SMH Baltic Sea Region Cooperation: “Transfer of Knowledge”, partnership programme with medical libraries in Northwest Russia, 2004 – 2011 : an asymmetrical partnership?

Introduction

Health information without frontiers, this year’s conference motto, inspired us to take a closer look at our own partnership programme. SMH (Section for Medicine and Health of the Norwegian Library Association) has for a long time been involved in international cooperation with the focus on our neighbouring countries around the Baltic Sea.
The overall objective of this particular partnership programme is to enhance and develop library and information services to healthcare personnel through strengthening and improving professional knowledge among librarians in the medical and health sciences. The librarians’ professional development and their improvement of the English language are given priority.  
The programme is built on experience achieved during the Nordic-Baltic health libraries programme 1994-2004.
Continuing education courses, study tours and participation in EAHIL conferences have been the main activities. The study tours and conference participations have been for one to four persons at a time.

Questions/Objectives

One of our goals is to make this project sustainable so that our Russian partners themselves can take more responsibility for future courses.

English as the only language for the courses proved to be a bit too ambitious, and in the beginning, we provided translations into Russian. We wanted to find out if the participants felt their knowledge of English had improved over the years.

International cooperation is a challenge and requires commitment, time and money. What are our experiences so far? Do we have an equal partnership or is it more a “development aid programme”?
The enthusiasm shown by all the involved parties has been an important motivation and condition for the project. However, we feel that there is some lack of progress in our partnership. Good communication and mutual trust is very important, but language problems and cultural differences may have caused confusion now and then. Do we know that the "Transfer of Knowledge" programme is relevant to our colleagues in Russia? Do they honestly tell us about their needs, or do they just accept what we propose?
Until now, the project has been fully funded by different Norwegian institutions, such as the Norwegian Barents Secretariat, SMH and the University of Oslo. Russia is a wealthy country. Do the libraries benefit from this wealth?

Method

We e-mailed a short questionnaire about the partnership to 35 of the participants. The sample chosen was not random.  We chose among the most consistent participants.

In a cover letter, we explained the need to evaluate the programme and urged them to respond in order to keep the programme going. We also encouraged them to forward to names we might have missed. The deadline was two weeks, extended to three after a reminder.

We used the free version of the online survey tool SurveyMonkey that allows max 10 questions. The idea was to keep it short and simple. The responses would be anonymous. The questions were made by reviewing our objectives for the cooperation, including applications for financial support from various Norwegian institutions.

Most of the questions had a 5-point rating scale with the opportunity to give comments.

A similar survey was also distributed to 13 of the non-Russian lecturers and facilitators in order to see if the experiences matched those of the participants.

Results

From the 35 participants in Russia, 12 completed the survey (34%)

The 10 questions to the participants:

1. Has your participation in TOK been useful for your daily work and has it increased your competence in librarianship?
   Response: Useful to very useful
2. If you answered positively to question no. 1, have you shared your new knowledge with those of your colleagues who did not participate?
   Response: Some ( not much)sharing
3. Have you widened your professional network through participating in TOK?
   Response: Only 1 had not widened her network one way or another
4. Have you improved your knowledge of English through your participation in TOK?
   Response: From very little to very much
5. Are there any local sources of funding for courses and professional development that you can apply to? Can you give some examples of courses you have attended?
   Response: 3 yes, 4 no, 5 don’t know. 3 have given examples of other courses they attended
6. If you were going to arrange a course yourself, what would you choose?
   Response: In addition to what we suggested: Teaching different groups (students, post-graduates etc), psychology of teaching, web 3.0, fundraising and communication with state government
7. Would you have participated in TOK if your institution had to pay a fee?
   Response: Most did not know
8. Web 2.0: Have you used anything of what you have learnt in your job? Do you have any examples?
   Response: Most have not used, two have done a lot. One gave an example
9. TOK: Do all the involved parties learn from each other? Is it a mutual cooperation?
   Response: More or less
10. 10.   Praise and criticism: What has been good and what could have been done better?
    Response: Overall - very good.  – “A good translator into Russian is necessary”.

From the 13 lecturers, 8 completed (61 %). The number of questions was halved. Primarily we would like to find out how the lecturers, from outside Russia, experienced this partnership programme.

The lecturer respondents were more positive in all respects. They also gave more comments on both the professional as well as the social side of the partnership.

Discussion

It was very satisfying to see that all respondents found project useful. The low response rate from the participants however was a disappointment.  Due to the low rate the sample is hardly representative and we must be cautious in interpreting findings.

The low response rate may be due to various reasons: Have all received the e-mail?  Low motivation to respond, ambivalence or politeness, language limitations, other library traditions.

To answer our question in the title: Yes, the partnership is asymmetrical as long as one partner provides lecturers and money.  We have attended a couple of conferences in Norway dealing with experiences in cooperating with Russia – not politically, but from people to people - both with Norwegian and Russian participants. Most of the experiences are similar; as long as a Norwegian institution funds the project there is an interest. This diminishes when trying to make the partnership more equal.

It takes time to build relationships, and to be successful and sustainable there must be a two way process.

The motivation for continuing the cooperation has always been strong among the “Transfer of Knowledge” organizers.  It has been a great pleasure meeting colleagues from different places, as both teachers and participants, and a good friendship has developed among us.
However, can we assume that the motivation will remain if the so-called “cooperation” continues to be unequal? It becomes more and more difficult to get full economic support without contribution from the partner.  Will other types of international cooperation emerge?