Our Research & Knowledge Management Liaison Librarian, Manuel de la Cruz Gutierrez, will be traveling to Guatemala City as part of a delegation from the Guatemala-Penn Partnership (GPP). This delegation, including Perelman School of Medicine faculty members Dr. Fran Barg, Dr. Judy Shea, and Dr. Kent Bream, will deliver an Implementation Science short course to junior researchers, clinicians interested in research, and thesis level medical students on January 9th – 12th, 2019 . These are individuals interested in applying for pilot research funds from Penn. Manuel will teach a portion of the workshop dedicated to literature searching with a focus on evidence-based medicine and efficient management of information. In addition, Manuel will meet with librarians from Universidad Francisco Marroquín (UFM) and Universidad de San Carlos (USAC) who have previously visited Penn Libraries. We are excited for this opportunity to rekindle our working relationship with our librarian colleagues at these key GPP partner institutions. Further, Manuel will have the chance to explore a new relationship with another Guatemala City university library, that of Universidad de Rafael Landivar. 

The Biomedical Library’s past collaborations with GPP and Dr. Bream include our award from the Elsevier Foundation to do an information needs assessment at the Hospitalito Atitlan and explore mobile health applications in the rural areas.  The grant also funded a workshop on mobile health apps for the librarians at UFM and USAC, and partially funded our Guatemalan librarian colleagues’ travel to visit Penn Libraries. Generous gift funds from Jeff (W’78, PAR’09) and Annie Seltzer contributed to supplying mobile devices and outfitting the Hospitalito library which had previously been unequipped with furnishings or technology.

We are most excited to have this partnership advance to next steps and are grateful to Dr. Bream and the GPP for encouraging our ongoing involvement. We look forward to  future opportunities sparked by this important outreach trip.