The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) officially launched its Virtual Library last week during the celebration of its 28th Anniversary since the signing of the SPREP Treaty, which established the organisation as a fully autonomous body to be based in Apia, Samoa.
The celebration was held in the form of an Open Day, which saw approximately 150 students from seven primary schools and colleges around Samoa, as well as college and university students in five of SPREP’s Member countries, take part in both face-to-face and virtual activities aimed at increasing young people’s awareness of the work done by the Secretariat.
The Open Day included a virtual component for the first time, which allowed College students from American Samoa and University students from Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to join the festivities virtually.
The main event of the virtual component was the official launch of the SPREP Virtual Library.
“We’re pleased to launch the SPREP virtual library which is an online resource of over 40,000 records and online documents to help build knowledge on our Pacific environment,” said Ms Miraneta Williams-Hazelman, Manager of the SPREP Knowledge Management Services.
“Over the past 28 years we have come a long way in terms of developing Pacific environment knowledge and managing this at the Secretariat. We have grown from humble beginnings to housing a vast amount of information for people to access, it’s a team effort from across the Pacific islands region, and our partners. We’re honoured to work with you all to help grow our knowledge of the Pacific environment and making it accessible to all.”
The SPREP Library was first established in 1994 at the Secretariat’s first headquarters in Vaitele in Samoa. It started with a collection of only 2,000 hard copy reports and 50 journals and was looked after by one librarian in a small space with no air-conditioning.
Due to the limited space, most of the collection was stored in boxes inside shipping containers, until the Secretariat moved to its current headquarters in Vailima, Samoa in 2000. There, the library was housed together with the Finance Department, as there was still no dedicated space available for it.
In 2002, the European Union funded the construction of a new building to house the SPREP Library, Records and Archives. At that time, it was called the Information Resource Centre and Archives, and now, the library’s collection consisted of over 40,000 records, with 7,000 available in full text.
The development of the Virtual Library started in October 2020, with the successful completion in March 2021. It was made possible through financial support from the European Union-funded Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+) Scaling Up Pacific Adaptation (SUPA) project, along with technical support by the SPREP Information Technology Team and systems developer consultant, Eighty Options.
The Virtual Library was fully updated in May 2021 to the current version that is now available to all people of the Pacific and beyond.
One university student from Solomon Islands who attended the virtual session of the Open Day and witnessed the launch of the Virtual Library said, “One thing I really enjoyed was learning about the SPREP Virtual Library and the SPREP website. This will help me extract information needed for my academic writing.”
To access the SPREP Virtual Library, please click on this link: https://library.sprep.org
For more information, please contact Ms Miraneta Williams-Hazelman at [email protected].