On 26 October 2022, UNESCO-ICHEI, together with the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereinafter as the Ministry), Nazarbayev University, and the Association of Libraries of Higher Educational Institutions of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereinafter as the Association), jointly organized a roundtable on the theme "Integrated library information systems for accelerating the process of informatization of higher education in Central Asia". Around 60 representatives from government education departments, universities and suppliers of information systems and products from Central Asian countries and the Russian Federation participated in the roundtable and discussed the establishment of an integrated library information system in the region.
The roundtable was chaired by Mr. Peter Lapo, General Expert of Nazarbayev University Library. During the opening session, Mr. Yerzhan Amirbekuly, Deputy Director of the Higher and Postgraduate Education Department of the Ministry, Prof. Han Wei, Deputy Director of UNESCO-ICHEI and Ms. Gulzhan Irzhanova, President of the Association Director of Library Information Center of Taraz Regional University, gave opening speeches respectively. Mr. Yerzhan Amirbekuly emphasized the important role of building library information centers in the digital transformation of higher education in Central Asian countries, and encouraged universities to adopt the latest information technologies and strengthen the integration and sharing of information resources to build the information infrastructure in the region. Prof. Han Wei outlined the systematic support provided by UNESCO-ICHEI for the digital transformation of higher education in developing countries around the world, including staff training, institutional development, policy guidelines, hardware support, and online training platform. She noted that Central Asia is one of the focus regions for UNESCO-ICHEI's work, and she looked forward to working with more universities and partner institutions in the region in the future.
In the keynote presentation session, Mr. Xu Mingshun, Programme Officer at Asia-Pacific Programme Office, UNESCO-ICHEI, Prof. Marat Rakhmatullaev from Tashkent University of Information Technologies (Uzbekistan), Dr. Alexander Plemnek, Director of the Library Information Centre of Saint Petersburg State University (Russian Federation), and Mr. Peter Lapo shared related initiatives and practices on open educational resources at institutional, national and regional levels. Starting from the global trends of digital transformation of higher education and taking the challenges faced by Central Asian countries in the process of transformation as the entry point, Mr. Xu Mingshun took IIOE's contribution to the digitalization of higher education in Central Asia as the main line of his presentation, and gave a detailed review of the various exchanges and cooperation between UNESO-ICHEI and Central Asian countries. He said that UNESO-ICHEI plans to establish the first IIOE National Centre in Central Asia in Uzbekistan to further deepen the cooperation between UNESO-ICHEI and Central Asian region on the digital transformation of higher education.
Experts at the roundtable highly valued UNESCO-ICHEI's contribution to the digital transformation of higher education and expected UNESCO-ICHEI to support one of the pressing issues in the higher education domain in the region - the construction of a regional library information system - and to carry out long-term and continuous cooperation under the framework of IIOE in the dimensions of capacity building on teacher professional development, regular activity exchange and sharing of promising case studies, in order to facilitate the process of regional integration of educational information resources in the region.
On 26 October 2022, UNESCO-ICHEI, together with the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereinafter as the Ministry), Nazarbayev University, and the Association of Libraries of Higher Educational Institutions of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereinafter as the Association), jointly organized a roundtable on the theme "Integrated library information systems for acc
