The Virtual Library of Indigenous Peoples, Inter-culturality and Traditional Medicine – VLIP is an internet site that compiles a numerous sources of information, accessible to those interested in the subject.

VLIP-Bolivia is constituted under a standard methodology and platform and is compatible with international systems developed by the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Information in Health Sciences (BIREME – OPS/OMS). It facilitates the processing, analyzing, organizing, and disseminating of information produced in our country on the topic of inter-culturality and traditional medicine.

Driving Institutions of VLIP-Bolivia are: the Vice Ministry of Traditional Medicine and Inter-culturality of the Ministry of Health and Sports, the Vice Ministry of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education, the Coordinator of Rural Indigenous Organizations and the Intercultural Communities of Bolivia. VLIP is also supported by the Fund for the Development of Latin America and the Caribbean’s Indigenous Peoples, the United National Populations Fund (UNFPA), and the Pan-American Health Organization-Bolivia, the Main University of San Andres, and other NGOs, international agencies, public and private organizations, professionals’ associations, scientific societies, and institutions linked to the strengthening and expanding of the flow of scientific and technical information as well as our ancestral written and oral knowledge.

The website provides a structure of integrate sources of information consisting of:

Bibliographic Searches

Contains bibliographic records of various sources of information: libraries, centers of documentation, statistics offices, and cooperating institutions. This recourse also provides access to technical documents and complete scientific texts edited by various institutions in the country.

Multimedia and Audiovisuals

Contains multimedia materials such as documentaries produced by institutions specialized in inter-culturality, radio shows, factsheets, booklets, newsletters, flipcharts, slides, PowerPoint presentations, and more.

News Center

Presents a central news monitor of national and international media and institutions´communication spaces in the field. It provides a constantly updating digital newspaper archive.

Education and Events

Database on courses, grants, and undergraduate, postgraduate, masters, and doctors programs both on campus and distance, virtual learning. It also includes information on lectures, symposia, conferences, conventions, summits, meetings, fairs, exhibitions, forums, conferences, round tables discussions, panels, awards, contests, meetings, seminars, and workshops.

Directories, Portals

The Directory of institutions of Indigenous Peoples, Inter-culturality, and Traditional Medicine. It provides personal identification information of specialists with links to their emails and websites and institutional information of all cooperating centers of the VLIP-Bolivia and other international and national agencies.

Legislation

The database that retrieves all complete texts and information on legislation related to indigenous peoples, inter-culturality, and traditional medicine. This program of Reference Data is based on the LILACS methodology for legislation cataloging.

Information Finder (LIPII)

Service that provides information on other websites of interest in the field of indigenous peoples, inter-culturality, and traditional medicine. It is a catalog of online information sources organized in a common methodology. It includes references to institutional websites, other databases, directories, electronic documents, educational material, software, and more.

Cooperative Service for Accessing Documents (CSAD)

Provides access to documents of various libraries located in the country and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean that are members of the Latin America and Caribbean Center of Information in Health Sciences.

Journals

SciELO is a model for cooperative electronic publishing of scientific journals on the Internet. Especially conceived to meet the scientific communication needs of developing countries, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean countries, it provides an efficient way to assure universal visibility and accessibility to their scientific literature. It is currently managing the application of the SciELO methodology in the elaboration of electronic journals with Latin American editors.