Tuesday, September 19, 2006

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

Saturday, September 16, 2006

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?

Thursday, September 14, 2006

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.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

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.

Friday, September 08, 2006

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...".

Thursday, September 07, 2006

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.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

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

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

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.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

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).

Friday, September 01, 2006

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.