February brought two events for Nepal Library Foundation. We had Valentine's Day rose sale single-handedly managed by the ever enthusiastic volunteer Alice Fung. And we ran a three day fund raising event conceptualized by Anu Saini and Alice Fung at UBC and co-ordinated by a crop of amazing volunteers. Both events generated funds and valuable recognition for NLF. Learn more about the event and enjoy a few pictures of the event here.

On April 4, 2012 Nepal Library Foundation (NLF) hosted an “Appreciation Dinner” in Café Kathmandu, Vancouver, Canada to recognize local volunteers who have worked tirelessly over the last three years to raise funds for the Foundation. Thirty five people including the Foundation Directors attended. During the evening Naresh Koirala presented a slide show introducing different aspects of Nepal and, in particular, showing many of the libraries that NLF has supported. The volunteers saw, for the first time, the libraries supported with the funds they raised.

Many were surprised by NLF’s accomplishment since its establishment six years ago. We hope that, someday some of the volunteers will visit our libraries and experience first hand the impact their work is making in the life of young people who had never seen a functioning library before. The visitors will certainly be made most welcome, in true Nepali style.

Nepal Library Foundation has finally published its yearly newsletter for the year 2011. You can read it here in pdf.

In other news, "Library Development in Nepal: Problems and Prospects" authored by Naresh Koirala and Paul Bird has been published in the European Bulletin of Himal Research. You can download the article here.

NLF Initiative with the Government of Nepal

For the last two years, Dr. Shiva Gautam of Nepal Library Foundation(NLF) has been lobbying the Government of Nepal (GoN) to allocate funds to start an ICT based education pilot project and e-library in Nepal. NLF believes that ICT based learning in all Nepali schools will be impossible without GoN’s unreserved commitment. The foundation president Naresh Koirala and board member Dr. Shiva Gautam recently flew to Nepal for a meeting with GoN in this regard.

We have created a brand new Twitter account, nepallibrary. Please follow us at http://twitter.com/nepallibrary and spread the word.

We have just created a facebook page for the foundation. It can be accessed at http://www.facebook.com/nepallibrary.org. Please spread the word by pressing the "like" button.

We hope to have wonderful and interesting discussions on library laws, Nepali libraries and readers in the facebook page.

In line with the non-profit nature of the foundation, the board recently decided to obtain ".org" domain for the foundation and discontinue using the ".com" domain going forward. In line with the decision, the domain name, nepallibrary.org has been registered for the foundation and is fully functional as of now.

However, our old domain, nepallibrary.com will continue to function for two more years until the transition to nepallibrary.org is complete. For now, even if you type nepallibrary.com, you are being redirected to nepallibrary.org.

Our website has been given a facelift and the underlying technology upgraded. This should allow for better content management and usability. Please standby for news in this section. Meanwhile, please surf around and let us know how you feel.