GLADNET: Annual Report

GLADNET Chair's Report 2004-2006

This Report provides a broad overview of the GLADNET association's activities from 2004-2006, during Susanne Bruyere's tenure serving as GLADNET Chair.
Download the GLADNET Chair's Report

2005 Annual General Meeting, Bahrain

GLADNET Update by Susanne Bruyere, Chair (Powerpoint; 578 kb)

Report of the Board Chair

The Global Applied Disability Research and Information Network on Employment and Training (GLADNET) began as an idea initiated by then Vocational Rehabilitation Programme of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1995. The idea was that it would be desirable to form an international network to pursue new knowledge related to disability and work. In 1997, with organizational changes pending at the ILO, GLADNET was transformed into an international non-governmental non-profit organization, registered in Switzerland, with executive offices in Canada. It continues to work closely with the Disability and Work Unit at the ILO.

From its inception, GLADNET's mission has been the advancement of mainstream employment and training for people with disabilities. It brings together researchers, government policy makers, organizations of and for persons with disabilities, unions and employers, all committed to this common goal. GLADNET accomplishes this through: knowledge generation by promoting transnational research and projects amongst our members; knowledge collection through our website and our InfoBase, an Internet-based library of full and partial text research and policy documents relevant to the mission; and, knowledge dissemination through a well-developed Internet based communications infrastructure, an electronic news alert GLADMail, by organizing sector conferences and other means.

Three distinctives continue to make GLADNET unique. First, it is the only international organization of its kind that focuses on enhancing economic opportunity for people with disabilities. Second, it is built on the strengths and possibilities of the Internet. GLADNET groups together resources related to disabilities and employment, and has an expanding online database of technical and research materials. It provides a "virtual organization" of experts from around the world that may be drawn upon to address a wide variety of questions. GLADNET is the only disability and employment related organization that integrates in one structure, through the Internet, research and information sharing components. Third, it serves as an innovative new kind of international knowledge and action bridge connecting all those interested in pursuing its mission at world regional and international levels.

Priorities in 2002 and 2003

With this report, GLADNET will have concluded its 7th year of pursuing its mission. The early years, with support from Executive Director Carl Raskin, personnel at the ILO and others, GLADNET set about establishing itself as an organization, creating the original electronic library (InfoBase), and experimenting with various ways of building its international network.

With his retirement as Executive Director in 2002, our first priority was to reorganize. Rather than replacing the Executive Director. we appointed an "Operations Manager" to look after the basic administrative and operational activities of the organization, and placed a higher expectation on the Executive and Board in promoting the GLADNET mission. We have valued Carl's contributions, and the organization continues as a legacy to the work he and others contributed to during GLADNET's first five years. Val Lawton, who had previously been retained to help transform the GLADNET website and our databases, was appointed as Operations Manager in June, 2002. Her report follows. I am also pleased to say that, after a brief hiatus, Carl returned as Editor of GLADMail and as contact with a number of our member organizations. The Executive and Board, for its part, responded by taking leadership in a number of areas that previously had largely bee left to staff -- including the organizing of our Geneva conference. So, in behalf of all GLADNET, let me say thank you to one and all.

Three main kinds of activity have been the focus of activity these past two years:

to promote GLADNET visibility;
to align GLADNET with other international organizations with interests in areas similar to the GLADNET mission: and
to develop our information delivery capacity.

Towards these ends, a good part of my one-year sabbatical leave was devoted to building or strengthening connections with a variety of world regional and international organizations. These included meetings with various organizations in Europe, with leaders of international disability member organizations such as Disabled Peoples' International, Inclusion International and Rehabilitation International, attending a number of regional or world congresses of these organizations, participating in the World Bank's event in Washington on World Disability day in 2003, making connections with various international ICT related private private sector companies such as MicroSoft, Hewlett Packard, Sony and others.

During these two years we have also seen the transformation of our website so it now has a cleaner look and is more accessible. At an administrative level we have more systematic databases, with better and more accessible information on both members and the increasing numbers of GLADMail subscribers. And, our InfoBase is gradually being transformed to incorporate more recent substantive research, partly by expanding the number of its holdings (such as through the project with the ILO reported elsewhere) or from researchers directly, and partly by creating linkages with other libraries with holdings.

Looking to the Future

I think it is fair to say that GLADNET has maintained and increased its visibility, even as the virtual world of the Internet has expanded to include a variety of other disability related organizations. While we have a good base, and have a variety of successes to our credit, the challenge remains to transform our possibilities into realities. Anyone involved in building international programs through non-governmental organizations understands the challenge. But, I am optimistic our vision remains realistic.

Respectfully submitted

Aldred H. Neufeldt, Chair November 2003

Report of the Operations Manager

On June 30, 2002, Carl Raskin, who had been with GLADNET since its inception in 1995, and GLADNET's Executive Director since 1997, retired. At this point, I stepped into the newly created role of Operations Manager.

My role has been to provide administrative and membership services to the association, as well as to oversee the transformation and development of the GLADNET website. I will address each service area -- GLADMail, the InfoBase and the general website-- individually.

Membership

Maintaining and building membership is a continuing challenge, with membership gradually falling. New initiatives to facilitate membership contact and administration include:

new membership tracking database, with system of creating numbered invoices
new contacts database of non-members
creation of contacts databases for regional GLADMail initiatives-- GLADNET Africa, GLADNET Asia-Pacific
established new hard-copy filing system with a history of members records
regular 'culling' of GLADMail recipients (required as email addresses change / become defunct)
member update outlining changes to the website, InfoBase explanations, invitations to submit content to the InfoBase have gone out via GLADMail. To date, one member has agreed to supply GLADNET with regular updates.

Financial Records

Our staff person, Leila Khoja, takes care of the routine task of dealing bank accounts, accounts payable and receivable, and other bookkeeping responsibilities.

GLADNET Services

1) GLADmail

GLADMail is the Association's premiere communications tool. In 2002, 57 messages were broadcast. By December 4, 2003, 76 messages were broadcast to GLADMail subscribers, all of which are highly relevant to GLADNET's central mission*. GLADMail remains a free service offered by GLADNET, and its subscribers number over 800.

n.b. The mission of GLADNET is the advancement of mainstream employment and training opportunities for people with disabilities throughout the world.

In operation since 1996, GLADMail recipients include all GLADNET members, ILO constituents, as well as other institutions and NGOs, and, increasingly, private individuals.

Each GLADMail is sent out as a separate email message. After some experimenting with a 'digest' service, which bundled messages together, it was agreed upon to return to the single-message service. Recipients can expect approximately 2 to 3 messages per week, with as descriptive a subject line as possible.

We are pleased that Carl Raskin has remained with GLADNET as Editor of GLADMail. This role entails handling distribution of general e-mail to the broad GLADNET community concerning disability and employment issues.

Carl deals with correspondence concerning "technical" issues of disability and employment, as well as distribution of GLADMail. Included here are announcements of conferences by the members of the GLADmail community and correspondence with the ILO that is technical in nature.

To ensure all incoming mail is dealt with, Carl and I coordinate by "carbon copying" mail to one another at the info@gladnet.org address, in order to determine who is best able to deal with it.

My role in the GLADMail equation is to deal with and respond to:

Questions of membership
Questions from GLADNET members of an administrative nature
Questions concerning subscriptions to GLADmail, including adding people to the GLADmail list
Questions concerning matters relating to the GLADNET website and infobase
Issues raised by members of the Board
Distribution of GLADmail that pertains to administrative issues, such as announcements of GLADNET activities, administrative changes, membership issues, etc.
Correspondence from the ILO of an administrative nature

2) Infobase

The Association continues to maintain its InfoBase, a comprehensive web-based resource on employment and disability. Its purpose is to provide access to current and comprehensive information via the InfoBase on effective strategies, best practices, research papers, legislation, and other relevant information relating to the employment and training of persons with disabilities.

In considering the options for the InfoBase's development, the advice of fellow librarians was sought by means of a teleconference in April 2002. Input was requested from the following:

Donna Dinberg, National Library of Canada
Stuart Basefsky, Cornell University
Lynn Hanson, University of Illinois
Dave Kisly, Open Learning Association of British Columbia / Freelance Technical Librarian

The task set before this group was to discuss options for the management of the GLADNET online collection, and how we might provide access to other small, disparate libraries' collections. Responses included developing a traditional union catalogue and mounting it online.

Guided by the experience of Stuart Basefsky, the group settled on a more interactive, non-traditional approach which would better harness the flexibility of the Internet. The participants suggested moving from a passive model of being information keepers and organizers, to becoming a proactive, information-filtering model.

An excellent model has been developed by Basefsky at Cornell University, wherein he maintains a news service of newly published materials in the form of electronic mail "alerts." Basefsky refers to this service "information journalism." After dissemination of a "news" item, it is catalogued in a traditional sense, and archived in the online database, making it retrievable at a later date. The resulting web-archive then serves as a library catalogue.

GLADNET's most recent re-engineering of the website and InfoBase has been completed with the technical expertise of Dave Kisly. The foundation is now set for the establishment of a proactive, information-filtering model as discussed above.

The InfoBase is searchable by InfoBase users by a selection of indexes -- either individually or in multiples-- such as subject, author, title, organization, year and by keyword. New content is consistently catalogued according to GLADNET standards, which will be codified and made available to members in 2004. There still remains considerable work re-cataloguing older records and weeding the collection. The InfoBase collection indexes online documents, websites, pdfs (e.g., the GLADNET brochure is available for printing), and can house images as well.

What is now required

GLADNET must forge sustainable and systematic contact with our members, to provide us with current research, news, updates, etc, that can be added to the InfoBase. GLADNET must assertively collect relevant and timely materials. To date, one member has agreed to supply the InfoBase with regular monthly updates-- German Labour Market Benchmark figures are sent electronically by REHADAT and German Federal Labour Office.

I would like to make another call to members to continue to provide us with summaries of project and other research activities.

Other Infobase Activities

Of great significance to the expansion of the InfoBase's content has been assisting the International Labour Organization, led by Barbara Murray and Bob Ransom. Relating to the ILO project, "Employment of people with disabilities-- the impact of legislation," GLADNET collaborated on making available full-text legislation on the InfoBase. While much of the full-text material was electronically available, a considerable amount required OCR (optical character recognition) scanning. Additionally, three Greek texts have required the services of a translator in order catalogue the files.

The new flexibility of the InfoBase accommodated the needs of this project, and those materials are now available for viewing on the InfoBase (at the time of writing, the three Greek files are in the translation process).

3) General Website

Other changes over this two-year period include changing platform, from an NT to a Cold Fusion server. This transformation has afforded the site administrator greater ease of use and flexibility, faster development time, scaleability, and allows for such functionalities as an administrative module for uploading new content.

Links Section

A considerable number of links to relevant sites have been added to GLADNET's Links section. These are categorized by subject (such as 'databases,' 'human rights,' 'hearing impaired,' 'journals', etc.), and accessed by a drop-down list.

Events Section

Information for this section is culled from regular browse through the websites of relevant organizations. This section has been kept up-to-date, and provides users with date, a short explanation of the event, and a link to the event/conference site.

Communications Link

Visitors to www.gladnet.org can subscribe to GLADMail directly from the site. They can also apply for GLADNET membership from the site via the online application. Payments may be made by cheque, direct deposit, or through our secure online credit card service.

In the past, GLADNET maintained an Employment page, where postings could be made. Having only received notice of five posting this year, this section has not been kept current. If GLADNET wishes to revive this section, a concerted effort to market this service to both employers and job-seekers should be undertaken.

ISP

The website was formerly hosted by Storm Internet of Ottawa. It is now hosted for no cost at the University of Winnipeg, as acknowledged on the site's main page.

Recommendations for 2004

With the improved facility of the site and the InfoBase's new breadth and currency, I would like to see a concerted effort to publicize GLADNET's membership benefits with an eye to increasing our numbers.

Additionally, I hope to continue to expand InfoBase content by developing collaborative relationships with other information providers for the benefit of GLADNET members.

Respectfully submitted,

Val Lawton, Operations Manager, GLADNET Association

Significant GLADNET Events in 2002 - 2003

The Board of Directors of the GLADNET Association met on five occasions during the period 2002 - 2003. All but the Vancouver meeting were conducted as teleconferences.

The 2002 highlight was the 14th meeting of the Board of Directors, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, May 26 - 27. On this occasion the board honoured the service of long-time executive director, Carl Raskin. Barbara Murray of the ILO reported on that organization's legislative surveys and comparative analyses of disability related laws, conducted in seven African nations. GLADNET assisted in this project by making full-text documents, and policy and programme information available via the InfoBase.

Barbara Murray explained that many African nations have no policies to guide them, and that there is very little in the way of formal statistical information available about Africa. GLADNET's assisted with this project by adding these documents, provided by the ILO, accessible via the InfoBase.

An Annual General Assembly was not held in 2002, as plans for a Paris-based meeting were not realized.

During this two-year period, GLADNET appointed two new board members. They are Stig Larsson (Sweden) and Donal McAnaney (Ireland), who have both agreed to sit on the GLADNET board for a two-year period, replacing Mireille Dopchie (Belgium) and Pierre Olivier (France).

GLADNET was represented by the Chair or a Board member at meetings such as:

DPI Congress (Sapporo, October 2002)
RI Annual Meeting (Osaka, October 2002)
Pan American Health Organization meeting on Mental Health and Work (Mexico City, 2003)
AGEFIPH conference (Paris, 2003)
Regional Rehabilitation International Meeting (Africa, 2003)
National Organization of Social Security Claimants (NOSSCR) (Washington, April 2003)
DPI Latin American Region meeting (Lima, July 2003)
Rehabilitation International Europe Regional Meeting (Aachen, Germany, November 2003)

Support and Collaboration

GLADNET has lent its support to the following project initiatives:

DPI's Global Information Network on Disability (GIND) -- a proposal for a pilot project submitted to the World Bank's Development Gateway in which GLADNET would develop regional information bases on 'sustainable employment.'
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific has now added GLADNET to its list of official participants
An as yet unrealized proposal has been to develop an ILO / GLADNET Africa Network