The IRC WASH LibraryThe WASH Information Consortium 24th September 2012

What it is

• IRC’s WASH Library

– acts as WASH Sector Memory, documenting more than 40 years

of sector progress, analysis and tools.

– provides direct access to over 15,000 full text WASH sector

documents.

– The collection is built around current themes of interest of IRC

and the WASH sector in general and contains a large collection

of ‘grey’ literature.

Connecting and empowering people's capacities

What is offers• Search function – that allows one to search both IRC and non IRC

WASH documents and Share one’s favourite search results

• E-journals – provide low-cost/free articles

• Selected web resources - DBs, Blogs, country profiles, discussion

lists, donors, equipment, events, factsheets, Glossaries, Thesauri

(collaboration effort) and education materials

• Regional and Thematic information

• Thesauri in different lauguages (En/Fr/Sp) http://thesaurus.watsan.net/

• A Q&A service

Try at http://www.washdoc.info

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Cont. My LibraryMy library: Tools to provide services adapted to one’s interest & needs. Create,

save, share and reuse reference lists; save ones search commands for next

time

References

• Visitors can select titles from the library and add them to a reference lists; they can create and store multiple lists.

• This reference list tool - users can select titles from the library database and

export this to RTF format for inclusion in papers or publications, using the

Harvard reference format

Search

• Visitors can save & store a search query and share one’s favourite search results

• The results are also available as an RSS-feed, allowing visitors to create personalised news updates and use an email alert service when new publications are added on one’s topics of interest.

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Benefits of the WASH library

• freely accessible on the web

• Access to grey information of the sector

• facilitates creation of partnership & networking

• Promotes Institutional Research outputs

• Strives to preserves digital materials for the long term by creating

backups

• Leads to other IRC info services thru the library – General WASH

news and updates

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How it is structured

• We use an inhouse numeric classification system in the library

How data can be exploited for external use:

• We have an extension for eZ Publish - other eZ Publish websites can use

this plugin to search in the database, also with a pre-selected filter. 

• We have a REST API - developers can easily create software to search in

the database and show individual titles. (this is being further developed, to

provide information in the Dublin-core format)

• Use the reference list tool

• Use the stored search tool, users can create a search query and keep

updated on new items

• Thematic newsfeeds, users can indicate the themes and regions of their

choice, and receive regular email message with news, including new titles in

the library.

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Outreach and Promotional efforts of the WASH libraryOutreach:

• Our library is a global resource that is used widely by academics,

practioners and people working with policy issues within the sector

Promotional efforts:

– Collaboration – current development with Akvopedia and

KnowledgePoint

– Interlinking – linking to our blogs and news services E-Source

– Together with DANS - expanding to storing, sharing data and

facilitating this with orgainsations in the countries we work

– add to IRC outgoing email a link to the library

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Challenges

• Funding

• Preservation of information

• Changing technology in terms of new media & making services

relevant to the google age

• Administration

– Uploading and maintenance of resources

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Wayforward• Expand services thru collaboration with others

• Promote open access open data

• Knowledge management/ content management

• Archiving and preservation

• Looking for innovative business models

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