Library training opportunity in Pohnpei

If you are a resident of the U.S.-affiliated Pacific and are currently working in a library, archive, or museum, you may be eligible for a training opportunity funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (www.imls.gov) and administered by Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (www.prel.org). Leaders for Pacific Libraries is a three-year project funded by IMLS to offer training for preprofessional library staff.

The third and final LPL training, “Building Digital Library Collections With Greenstone,” will be held May 4–22, 2009, on the national campus of the College of Micronesia-FSM (www.comfsm.fm/national), in Palikir, Pohnpei State, Federated States of Micronesia.

One week will be devoted to training on the software, and two additional weeks will be spent building a “Pacific Digital Library.” The PDL will be an ongoing collaborative project of the participating institutions from throughout the U.S.-affiliated Pacific region.

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to build a variety of different kinds of digital library collections with the Greenstone digital library software, a comprehensive, open source system for constructing, presenting, and maintaining information collections. Collections will be built from HTML documents; Word, PDF and PostScript documents; images in various formats; MP3 and MIDI audio; MARC records; and more. For each collection, various different full-text search indexes and metadata-based browsers will be created. We will discuss support for the Dublin Core, OAI, and METS standards.

Attendees will receive this open source software on a CD-ROM that we will provide, along with various sample files, so that they can take it home and install it on their own machines.

Applicants will receive award notification by April 3, 2009. Direct round-trip airfare to Pohnpei, housing, and a modest per diem will be included as part of this award.

For eligibility criteria and how to apply, visit http://www.prel.org/programs/clt/imls-lpl/call-for-applicants-2009-imls-lpl.aspx.

Carefully review the information on the above website to determine your eligibility, before completing the application process. Contact Jane Barnwell, IMLS LPL Project Director, at barnwellj@prel.org, if you have any questions about your eligibility or program requirements.

PREL is an independent, nonprofit corporation that serves the educational community in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific, the continental United States, and countries throughout the world. PREL administers the Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific, one of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories funded through the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. PREL has service centers in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific islands, including American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM: Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap), Guam, Hawai‘i, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Republic of Palau.[B][I] (PREL)[/I][/B]