APSIG newsletter no. 59: November 2005

RMIT projects in Vietnam

RMIT International University Vietnam, a subsidiary of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, has been engaged for the past four and a half years in the project management of a number of learning resource centre development projects in collaboration with Vietnamese universities.

Each learning resource centre project entails the design, construction and development of a large-scale library facility based on contemporary models and standards of information services, together with the provision of information technology infrastructure, high quality teaching and learning facilities and a range of current print and electronic information resources and services.

The development of these facilities and resources is supported by capacity building programs in the areas of management and staff training, financial sustainability, and operational and service development.

It is an ambitious and high-profile development program, aiming to improve the level of resources and facilities available to students in Vietnamese universities, act as a model for library development elsewhere in the country, and to initiate reform to teaching and learning processes through the encouragement of independent resource-based learning.

RMIT Vietnam is currently collaborating on four projects, located at the universities of Hue and Danang (central provinces), Cantho (Mekong Delta) and Thai Nguyen (northern mountainous area). The Hue and Danang Learning Resource Centres have been opened in June 2004 and July 2005 respectively, while the Cantho LRC is due to open early in 2006 and the Thai Nguyen LRC in 2007.

In addition to the learning resource centre projects, RMIT Vietnam has also been active in assisting the development of infrastructure for the practice of librarianship at a national level in Vietnam.

A number of workshops have been organised to encourage the adoption of major international bibliographic standards, and to explore ways in which libraries can work together co-operatively to share resources, improve professional practices and work towards the development of a Vietnamese national library association.

From these initiatives has emerged a collaborative project between RMIT Vietnam and the National Library of Vietnam for the authorised translation of the DDC 14th abridged edition. The translation of MARC 21 has already been completed by NACESTI, the Vietnamese National Centre for Scientific and Technical Information, and a third project to undertake the translation of AACR2 is proposed for the near future.

Michael Robinson, manager