an international health research organization based in Dhaka. He gives a librarian’s perspective of the challenges of research access in Bangladesh What should a library look like? For me, it should have five basic components: a building, professional staff members, resources (such as furniture and print and e-literature), budgets and users. In Bangladesh, the two most difficult components for librarians to manage are budgets and resources.
Dilshani Dissanayake shares her experiences of adapting INASP’s AuthorAID materials and approaches to the University of Colombo, particularly through the introduction of writing clubs that use peer learning and mentoring to boost research-writing skills.
Jacinta Were, an INASP associate based in Kenya, discusses how INASP and the Kenyan library consortium have worked together for well over a decade to support sustainable access to electronic research information in the country. I’ve known and worked with INASP for the last 15 years, mainly to support research in Africa. When INASP started working in Kenya we had gone for about six years without subscribing to any journals because there was no budget. When we did subscribe to a journal, it was just one at a time, in print form, and it would often take two years to arrive. When INASP arrived and explained what they were planning to do we welcomed them, we said “Yes, this is really the right time!”
Photo: Department of Research Services, Parliament of Uganda Author: Emily Hayter, Programme Manager, Evidence-Informed Policy Making Team, INASP Over the...
