Due to lack of a National Library, national data on Suriname is located in various information-institutions. Because of this, literature is not widely accessible for the public.
The purpose of the Foundation National Database Suriname (NDS) is centralizing and optimizing all bibliographic information on Suriname in order to make this information accessible to a wider audience.
It seeks to achieve this objective by organizing educational, informational and recreational activities and liaising with relevant institutions.
The first Board of the Foundation consisted of the following persons:
• Lettys Pollack-Leeflang (president)
• Hilde Neus-van der Putten, MA (secretary)
• Olga Jannasch-van ’t Noordende (Treasurer)
• Jane W.F. Smith, MA (member)
• Jerry. Egger, MA (member)
Activities
• The first activity of the Foundation was organizing the vocational training for library assistant from 2009-2010, sponsored by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Department of Culture.
In September 2010 27 persons received an intermediate vocational education Diploma Library Assistant.
• In 2012 the Foundation hosted the inaugural meeting of the Dutch Caribbean Libraries Association (DCLA). Libraries from all over the Dutch Caribbean were present and committed themselves to contribute to collaborate to the accessibility of the cultural heritage of the Dutch Caribbean.
• ACURIL (Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries) is the regional library association and in the fiscal year 2014-2015 Suriname held the Presidency.
The Foundation NDS hosted the 45th ACURIL Conference in 2015.
• The training Information specialist was organized in 2014. This training, realized through a twinning project Suriname-Netherlands, was a collaboration with the GO Opleidingen, School for Information, the Netherlands. In 2015, 14 persons from different libraries received a Diploma Information Specialist (Higher Vocational Education level).
The current board underwent a slight change since 2019:
• Jane W.F. Smith (chairperson)
• Hilde Neus-van der Putten (secretary),
• Olga Jannasch-van 't Noordende (treasurer),
• Stella M.L. Pollack-Leeflang (member)
• Jerry Egger ( member)
• Tanya Sitaram ( member)
Since 2021 Stella M.L. Pollack-Leeflang is no longer a board member; Tanya Sitaram replaced her.
E-mail of the board: ndsnwe2019@gmail.com
To solve the lack of library personnel at a strategic level, the Suriname Library School was established in November 2019. Two courses were prepared in collaboration with GO opleidingen and sponsored by the GO Fund Foundation (the Netherlands). The aim of both courses was to educate library staff; the Training Library manager with the aim of managers for all library types and the Training Library assistant with the aim of library personnel for library-technical activities.
The NDS Foundation is responsible for maintaining the online catalog of cultural heritage from Suriname, which is available on the NDS website. The libraries in Suriname are committed to ensure the updating of the online catalog by adding the existing Suriname documents in their libraries.