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.