Tuesday, November 21, 2006

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.

Friday, November 17, 2006

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.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

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!