Assistant librarian Saw Harrison (left) and IT-administrator Yet Htet Ko (right) from the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) received their new library catalogue at the ongoing RWI conference for human rights librarians in Bangkok.
“This catalogue will allow the commission’s staff and target groups to easily access human rights resources available at the library,” says Karl-Adam Tiderman, RWI’s librarian.
RWI has also uploaded nearly 2,000 electronic open access resources to this catalogue, which will serve as a foundation for the commission’s future electronic collection.
Thanks to the library’s electronic presence, human rights resources will get increased visibility, and as many of these have been donated to the MNHRC by RWI, the catalogue also increases the value of past RWI donations.
Saw Harrison says that this new system will be better both for library users and for its staff, and Yet Htet Ko adds that the system also is easy to administrate.
The catalogue is a “Koha” installation – the most commonly used, and widely regarded as the best, open source library system that exists today, in parity with most commercial systems. It has been set up in cooperation between the Raoul Wallenberg Institute’s NHRI unit and the Institute’s own library.
“This is yet another step forward for the dissemination of human rights in Myanmar,” says Tiderman.