Anissa Medjahed's testimonial

 Being chosen to participate in ILNP was really a great opportunity for me. It was wonderful and beneficial as it allowed me to meet new librarianship professionals around the world and to share librarian issues with them.

This great program gathered colleagues from different backgrounds all over the world and gave them the opportunity to communicate and discuss different issues that concern librarianship.

I encourage librarians to apply in this program, because it'll give them the chance to discover how libraries around the world work, meet new people, get notified by different international events and have the opportunity to attend them.        

I'd like to thank the whole ILNP team for this unique experience and for the great work they do to gather all these people from different time zones and different backgrounds. I also want to thank my partner Lily for the discussions we had, and Jessica O'Neil our liaison for her support and her regular follow-up.

PS: A special thank to my classmate and friend Nadjiba who told about this program.

Anissa Medjahed

Librarian at UBMA library, Algeria

Win Shih's testimonial

Participating in the International Librarians Networking Program (ILPN) program amid the pandemic and social justice movement is a particularly rewarding experience. Due to the time differences, my partner and I communicated mostly via emails. By addressing those discussion prompt provided by ILPN, we learned about each other’s position, library, institution, research interests, career path and aspiration, as well as library profession and organizations in our region. We further shared our thoughts about the changes and impacts at personal, organizational, and professional levels during a time of uncertainty and isolation. The capstone project enabled us to reflect on institutional and personal efforts and strategies in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in access, collection development, and services.

I am grateful for this transformational experience in interacting and collaborating with a colleague abroad. ILPN not only expands my horizon, but also extend my “invisible college” beyond the local “sphere of the known.”

Carmen Lei’s testimonial

My name is Carmen Lei, I’m a Chinese and I have been in the library field for around 18 years, I’m a librarian in Macao Institute for Tourism Studies. I would like to thank the organizer of the ILNP for such a great opportunity to include me as one of the participants which I have a chance to meet up with librarians around the globe.

I was matched with Noorjahan Shaikh, Head and Librarian of AISC Library, India and April Manabat, Expert Librarian at Nazarbayev Univerisity Library in Kazakhstan. The Trio group were able to connect via email, whatsapp and also conducted meet ups via zoom to exchange information and share our experiences in librarianship. As all of us are working in academic library, so we have similar grounds for discussion, we were able to share roles and responsibilities and also focuses on discussion on how we act particularly to support our users in times of the COVID epidemic, discussion not just focus on provision of services and library support but also health and wellbeing of users in the library. The COVID 19 has brought library services in a virtual mode and we all need to work in the ‘new normal’, sharing will surely continues even after our program.

I would like to thank my liaison, April Moyo for supporting us to ensure we are connected, I’m also thankful for the friendship with these two energetic ladies, I hope that when the COVID pandemic is over, I can meet my trio team in person and I would definitely suggest those who would like to enhance your professional experience to participate in this fascinating program.

Aieda Mustafa Salman's testimonial

My name is Aieda Mustaf Salman from Iraq I have a master degree in library and information science from Al-Mustansiriya University  I am librarian and I worked in the library field for 30 years in the central library of Baghdad university , and I have interests in the field of scientific communication, electronic library systems, and open source systems.

it’s a unique experience to participate in this program  I loved to participate  ILNP program because   to help us  on knowledge and experience transfer between to partners and learn, and benefit from each other’s, and  gives us huge chances to develop our libraries.

Though I am worked in largest University library in Iraq, I have the opportunity to meet my partner from Croatia (Jelena Madunić)  who is worked am employed as cataloging librarian at the University of Split Library. and I communicated with her. We talked about various aspects of our academic training, how to develop program training , library systems , and how to use it. We talked about other interests in different aspects of life.

finally I would like to thank all the organizers of the International Librarians Networking Program for this great opportunity to become one of the participants.

and I would also like to thank my supervisor (Jessica O'Neil) who continued to communicate with us during the program.