The Namibia Research4Life (R4L) Training-of-Trainer Workshop

The Research4Life (R4L) Training-of-Trainer Workshop was held at the University of Namibia (UNAM) in Windhoek, Namibia from 12 to 15 March 2012. The workshop was organised by ITOCA and UNAM with funding from WHO WHO/AFRO Health Sciences Library and Documentation Centre and was attended by faculty and librarians from selected universities and government departments in Namibia. Local arrangements were ably coordinated by Chenjerai Mabhiza, Jacobina Mwiiyale and Bravismore Mumanyi, University of Namibia Library.

The Participants     
The workshop had a rich pool of participants drawn from faculty and Libraries of selected institutions in Namibia including UNAM, National Archives and the Ministry of Education, Division of Community Libraries. The participants were mainly librarians. For the numerous academic reference librarians, it was critical to cross train them in accessing information from the various Research4Life (R4L) programs. This group of 28 was equally divided between the two tracks of health and agriculture/environment.

The Workshop   
 The University Librarian Ms Ellen Ndeshi Namhila gave the opening address expressing her appreciation for the workshop being finally held in Namibia immediately after changing status from a group B to a group A country. The four-day workshop targeted lecturers, researchers and librarians as brokers of the information. The main facilitators of the workshop were Professor Lenny Rhine from Librarians Without Borders (LWB) and Michael Chimalizeni from ITOCA.
The aim of the course was to impart skills on access and use of electronic resources focusing on R4L and TEEAL programs. Most of the participants to the workshop were familiar with AGORA, HINARI and OARE but still they found the workshop extremely useful and expressed that the enhance skills in effective searching and other features would have a positive impact on their work. The mixture of Power Point presentations and hands-on exercises made the understanding of how to get the best out of the programmes easier.  The main objective of the workshop was to empower participants to better utilize electronic resources available to them through R4L and spearhead the promotion of the e-resources upon returning to their home institutions.