1. SISTER LIBRARIES Meaghan O’Connor Program Officer, IREX Saturday, April 2, 2011

2. “Becoming a sister library is an opportunity to build relationships with libraries in other cultures that can help us learn, understand, and better serve our own community.” -Sarah Ann Long ALA President 1999-2000

3. Why Sister Libraries? Community focus Increase cultural awareness Create connections across the globe Explore the heritage of community members Staff focus Broaden views of the library profession Share information, resources, expertise, and training Share techniques and technologies to help solve problems

4. SAMPLE PROJECTS

5. Academic Libraries Tecnológico de Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico) & University of Maryland (College Park, MD) planned a joint conference that took place in Monterrey, October 2008 http://www.lib.umd.edu/MCK/tecprogram.html

6. Public Libraries Des Plaines Public Library (Des Plaines, IL) and Biblioteca Benjamin Franklin (Guadalajara, Mexico) have exchanged staff, gifted books to each other, and have coordinated children’s programming. http:// www.dppl.org/about_dppl/sister_library_projects.shtml

7. Special Libraries http://calarts.edu/library/aboutus/sisterlibrary California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) is supporting the foundation of the library at the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center (Kigali, Rwanda).

8. Considerations $$ Funding $$ Language Library needs & resources Institutional support How formal should the partnership be? Community support Flexibility

9. SISTER LIBRARIES WIKI http://wikis.ala.org/sisterlibraries/

20. Other routes to partnership Sister Cities US Embassy / American Corners Demographic information

22. WHAT’S THAT URL AGAIN? http://wikis.ala.org/sisterlibraries sister.libraries@gmail.com