Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A business school library in a developing country...



Last week, I was in El Salvador and paid a visit to the ESEN - Escuela Superior de Economia y Negocios, a private, non-profit business school. Unfortunately, the school was closed for Holy Week but I had pre-arranged a visit and tour of the library with the Director of the Library, Maria Teresa de Velasquez. The school serves about 600 undergraduate students in a beautiful new and well-equipped facility. The library operates under what it calls the 'Chilean model', in which the student body is divided into groups of 5 or 6 students and one set of textbooks is purchased for each group and then maintained in the library. In addition to purchasing and maintaining textbooks, the library has a collection of magazines, reference books and a circulating collection, access to some electronic databases (in English), and a strong community service program in collaboration with the students. The ESEN is very different from some of the other Salvadoran universities that I've visited over the years.

Although the library does not have a separate Web page, you can visit the ESEN's web site here.

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