This is the second consecutive year that a team of soldiers from North Carolina has worked with the Moldovans in their quest to become OCC certified.

By Silvia Ciubrei, Scientific Medical Library of the Republic of Moldova,
Diane Darrow, BS, Coastal AHEC Library, Wilmington, North Carolina USA
Donna Flake, MSLS, Coastal AHEC Library, Wilmington, North Carolina USA

In 2006 all the twelve North Carolina medical libraries began a partnership with the Scientific Medical Library of Moldova. This ongoing partnership is part of a bilateral agreement between the Governor of North Carolina and President Voronin of Moldova. North Carolina Secretary of State, Elaine Marshall, coordinates many programs between North Carolina and Moldova. This partnership is modeled on the Sister Library initiative of the Medical Library Association with the Medical Library of Latvia.

The Scientific Medical Library serves as the National Medical Library for Moldova. The library is part of the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University Nicolae Testemitanui which has 1,000 professors, 4,800 students, 1,800 residents, and 91 residency programs. There are 6 faculties within the university and they are: General Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Public Health, and Residency and Training Courses for Doctors. The library employs 62 staff members. The library owns 1,200,000 books and journals (almost all in Russian). The library's collection is spread over several locations at the university. The library has five reading rooms, two information centers, and three internet classrooms located in the student hostels. It also has branches located in the Psychiatric Hospital, the City Hospital, and in the School of Training for Nurses.

This new program is fantastic and we appreciate it and value it. The partnership has made a tremendous difference to all of us at the medical school and we are sure this will contribute to the improvement of the system of medical education and health care in our country. Comments by Dr. Nicolae Esanu, President of the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University.

Over 7,000 current medical books and journals were shipped from North Carolina medical libraries to the Scientific Medical Library of Moldova.

• Health sciences Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
• Duke University Medical Center Library, Durham, NC
• Laupus Health Sciences Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
• Coy C. Carpenter Library, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem
• Coastal AHEC Medical Library, Wilmington, NC
• Charlotte AHEC Library and Information Resource Center, Charlotte, NC
• Northwest AHEC Libraries, Hickory, Salisbury, and Boone, NC
• Mountain AHEC Health Sciences Library, Asheville, NC
• Moses Cone Health System Library, Greensboro, NC
• Area L AHEC Library /Information Center, Rocky Mount, NC
• Wake AHEC Medical Library, Raleigh, NC
• Southern Regional AHEC Information Access Center, Fayetteville, NC

On June 18, 2009 the Moldova - NC Partnership helped with the donation of new medical books and journals in Moldova.

NCSU just delivered a complete 13,000 technical and scientific book collection to a University in Moldova.

Most libraries in North Carolina receive a lot of different free books from publishing companies. Sometimes the Library can’t utilize all these books and then donate them to others. In this context the Library of the Medical University in NC has agreed to donate such books to Medical libraries in Moldova. A partnership between the University in NC and the Medical University in Chisinau to maintain a regular supply of medical books to Moldova is being explored.

Some of the problems to overcome are the inventorying, storage and the shipment of these books.

School-to-School Projects.

• This project has the purpose of restarting an earlier, successful project to match classroom to enable HS students to no only become pen pals, but to also jointly study the same texts and then share their ideas and points of view. It became possible and more accessible now, because the number of schools with Internet access is growing and there are a high number of English speaking students and teachers all over the Moldova.
• The NC [NCSU, Goodwill Industries, SAS Institute and Counterpart International] project of PC donations to the Chisinau Schools is shipping 283 computers this August. The actual shipping costs were underwritten by donations through the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville. The intent is to eventually provide 1000 computers and the creation of 100 computer learning labs in the public schools. SunTV as a donation will provide the equipment installation and Internet service connections at the schools. See attachment Blue for additional background information.
• The exchange of students as interns has continued and is now including an increasing number of college students.

Website: http://www.coastalahec.org/library/library-moldova.asp

In 1999 a high school partnership was begun between Ion Creanga Liceu in Chisinau and Northern Forsyth High School in Winston-Salem, NC. The students of both schools posted biographies on a joint web page, read books together, and did book reports as class projects. The teachers involved were Candi Lavender at Northern Forsyth and Valentina Mitrofan at Ion Creanga. (Students at North Forsyth raised money for a donation to an orphanage in Moldova. This provided fresh milk to the children for a year.)

In 2001 Mrs. Lavender began working at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem and formed a second partnership with Lyceum V. Alecsandri in Ungheni with teachers, Elena Chelaru and Diane Rectu. Students at Parkland shared information about Moldova with their student body. Both schools created virtual field trips of their communities. In 2002 students are working on a project to collect, share, and compare local folktales. Mrs. Lavender went to Moldova in September 2001 and visited both partnership schools.

The partnerships were organized and facilitated by Ms. Diane Midness of the Center for International Understanding.