A panel of eminent librarians with many years of experience working in an international context worked with Elsevier Library Relations to select 10 recipient libraries, which are located in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Ibrahima Bob

Ibrahima Bob is from Senegal, the westernmost country of Africa, and works at Africa Consultants International, an American Dakar-based NGO specializing in communication for development. Currently Ibrahima is the West Africa Regional coordinator for the Open Knowledge Network, a DfID (Department of International Development, UK) funded project to support creation and sharing of local content to support development.  

Ibrahima is also President of the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA). His professional interests include improving access to information, Information & Communications Technologies (ICTs) training, and information resources for developing countries.

Derek Law

Derek Law is currently Head of the Information Resources Directorate as well as Professor in the Department of Computing and Head of the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde. He has worked in several British universities since 1970 and has published almost 200 book chapters, articles and conference papers since then, some of them republished in seven other languages. Most of his work has been on the development of networked resources in higher education and the creation of national information policy. Recently he has worked on the use of wireless technology in developing new methods of teaching and learning.

Derek is immediate past Treasurer of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA); past President of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland (CILIPS) and past President of the Electronic Information for Libraries foundation (eIFL), which promotes electronic access to journals for developing countries. He has served on a wide range of national level committees relating to electronic libraries and archives and was directly involved in setting up both the BIDS (Bath Information and Data Services) and AHDS (Arts & Humanities Data Service) projects. He has also conducted reviews in over two dozen universities.

Tony McSean

Tony McSean is Elsevier’s Director of Library Relations. Before taking up his post in August 2004, Tony held the position of Director of the library of the British Medical Association for 16 years and, earlier, worked in the British Library’s National Bibliographic Service.

Tony has served on the Board of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries since 1992, has twice been Treasurer and Secretary, and twice has been elected President. He is currently chairing a committee to establish professional accreditation for European health librarians. He has been a member of the CILIPS and Library Association Council for 8 years and has been active in the Medical Library Association’s International Cooperation Section. He was chair of the 8th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (2000) and has spoken and published widely on library matters.                                         

Lenny Rhine

Lenny Rhine, Ph.D.,is Assistant Director for Collection Management at the Health Science Center Libraries, University of Florida. Since 1992, he has been involved in international librarianship predominantly in Sub-Sahara Africa. Besides coordinating the UF/University of Zambia Medical Library Partnership, Lenny has presented numerous workshops and papers about IT applications for developing country health information needs in both Africa and Latin America. He works closely with the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa on various training projects including an email HTML course that is currently underway.

Currently, Lenny is the compiler of the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)  Health Links gateway as well as the INASP  Library Partnership Database. He is the recipient of the 2004 International Cooperation Section Award, Medical Library Association (US) in recognition of a colleague for his/her contribution to international cooperation.