Libraries in ODINCARSA partner countries have developed several library databases that assist researchers and decision makers. The following library databases are currently available (click on the images to visit the sites)

	The ODINCARSA OceanPortal's main goal is mainly to promote knowledge on the oceans and facilitate information exchange for a vast number of people in South America and Caribbean.The Portal Structure is easy for Web surfers and enables users to access contents by subject, geographic location and by personal searches. With this design we hope that you return to the Portal regularly to obtain information related to legal, political, scientific, economic, environmental and education issues that, in anyway, affect the actual and future situation of the Oceanic and Coastal Spaces in our Region. Portal Oceanico is maintained mainly in Spanish but some information is available in English as well
	The IAMSLIC Latin-American Regional Group (Grupo Regional Latinoamericano de IAMSLIC) is formed by 41 members of IAMSLIC from 12 countries of Latin-America. The regional group will have as main objective, to strength the cooperation between libraries in Latin America. To accomplish this purpose the experience and mechanisms of IAMSLIC will be used along with other mechanism that will accomplish our objectives
	The Union List of periodicals of the IAMSLIC Latin-American Regional Group (Listado Unido de Publicaciones Periodicas) allows you to find out where a journal is available in the region. The system also enables requesting articles (for IAMSLIC members only)
	ODINPUBCARSA is the e-repository for the ODINCARSA regions. This sub-project has started in 2006.
	ASFA (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts) Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) is an International Cooperative Information System which comprises an abstracting and indexing service covering the world's literature on the science, technology, management, and conservation of marine, brackish water, and freshwater resources and environments, including their socio-economic and legal aspects. The ASFA bibliographic database is the principal output of the system and it contains approximately 1,000,000 references, with coverage since 1971. About 3,500 new bibliographic references are added each month to the database. Each reference includes: the title of the document in its original language (all non-English titles are also translated into English); an English language and/or non-English language abstract and subject; taxonomic and geographic index entries as relevant. You can access ASFA online through the CSA Illumina service (you will need a userID and password) Free access for Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDC) to ASFA products The project to supply the ASFA Database (free of charge) to Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDC) is an attempt to provide access to the ASFA database to those Institutes that cannot join ASFA and/or that cannot afford the commercial subscription price to ASFA. The project is limited to institutes in LIFDC countries, because of the commercial nature of the ASFA partnership. The project began in 1999 and was originally limited to providing only the ASFA CD-ROM to institutes only in Africa. The project was subsequently enlarged to include all LIFDC countries and also to include access to the ASFA database via Internet (albeit many LIFDC countries institutes do not have the necessary internet connectivity). For institutes in LIFDC countries in Africa, the number of institutions accessing ASFA under this initiative is 38. For the rest of the world ASFA LIFDC project, including both those receiving ASFA on CD-ROM and those receiving it via Internet, the total number of ecipients (other than Africa) is 13. It should be noted that a number of Institutes (7 to date), as a result of this project, have joined the ASFA Partnership (i.e. they submit ASFA bibliographic references to the ASFA database for the aquatic science literature published in their country. In return, they receive the ASFA information products as a result of their membership in ASFA and not as a result of the LIFDC project). A List of ASFA input centres in the ODINCARSA partner countries can be found HERE

The Latin American Group on Marine information Management (IAMSLIC Regional Group for LA)

Constitution of THE LATIN AMERICAN GROUP IN MARINE INFORMATION 
                                          Mazatlan, Mexico (October 2002)

                      Coordinated activities Latin American Group and EPCOR

MARINE INFORMATION PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES

1.       Latin American Group on Marine Information meets in virtual forum

At the end of March 2005, the Latin American Group in Marine Information Management established for the first time a virtual forum. 11 experts from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina participated in this discussion.

This first successful experience was the beginning of another several further forums where the Agenda for the group was discussed. The main issues discussed were.

a.       The Regional Marine Libraries Catalogue development, which is progressing thanks to contributions of most of the Members of Latin American group who are also part of ODINCARSA.

b.       The technical implications and alternatives for an Interlibrary Loan Exchange System were discussed. ARIEL, Win Isis, Prospero and Adobe were some of the options analyzed.

c.       Discussion about the installation of scanners provided by ODINCARSA was done during these sessions.

2.       Progress of the Digital Repository of ODINCARSA

After the last training workshop on Marine information management. The ODINCARSA MIM group designated to Mrs. Catalina Lopez (Mexico) and Miss Patricia Muñoz (Chile) as coordinators of the ODIPUBCARSA project. Terms of reference of reviewers were established and a close work with Dr. Marc Goaverts (Belgium) was done in order to start feeding the system.

The repository is being developed with the active participation of the following ODINCARSA Member countries: Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador,   México, Uruguay Trinidad y Tobago y Venezuela. From these countries Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay have created their collections. The coordinator team of the project was granted by IAMSLIC with 1000 USD.

The repository is available on: http://doclib.uhasselt.be/carsa/. The progress of the project was reported in the IAMSLIC Conference 2006 and the Dublin Core Annual conference  held in  October 2006 in Colima, Mexico.

3.       Library exchange in Latin America is enhanced

In according to the information disseminated by Mr. Steve Watkins (USA) and active member of IAMSLIC, Latin America has enhanced the inter library cooperation.  The reported information indicates: “The most significant shift may be seen in the Latin American region, where the first full year of availability of the Latin American Union List of Serials and a sustained effort by the Latin American Regional Group to promote regional resource sharing have proven highly successful. In 2004/05, 31.5% of all borrowing requests were submitted by Latin American libraries, while only 3.8% of all requests were received by libraries in Latin America. In stark contrast, the numbers for 2005/06 show that the number of borrowing requests received by Latin American libraries has quadrupled to 15.7% of the total, while the number of requests submitted by Latin American libraries has risen modestly to 38.6% of the total. Even more significantly, while only 5.8% of borrowing requests from Latin American libraries in 2004/05 were submitted to other libraries in the Latin American region, in 2005/06 30.7% of such requests were submitted to sister libraries within the region”.

4.       The Latin American Regional Union List of Serial

      ( http://library.csumb.edu/iamslic/latinoamericano/unionlist )    

The Latin American Regional Group launched the First Regional Union List – The Latin American Regional Union List of Serial: where you can find  more than 8, 350 holding records from 17 libraries from 9 Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela).

This action was possible with the great participation and enthusiastic support of 17 members of the Latin American Regional Group and the great help and volunteer collaboration of Steve Watkins (USA) and German Ramirez (Mexico) with the developing of a database, transfer the information and set up the holdings in the Union List of Serial home at the following web site:

 http://library.csumb.edu/iamslic/latinoamericano/unionlist      

It is a very useful tool for the marine information management to know the publications of the Latin American Libraries and Documentation Centers.

5.      Support of ODINCARSA to Latin American Document delivery project

With the support of IAMSLIC, EPCOR/IAI and ODINCARSA/ IOC during 2005, 6 institutions were beneficiated with scanners and ARIEL licenses. 5 scanners and one ARIEL license were distributed between 6 Institutions from 5 countries: Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Colombia.

Actually the institutions are working with some software to digitalize the scientific documents and sharing their holding, through the Union List of the Latin-American Regional Group.

6.       Latin American Group Coordinator ends a fruitful period 2002-2006

The Latin American group was born during the XXVIII IAMSLIC Conference on 2002, when by first time several Latin American delegates met together to discuss a minimal regional agenda for interlibrary cooperation. The group requested to ODINCARSA to coordinate the necessary actions to constitute the group. The group elected to Mrs. Clara Ramirez (Mexico), as Coordinator of the group, then the Latin American Group was approved by IAMSLIC. The main achievements of the coordinator were: the consolidation of the group since its start, joining more than 41 members from 12 Latin American countries, to motivate the joint work to offer information services through the web: http://ola.icmyl.unam.mx/larg/,, the Latin American Union List of serials with more than 8350 holdings from 17 libraries, the funding from another sources to implement the Regional Document Delivery system, the regional directory of librarians and institutions and the outstanding representation of the region during the International IAMSLIC conferences.

After a very hard but fruitful period (2002-2006), the Coordinator of the Latin American group, Mrs. Clara Ramirez, conveyed its position to Mrs. Guillermina Cosulich (Argentina).

7.        The Regional Ocean Portal (PORTAL OCEÁNICO)  www.portaloceanico.net

More than 50000 visitors have been in the Portal which has now, more than 3700 knowledge objects available in several categories.

The number of visits to the portal has increased, today we overpass more than 86.500 from the beginning of the project. We have more than 5123 contents and English and Portuguese contents have increased significantly during the last  year. 80% of visitors are from Latin America and the Caribbean, 17,7% are from USA, Canada and Europe, the rest are from Asia, Australia and Africa.

8.       ODINCARSA WEB SITE  (www.odincarsa.net )

ODINCARSA web site was full changed. The work implied a complete update, of national coordinators, and technical contacts on ocean data management and information management. It was also included new sections where products and services were more visible. The web site is fully translated in English and Spanish. The changes and updates were informed to all the network, and is being promoted at national level.

9.       ODINCARSA DIRECTORY OF EXPERTS -CARSA DIR ( www.ioc.unesco.org/carsadir  )

The regional Directory of Experts of Latin America and the Caribbean has been a successful contribution to Ocean Expert. There are more than 800 professionals records registered. This has been a good tool to promote to marine experts from the region to another continents, and facilitating contacts, coordination and involvement in International projects.

10.    ODINCARSA REGIONAL LIBRARIES CATALOGUE  (http://ola.icmyl.unam.mx/larg/ )

The Latin American Group on Marine information Management. joins more than 41 members from 12 Latin American countries, to motivate the joint work to offer information services through the web: http://ola.icmyl.unam.mx/larg/,, not the Latin American Union List of serials with more than 8350 holdings from 17 libraries, is a reality and available through their web site.

      
INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

In order to foster the Latin American Group on Marine Information Management , ODINCARSA supported the  IAMSLIC Membership of the following libraries during 2007:

http://www.cioh.org.co
http://www.invemar.org.co
http://www.cuba.cu/ciencia/citma/ama/oceanologia/Default.html
http://www.inocar.mil.ec
http://www.inp.gov.ec
http://www.ciidirsinaloa.inp.mx
http://www.pancanal.com
http://www.dhn.mil.pe
http://www.shoa.cl
http://biblioteca.cicese.mx
http://ola.icmyl.unam.mx/biblio
http://www.xcaret.igeorfcu.unam.mx
http://www.cicimar.ipn.mx
http://ciad.mx/biblioteca/index.htm
http://www.acuarionacional.cu
http://mda.cinvestav.mx
http://www.itmarmaz.edu.mx
http://cibnor.mx/biblioteca/ebiblio.php
http://www.inidep.edu.ar
http://www.inocar.mil.ec
http://sia.mxl.uabc.mx
http://biblio.uabcs.mx

ASSESMENTS, DATA BASES AND OTHER ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Feasibility Assesment for an ILMS System for Latin America  

Data Base of Marine Libraries