Medical academic libraries in Romania: Co-operation and partnerships in support of the educational and research policies

One of the solutions found by libraries to the various changes and challenges in the information society has proved to be co-operation. Libraries in the Western countries have become aware very fast of the benefits it can bring and formed partnerships and collaborations which have allowed them to share a wide range of resources. In other countries the advantages of co-operation were not understood so quickly and when this finally happened things moved very slowly, or the co-operation ideas could not been put into practice due to various reasons. In Romania after a few failed attempts of creating a consortium for the acquisition of electronic resources, the “Anelis Plus” consortium has been recently formed and it includes Universities, Institutes of Research and Development and Central University Libraries; libraries are now collaborating to create the national information and documentation system. Even if Romanian libraries might not represent the best example in terms of co-operation, our research conducted within 2007-2012 at the level of medical academic libraries on the modernization of their services and the information practices of their users together with the results of an interview-based study conducted within January - April 2013 among their directors revealed a different attitude towards co-operation, these libraries having a series of initiatives which demonstrate their openness and their wish to become involved in common projects. This paper presents the experience of Romanian medical academic libraries during the last two decades with regard to their co-operation initiatives and refers to their participation as members of “Anelis Plus” in the implementation of educational and research policies.