For Immediate Release
July 2, 2014
For more information, contact:
Andrea Higginbotham
(202) 296-2296
[email protected]
Washington, DC – Since 1999, the international nonprofit Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) has been working with libraries in developing and transition economy countries to help remove economic, technical, and legal barriers to accessing information.
EIFL has partnerships in 50 member countries, and negotiates with publishers for affordable access to e-resources, and leads forward-looking advocacy campaigns for Open Access to research literature and fair copyright for users. Its efforts have empowered libraries to leverage information for education, learning, research, and sustainable community development.
For its work in putting libraries from Africa to Asia and Europe at the center of the movement to democratize access to information, and increasing the visibility of scholarly research, SPARC has recognized EIFL with its July 2014 Innovator Award
EIFL has had a great influence and reach with a modest budget and staff operating with a virtual office. There are 11 staff members working at locations around the world, led by Director Rima Kupryte in Rome.
By helping countries form library consortia, EIFL has enabled groups to leverage their influence and create a sustainable model to improve the access to information. It has provided training and helped craft Open Access policies, lobbied for changes to copyright laws, and made vital research materials available to all corners of the world, including Azerbaijan, Laos, and Sudan.
For more on EIFL, the July 2014 SPARC Innovator Profile is online at http://www.sparc.arl.org/initiatives/innovator.
The SPARC Innovator program recognizes advances in scholarly communication propelled by an individual, institution, or group. Typically, these advances exemplify SPARC principles by challenging the status quo in scholarly communication for the benefit of researchers, libraries, universities, and the public. SPARC Innovators are featured on the SPARC Web site semi-annually and have included John Willinsky, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), Michael Nielsen, Health Research Alliance, The World Bank, R. Preston McAfee, Harvard University FAS, Ted and Carl Bergstrom, Melissa Hagemann, among others.
For further information or a list of previous SPARC Innovators, please see the SPARC website.
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SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC’s advocacy, educational, and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.sparc.arl.org.