ALIA BOD approve HLA Symposium

The ALIA Board of Directors has given approval for the HLA Symposium to go ahead next February.

At the Symposium we'll be looking at the indications and contraindications for services and innovations, at the vital signs of our systems and our profession and at actions and reactions to change and innovation.

• National approaches to health information and the state of the nation’s health libraries
• Library / Web 2.0 - digital divides between libraries and how to overcome them
• Search filters and expert searching
• Panel on trends: EBL; Clinical Librarianship
• Virtual reference update — the latest with Chasing the Sun
• Future directions for HLA - round table and general meeting
• Group meetings: GratisNet; Chasing the Sun
• Anne Harrison Award nominations open
• Symposium dinner, Friday night
• Trade Exhibition

Early bird registration will be to 19th January.
Members $340
Non Members $470

Registrations after 19th January
Members $470
Non Members $540

Student Members $190
Student Non Members $250

More details will be released over the new few weeks.

ALIA General Meeting 30th November 2006

The ALIA General Meeting is being held at 5:30pm on Thursday 30 November 2006 at The John Niland Scientia Building, University of NSW, Sydney.

At this meeting the proposed governance changes will be voted on. This is a very important meeting and the HLA Executive urges you to read about the proposed changes and vote on them.

If you are unable to attend the meeting you can nominate a proxy using the electronic proxy form (only available to members; you will need to sign onto the ALIA website). From Roxanne Missingham:

Some important things to note about proxies: If acting as a proxy it is important to note that the member is delegating to another member the right to vote on their behalf. It is up to the member holding the proxy vote (s) to interpret them as they wish. That is, a member is given a proxy not a specific delegation to vote in a particular way for each motion. Therefore, when delegating a proxy vote to another member you may wish to suggest your view on the motions before the meeting. The proxy also holds full voting power for anything during the meeting of those members they hold proxies for. For that reason giving proxy to another member should be considered quite carefully especially as major changes can be proposed at meetings via the process of amendments to motions.

If in general you want to vote "YES" to the proposed changes, you may want to consider appointing Roxanne Missingham, ALIA Vice President, to vote on your behalf. Contact Roxanne at Roxanne.Missingham@aph.gov.au. Those voting "NO" might want to consider appointing either Helen Mandl (c/ University of Wollongong Library, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong NSW 2522; ALIA member no. 34250) or Tania Barry (c/ Wyndham Library, PO BOX 197 Werribee 3030; ALIA member no. 047842)

The agenda, motions and proxy form can be found at the ALIA governance web page.

JMLA Case Studies

The JMLA Case Studies series was launched in the October issue of JMLA and using experts from librarianship, informatics, medicine, research and other areas as necessary, aims to "address challenging situations in health sciences information provision".

The first case study looks at a complex clinical question from the intensive care setting and follows the process of searching and synthesising the evidence for application to a critical patient care decision.

To supplement these case studies the editors have lauched a blog, JMLA Case Studies in Health Sciences Librarianship. To date, posts to the blog discuss: the appropriateness of using Wikipedia for understanding the medical concepts; several relevant articles published since the case was published; strategies for refining clinical questions and; the limitations of review articles.

This is an excellent initiative from the editors of JMLA and well worth following.

Australian author publishes in JMLA

Congratulations to Ruth Sladek (former SA Repatriation Hospital Library Manager, NICS and PhD scholar) as first author of an article published in the October 2006 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association. The paper is Development of a subject search filter to find information relevant to palliative care in the general medical literature.

We believe Ruth may be the first Australian author of a research artcle in JMLA!

EBLIP4

The 4th International Evidence Based Library & Information Practice Conference will be held May 6-9, 2007, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. From the conference website:

This exciting international conference has grown out of an increasing interest in using the best available evidence to improve library and information practice in all types of libraries. The conference on May 6-9 will be followed by two days of continuing education. The program will provide a forum for the presentation of high quality research papers and posters as well as dynamic discussions of the transformative role of evidence-based practice in the profession.

The deadline for the submission of paper and poster abstracts is December 1. See the call for submissions web page for details.

Registration for the conference has not opened as yet.

Communicating the value of hospital libraries

The Colorado Council of Medical Librarians Advocacy Committee has created a set of resources for medical librarians to use to communicate the value of medical libraries to their organisations' managers.

The resources are available as free downloads from the MLA Vital
Pathways for Hospital Librarians website.

neXus Census - deadline looms

If you haven't done so already PLEASE complete the neXus Census. The deadline is this Friday, 20th October.

From the ALIA website: "The goals of the neXus census are to develop a demographic, educational and employment picture of the library and information profession today and to identify the diverse workforce planning activities currently being undertaken in the library and information services (LIS) sector in Australia. The research project is aligned with similar projects undertaken in Canada, the United States of America and the United Kingdom, to enable a comparison to be made between the situations in Australia and in other countries."

Follow the above link for more information and to connect to the online survey.

Web 2.0 technology for health librarians

The Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association has recently featured an excellent series of articles that introduce web 2.0 technologies to health librarians (v.27, issues 1,2 & 3). The first article examines RSS, the second article looks at blogs and podcasting and the third discusses social networking and social bookmarking.

If you are relatively new to Web 2.0 technologies and want to know more, these articles are a good place to start given their health library focus.

Online access to the journal is available to CHLA members and journal subscribers.

aliaNEWS

The September issue of aliaNEWS has just been broadcast. Go to the ALIA e-list page for information on how to join this list if you're interested.

Of possible interest to health library workers:
- Early Bird registration for the Online 2007 conference closes on 17 November 2006
- Early bird registration for the New Librarians Symposium 2006 closes on 6 October. The New Librarians are also running a competition, the prize being registration to the conference
- CLICK 06 starts today. Abstracts are now available on the website
- Imogen Garner, University Librarian at Curtin University of Technology, has been awarded an ALIA Fellowship

Guidelines for the Introduction of Electronic Information Resources to Users

If you are responsible for introducing electronic information resources to your users, you might find the Reference and User Services Association's Guidelines useful. The Guidelines have been written for all types of libraries and RUSA suggests that libraries adapt the suggestions and recommendations contained within the Guidelines to their local environment.

These Guidelines are also handy for anyone who has to write a local policy on this topic. Why reinvent the wheel?

Deadline looms for HLA Exec Nominations

HLA Convenor, Cheryl Hamill, has asked that nominations for the HLA Executive reach her by email (see sidebar for a link to Cheryl's email) on or before 25 September. Nominees must be current financial members of ALIA HLA.

PLEASE GIVE THIS SOME SERIOUS THOUGHT. While a number of nominations and expressions of interest have been received, more are needed.

HLA needs an injection of new ideas and energy, whether you're an experienced practitioner with definite ideas about the direction HLA should take or a recent graduate hoping to learn as much as contribute.

This is YOUR opportunity to directly influence. Don't let it pass you by.

Cunningham Fellowship applications close 1 December

Applications for MLA's Cunningham Memorial International Fellowship close on 1st December. The Cunningham fellowship is a four-month fellowship for health sciences librarians outside the United States and Canada. It provides the opportunity for observation and supervised work in one or more health sciences libraries in the United States or Canada, a limited amount of travel, and because it runs in the months prior to the MLA annual meeting, an opportunity to attend continuing education courses at the annual meeting. The stipend is $6,000.00US with an additional $2000US being available for travel within the US.

To date, two Australians have been awarded the Fellowship - Francis Bludhorn in 1987 and Saroj Bathia in 2003. Reports of Saroj's experiences are available on the MLA website.

The ABC's Health Report: Facing the Evidence

This coming Monday, 11 September, you may want to tune into the The Health Report with Norman Swan on ABC's Radio National. "Associate Professor Alex Barratt takes a close look at the catastrophic errors that have occurred when evidence has been ignored, and why evidence based practice is still not being implemented in consultation rooms...".

A couple of online PD sites

The SirsiDynix Institute offers a series of free web based seminars on their site while Dialog's Quantum2 is a leadership development program providing access to workshops, case studies, white papers, and links to other resources.

Think twice before tossing those print journals

The University of NSW Library made the news yesterday after members of the law faculty found hundreds of bound volumes of international law journals discarded in an industrial bin.

This incident provides as good a reminder as any to:
* ensure your weeding and discard policies are up to date and ratified by your library advisory committee
* involve users in weeding decisions, and
* look at options for donating journals to third world libraries

Education for Library and Information Services: A Festschrift

Take some time to check out the interesting range of papers published in Education for Library and Information Services: A Festschrift to Celebrate Thirty Years of Library Education at Charles Sturt University. Included is: a paper by Suzanne Lewis from Central Coast Health titled Creating and sharing opportunities for lifelong learning; Karen McVickers and Marie Murphy outline ALIA's role in education for librarianship; if you are considering doing a doctorate, Ross Harvey and Jake Wallis examine whether doctoral-level research in library and information management address professional needs; and for those of you interested in knowledge management, don't miss Stuart Ferguson and Philip Hider's paper, Knowledge management education in Australia.

Proposed ALIA Governance Changes

Don't forget to have your say regarding the ALIA Board of Directors' proposed changes to membership and election arrangements.

Some interesting and opposing views about these proposed changes were expressed on the aliaNATSPEC discussion list during August. These were forwarded to aliaHEALTH and you can click here, here and here if you missed them first time around or want to refresh your memory.

These are potentially significant changes and therefore worthy of your consideration and opinion. Now that all the regional meetings have been held you will need to send your comments by email (don't forget to remove '.nospam' from the address).

NICS to join NHMRC

In a move that is expected to "strengthen the translation of research findings into improvements to health care practice", the National Institute of Clinical Studies (NICS) is going to be incorporated into the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

This news came our way via the latest issue of the Australian Healthcare Association's newsletter, E-Healthcare Brief. Some of you may be interested in signing up to receive this weekly emailed newsletter. It's designed to provide AHA members and other healthcare professionals with an overview of important topical issues. Visit the AHA's mailing list page.

Bot a Blog: receive new posts as emails

Thanks to Graham Spooner at the College of Nursing for putting me onto Bot A Blog. If you don't use an aggregator, Bot A Blog allows you to receive new posts from your favourite blogs as emails. You'll now find a link to Bot a Blog in the sidebar.

HLA News published today

ALIA HLA members should have received their e-copy of HLA News issue 3 2006 today.

HLA News is emailed to all current members based on a list of addresses provided by ALIA National Office. If it didn't hit your inbox please check your membership details by logging onto the members' only section of the ALIA website to ensure that ALIA has an email address for you. In the meantime, feel free to email me direct (see sidebar).

This issue of HLA News will appear on the HLA website in the near future.

PD Opportunity: Power Searching With The Pros

Elizabeth Swan, Mary Ellen Bates and Chris Sherman have now finalised the program for the next series of Web Search Pacific's Power Searching with the Pros workshops. These workshops will be held in Melbourne (1-2 October), Canberra (5-6 October) and Sydney (9-10 October). Details can be found on the Web Search Pacific website. These workshops come highly recommended.

MLA Professional Development Opportunity

On November 8, MLA is webcasting Moving at the Speed of Byte: Emerging Technologies for Information Management. The aim of this webcast is to "expose information professionals to new and emerging technologies and to encourage their use in information management".

The session is being held from 1-3pm central time, which isn't exactly conducive to those of us in Australia (9pm WST 8 Nov, midnight EST 9 Nov), but if you're interested, more information can be found on the MLA website. One thing to bear in mind is registration offers video-on-demand viewing for up to 30 days after the session.

HLA Symposium 2nd and 3rd Feb 2007

Don't forget to pencil in the HLA Symosium being held on 2nd and 3rd February on the back of the Online conference in Sydney next year. Planning is underway and more information will be released as it comes to hand. Watch this blog!

In the meantime, the MLA's Hospital Library Section has been pretty rowdy. The dialogue started on the subject of conference programming but quickly moved to include other topics. I recently posted a summary of the discussion to aliaHEALTH but have yet to see any hospital librarians in Australia pick up the thread. The issues raised hold just as much relevance to us: survival, demonstrating value, professionalism...plus the whole conference discussion which included relevant programming, support to attend and use of technology to take the conference to those unable to get there in person.

It's not the most important issue raised but the use of technology really struck of chord. It would be terrific if we could get some individuals to volunteer to blog their conference experiences for the benefit of those who can't make it. If you want to be involved in a project like this, let me know and we'll see if we can't get something happening.

Libraries Using Evidence - http://www.eblip.net.au

Keep an eye on this little gem. The folks at Northern Sydney Central Coast Health and The University of Newcastle recently launched their Evidence-Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) website and related blog. This 'Libraries Using Evidence' site is a work in progress. As such, libraries are invited to contribute their projects, comments or suggestions to help keep the site useful and relevant. The next phase of development is concentrating on building a toolkit of EBLIP resources.

It's terrific to see this group of health librarians take the lead in Australia.

Ruth Sladek

Many of you will know Ruth Sladek as the former library manager at the Repatriation General Hospital in Adelaide and from the her clinical evidence researcher service study. Supported by a NICS grant, Ruth is these days undertaking a PhD on the cognitive biases and uptake of evidence in clinical practice. From the NICS website: "When we make decisions we often rely on ‘mental rules of thumb’ (also known as heuristics). These are based on past experience and are used more frequently in times of uncertainty. This study investigates the relationship between reliance on heuristics and the uptake of evidence in medical decision making."

Ruth has recently published the first paper to come out of her PhD in a new online journal called Implementation Science. Be warned, it is a theoretical positioning paper so maybe not everyone's cup of tea but nonetheless, congratulations, Ruth!

The HLA Exec Needs You!

On 4th August a call for nominations to
the HLA Executive Committee was posted on aliahealth. Official duties would start in Feb 2007.

It's no surprise that individuals are willing to join committees if they are motivated by the actual work or projects being proposed and if they perceive they will actually get something out of the experience. What that something is will vary from individual to individual.

Having been involved in ALIA health library related committees for quite a few years now, I continue to be motivated on a number of levels - my philosophical comittment to the professional association and the role it plays in defining librarianship as a profession; being able to directly influence; I am forever learning from my involvement; the personal sense of achievement it gives me; it certainly looks good on my CV and has impressed my bosses and perspective employers; the opportunity to meet and work with new colleagues (who I continue to draw on years later); the new friendships I've made...

If these sentiments ring a bell with you give some serious thought to joining. If you'd like more information before making a comittment, please feel free to contact either Cheryl Hamill 08 9431 2780 or Lindsay Harris 08 8222 6161.

HLA Blogs! is a little 'experiment' to see if we can't keep you better informed of the work of HLA, the ALIA group representing libraries and information professionals in the health and biomedical sector.

And along the way we plan to throw in a few 'value added ' extras - postings about postings (!), websites and lists. Heck, anything we think might be of value as long as it's relevant to health library workers.

Get involved. Feel free to leave your comments or email us if you know of something we haven't yet discovered.