In a bid to further strengthen SPREP Member countries’ knowledge of the Pacific environment, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme’s (SPREP) Knowledge Management team conducted a virtual training session to introduce participants from Kiribati to the SPREP Virtual Library.
The upgraded Virtual Library was officially launched in 2021 during the celebration of the 28th Anniversary of the signing of the Treaty which established SPREP as a fully autonomous body to be based in Apia, Samoa. It is an online resource of over 47,000 records and online documents which can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, and at any time as long as they have access to the internet.
The virtual training was attended by participants from the Parliamentary Library of Kiribati, Kiribati National Library and Archives, Sacred Heart High School Library, St Patrick High School Library, and the Ministry of Education Library.
“This session was a follow-up training to one we conducted last year with the Senior Librarian from the Parliamentary Library of Kiribati. This year we invited them again but extended the invitation to all other libraries in the country,” said Ms Miraneta Williams-Hazelman, Manager, Knowledge Management.
“We started the session by providing a brief history of the SPREP library, from its humble beginnings in 1994 at the first SPREP office at Vaitele with only 2,000 hard copy reports and 50 journals,” Ms Hazelman said.
“We then conducted a live demonstration of the Virtual Library, covering everything from all the different menus and functions as well as sharing shortcuts, tips and tricks to search the Virtual Library more efficiently,” she added.
Participants were also offered assistance with accessing information resources from other areas of the SPREP website and from other sites where they can find peer-reviewed journal articles on various subject areas. They were also encouraged to subscribe to SPREP’s ‘Give Me Library’ monthly highlights and SPREP’s quarterly publications list to keep them up to date with the latest information and additions to the SPREP Virtual Library.
The Kiribati Parliamentary Library’s Senior Librarian, Ms Teawa Tuare, commented after the session that they were grateful to SPREP’s Knowledge Management Team led by Ms Hazelman for availing their time to facilitate the training.
“The training session was very helpful. We all learnt a lot from it, and it was also very helpful in enabling us to better assist our staff, students, researchers and other users of our library with their information needs,” Ms Tuare said.
The SPREP Information Resource Centre and Archives / Library is available for visitation once Samoa’s SOE restrictions are uplifted. Meanwhile, you can visit us virtually and our library collection through the following link: https://library.sprep.org.
For more information, please contact Ms Miraneta Williams-Hazelman at [email protected] or the SPREP Knowledge Management team at [email protected].