HLA News - November 2007 issue

ALIA HLA members should have already received their copy of the November 20007 issue of HLA News via email.

In this issue you will meet Aussie expat Janene Batten as she talks about her life at Yale and the sometimes indirect routes to life's perfect destination.

Terry Harrison reports on the third UK Clinical Librarians Conference and Ann Ritchie reflects on the IFLA satellite conference on CPD. Terry has also penned the Left Field column in this issue, which for the first time is written by someone looking from within the sector.

We also celebrate the retirements of Titi Alexander and Ian Stubbin - not their going, but the sector's good fortune in having them!

Last up, hands up for dreaming08 -­ a genuine health libraries stream within the conference and a professional development day as a satellite event.

The November issue is now up on the HLA newsletter website. Members can access this issue by logging on using their 6-digit ALIA membership number and password.

All preceding issues of HLA News are open access.

Thanks to our newsletter sponsor EBSCO for their renewed sponsorship of HLA News.

Job opportunity: Manager Joint Princess Alexandra Hospital/UQ Library

An exciting opportunity is available for an innovative and energetic Librarian with outstanding leadership and management qualities to take on a senior management role at The University of Queensland Library. The University Library delivers high quality client-focused innovative information products, services and programs that are integrated with and central to the University’s teaching, learning, research and community service activities.

The Role: In the role you will manage the delivery of information services to the Joint Princess Alexandra Hospital/UQ Library; participate in overall strategic planning and policy development within the University Library, develop action plans to implement Library policies and strategies; ensure effective communication with clients, and participate in budget formulation and expenditure as well as recruitment, deployment and development of staff. See position description for other duties.

The Person: You should possess a degree and recognised professional library qualifications, sound library management experience and expertise; extensive professional experience in academic libraries; sound understanding of trends in information service delivery in an educational and research environment and the ability to work flexibly within a team structure. See selection criteria for further requirements.

Remuneration: This is a continuing full time appointment at HEW Level 8. The remuneration package as of 1/1/08 will be in the range of $80,419 to $ 90,300 per annum, including employer superannuation contributions of up to 17%.

Contact: Obtain the position description and selection criteria online or contact Suzanne Green, telephone (07)3365 6254 or email. Telephone Lisa Kruesi (07) 3365 5354 to discuss the role.

Send applications to Joanne Rutherford, Human Resource & Staff Development Coordinator, Library Corporate Services, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld 4072, or email.

Closing Date for Applications: 16th January, 2008

Reference Number: 1263306

Scholarship opportunity

The Department of General Practice, Flinders University through the Primary Health Care Research Evaluation and Development (PHCRED) program, is offering an exciting opportunity for a Librarian with a knowledge or background in health to assist our group perform a literature search of the research evidence for reducing hospital bed days of older adults. This includes both decreasing the number of unnecessary admissions (hospital avoidance) and decreasing the number of inpatient bed days through greater use of community based sub-acute care services.

The person we seek will have:

• Graduate Diploma or Masters in Information Studies or equivalent;
• Eligible for membership of the Australian Library and Information Association;
• Knowledge or background in Health;
• Experience using health databases;
• Good conceptual skills, enjoys a challenge and has a flair for creativity;
• An interest in being a member of a research team.

The value of the schoarship is $20,000. There is flexibility with respect to working hours as well as full time / part time but someone is needed who can make a start quickly.

In the first instance please email Dr Leigh Roeger, PHCRED Coordinator, at with a brief paragragh about yourself to express an interest in the scholarship by Friday 23rd November 2007.

Job opportunity: Manager, Biological Sciences Library, UQ

The position of Manager, Biological Sciences Library (HEW Level 8)- University of Queensland has been advertised on the UQ internal vacancy list, and on the Seek Website

Closing Date for Applications: 16th January, 2008

Reference Number: 1262716

Minutes of HLA Exec meetings now available

The minutes of HLA Executive teleconferences held on 12 June and 16 October are now available on the ALIA HLA website. Any feedback can be directed to HLA Executive members. Contact details are available through Vital Link (select Health Libraries Australia under the 'Groups' drop down box).

ACT NOW! Complete the survey on Australian health librarians and Web 2.0

Endorsed and supported by the HLA Executive, we encourage all Australian Health Libraries to complete this survey.

The survey on Australian health librarians and Web 2.0 is now open and can be accessed here.

A survey was undertaken recently in the US by the MLA Social Networking Software Task Force investigating use of collaborative/social networking tools and services. Results from the original survey of MLA members are reported at the Task Force on Social Networking Software blog.

Libraries Using Evidence and NSW Health, with the support of Health Libraries Australia, are extending this survey to the Australian context. Staff in health libraries across Australia (hospital, academic, special etc) are invited to participate. The Australian data will be used to generate a snapshot of the use of and attitudes towards collaborative/social networking tools and services. Results will provide librarians with evidence to assist in influencing policy and practice at their workplace. Results will be reported in the first instance on the Health LIS 2.0 and Libraries Using Evidence blogs.

We ask that you take a few minutes to complete this brief survey. If you are unsure about something, please email us with your question. The survey will close on 25 November 2007.

Please note: this survey is completely confidential. No identifying information will be released with results.

Your participation is appreciated. Remember - the survey can be accessed here.

Lisa Cotter, Suzanne Lewis and Gillian Wood
projectchili2007@gmail.com

Cunningham Fellowship applications close 30 November 2008

Applications for MLA's Cunningham Memorial International Fellowship will be accepted up until 30 November 2008.

The award is given annually to citizens or permanent residents from countries outside the United States or Canada who have both an undergraduate degree and a master’s level library degree and are working or preparing to work in a health sciences library in their countries. The program provides a learning experience that may consist of a stay in the United States at one or more medical libraries. Based on a pilot program for the 2007 Cunningham Fellowship, the format and duration of the 2009 program could vary from two weeks up to a period of three months. The Cunningham Fellowship was established in 1967 and named in honor of Eileen Cunningham.

For more information, contact Lisa C. Fried, credentialing, professional recognition, and career coordinator at +1 312.419.9094 x28. Click here for links to a fact sheet and application.

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.

World Congress of Health Professionals Mar 26-29, Perth

Registration is open for the World Congress of Health Professionals to be held March 26-29 2008 in Perth.

"This world congress represents the first time that all health professions across all sectors, have been invited to meet. It is an opportunity to meet those in the forefront of developments in health, to hear experts share their vision of our future and to network with leaders in health from across the world."

The Congress has five themes:
Global Challenges and World Health
Innovations in Service Delivery
Workforce and Training Developments
Demands and Opportunities
The Impact of New Technology on Health Care

and is hosted by:
The Metropolitan Allied Health Council
The Allied Health Alliance of Western Australia

Register for the 2007 NSW Health Libraries Forum

The NSW Health Libraries Forum 2007 Committee are pleased to announce Sally Toms of North Coast Area Health Service as the recipient of the Forum sponsorship opportunity for regional librarians. Thanks to Ramsays Medical Books and More, Sally and her colleague Kath O'Meley have $750.00 to help pay for accommodation, travel and registration at the Forum on 8-9 November at Gosford Hospital.

To join Sally and Kath at the Forum, register now at the earlybird rate of $100 (2 days including Forum dinner), and you will go in the draw to win a PDA courtesy of ProQuest.

Register now at: http://nswhlf2007.blogspot.com/.

For enquiries, please contact Suzanne Lewis or Lisa Cotter.

(Posted for Suzanne Lewis)

Web 2.0 & Hospital IT Departments

Mark Funk has put up an interesting post about hospital IT departments blocking Web 2.0 technologies. This follows on the back of a post by the Krafty Librarian who can't access YouTube and therefore a video for one of the doctors at her organisation.

How many of you have this problem and can't access Web 2.0 technologies? Share your stories using the comments botton.

EBLIP Vol 2, No 3 (2007) now available

The lastest issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice has just been published. Click here to access this open access online publication. Once again, our own Suzanne Lewis, from Northern Sydney Central Coast Health, has contributed another evidence summary to this international journal.

Job ad: Clinical librarian, NT

This is a great opportunity to establish a new position in the Northern Territory Department of Health and Community Services Library, based at Royal Darwin Hospital. Working in multidisciplinery teams, the clinical librarian will be focused on ensuring a specialist, clinical information service is delivered to hospital/health facility clinicians through literature searching, critical appraisal, training, and the integration of electronic knowledge resources with clinical workflow.

There are 5 hospital libraries (Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine, Nhulunbuy and Tennant Creek) and almost 5,000 staff working for the Dept, the biggest in NT. The library is well resourced, dynamic and forward looking.

If you'd like more information about the position please call Anne Ritchie on +61 8 8922 8756 this week to discuss possiblities (after 10/8/08 please contact Bid Rose).

Click here for information about how to apply online.

IFLA Health and Biosciences Standing Committee newsletter

The current issue of the Newsletter of the IFLA Section of Health and Biosciences Libraries can be found here.

The 'L' word

There has been a lot of discussion on the MLA's hospital library e-list about the 'L' word. One post recommended a recent article, The New Librarian, in the New York Times July 8 2007, saying "That article put to rest ANY idea I may have had in changing the librarian title, and it was fun to read. Librarians (and the profession) are now 'cool'!"

ALIA's professional development e-list

Karen Mills was recently appointed as the Professional Development Officer at ALIA national office and she's been busy sending out updates on upcoming PD events on the ALIA professional development e-list. Sign up to aliaCPD to receive notification firsthand.

Job opportunities: Faculty Liaison Librarians, Univesity of Sydney

The University of Sydney Library is recruiting for two librarians.

Faculty Liaison Librarian (Two positions)
* Health Sciences Library, Cumberland Campus
* Medical Library, Camperdown Campus

The University of Sydney is supported by a dynamic Library system that offers a diverse range of information services to students, staff and the community. The Health and Medical Libraries Division provide services from five libraries on four campuses. These libraries provide a range of services to support the staff and students of the five Faculties of Health.

We are searching for two proactive Faculty Liaison Librarians, with great people skills, to join this motivated, customer-focussed team. One position will be located at the Health Sciences Library at the Cumberland campus, and the other will be located in the Medical Library at the Camperdown campus. A core component of these roles is liaising with staff and students from a specific discipline area to develop and market high quality information services, as well as managing the design, delivery and evaluation of information skills programs.

To succeed, you will be a creative professional who thrives on partnership building and an excellent problem solver within environments of constant change. You will be confident using the Web and databases to find quality information and will keep in touch with trends in digital resource creation. Eligibility for professional membership of ALIA or equivalent, with subsequent relevant work related experience, or an equivalent combination of experience and training is also a must.

These are unique opportunities for innovative, flexible and customer-focussed librarians to take on challenging and autonomous roles that will support the information systems across the Health and Medical Libraries Division; a part of the largest academic library in the Southern Hemisphere.

These positions are full-time continuing, subject to the completion of a satisfactory probation period for new appointees. Membership of a University approved superannuation scheme is a condition of employment for new appointees.

Remuneration package: $67,089 - $72,359 p.a. (which includes a base salary Level 6 $56,691 - $61,145 p.a., leave loading and up to 17% employer's contribution to superannuation)

All applications must be completed online. Specific enquiries about the role can be directed to Libby O'Reilly on (02) 9351 3618. Alternatively, general enquiries can be directed to Sandra Choi on (02) 9351 5880.

Closing date: 5 August 2007

For more information contact Libby 0'Reilly, Director, Health and Medical Libraries, University of Sydney, (p)+61 2 9351 3618, (m)+61 0401715195.

PD event - Bridging the gap: translating research into policy and practice

Presented by the HLA Regional Committee (Qld), Associate Professor Ann McKibbon from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University will be presenting the free lecture on knowledge translation, on Tuesday 21 August in the Auditorium, Medical Education Centre, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Herston, 2pm-3pm. Light refreshments will be provided following the presention. ALL WELCOME - no need to RSVP.

For more information click here.

Ann McKibbon BSc, MLS, PhD, is a medical librarian who has been working in the areas of evidence-based medicine, medical informatics, and knowledge translation for more than 25 years at McMaster University inHamilton, ON Canada. Her work includes studies of clinicians using Medline and other information resources as well as the Clinical Queries in PubMED. She received a PhD in medical informatics at the University of Pittsburgh in 2005 and is an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster. She continues her research and teaching in informatics and knowledge translation in the medical school and to other audiences outside the university. She has over 50 peer-reviewed publications and has taught more than 100 workshops to librarians and health professionals. She enjoys making difficult-to-understand topics (e.g., statistics) easily understood and believes strongly that librarians have a major role to play in research inside librarianship and in other disciplines. Taken from:
http://www.bm.cm-uj.krakow.pl/eahil/cec.php

Job advert: Manager, UQ/Mater McAuley Library Service (HEW Level 8)

THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND LIBRARY
Exciting management opportunity in one of Australia’s premier learning and research institutions.

An exciting opportunity is available for an innovative and energetic Librarian with outstanding leadership and management qualities to take on a senior management role at The University of Queensland Library. The University Library delivers high quality client-focused innovative information products, services and programs that are integrated with and central to the University’s teaching, learning, research and community service activities.

The Role: In the role you will manage the delivery of information services to the UQ Mater/McAuley Library within the context of the Biological and Health Sciences Library Service; participate in overall strategic planning and policy development within the University Library, develop action plans to implement Library policies and strategies; ensure effective communication with clients, and participate in budget formulation and expenditure as well as recruitment, deployment and development of staff. See position description for other duties.

The Person: You should possess a degree and recognised professional library qualifications, sound library management experience and expertise; extensive professional experience in academic, research or special libraries; sound understanding of trends in information service delivery in an educational, research and clinical environment and the ability to work flexibly within a team structure. See selection criteria for further requirements.

Remuneration: This is a continuing full time appointment at HEW Level 8. The remuneration package will be in the range of $78,076 to $ 87,669 per annum, including employer superannuation contributions of up to 17%.

Contact: Obtain the position description and selection criteria online or contact Suzanne Green on (07) 3365 6209 or email. Telephone Lisa Kruesi (07) 3365 5354 to discuss the role.

Send applications to the Joanne Rutherford, Human Resource and Staff Development Coordinator, Library Corporate Services Level 6 Duhig Building, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld 4072, or email.

Closing Date for Applications: Tuesday 7th August, 2007

Reference Number: 1313676

EBLIP4 conference papers now available

The full papers from the Evidence-based Library and Information Practice conference, EBLIP4, are now on the EBLIP4 website. The organisers are working to make podcasts of keynote speakers, such as Andrew Booth and Jonathan Eldredge, available so keep checking the site. A permanent link to the EBLIP4 website can be found under the 'Recent Conferences' column on the HLA Blogs! site.

Your HLA Executive at work

Keep abreast of the work of the HLA executive; links to the minutes of teleconferences held 13 and 27 March 2007 can be found at http://www.alia.org.au/groups/healthnat/meetings/.

Please direct any questions related to the minutes to HLA Convenor, Heather Todd.

NSW Health Libraries Forum 8-9 Nov 2007

Northern Sydney Central Coast Health is hosting the 2007 NSW Health Libraries Forum at Gosford Hospital on 8-9 November 2007. This practical and innovative event will consist of papers, posters, workshops and meetings designed to facilitate networking and deliver valuable professional development opportunities. The theme of the conference is "Focus on the User Environment: Techniques and Technologies", and abstracts submitted to date indicate a range of Web 2.0 and other technologies being used to enhance library users' information environment. The call for papers and posters has been extended to July 9 and more information can be found on the Forum blog at http://nswhlf2007.blogspot.com/.

Keep an eye on this site for the program which will be posted shortly and for registrations. The Forum has a focus on health librarianship but will be of interest to librarians from other fields also, and all are welcome to attend.

A bit of light humour

The Vic Specials are running a competition for the best library jokes (Vic Specials Jun 07 newsletter, p.8) and offered up one to start things off:

A man walks into a library and loudly announces to the librarian: "I would like some bacon and eggs." The librarian, taken aback, replies: "Don’t you know that this is a LIBRARY?" The man, embarrassed, lowers his voice to a barely audible whisper and repeats: "Please can I have some bacon and eggs."

Maybe you'd like to share your best library joke here on the blog.

LIANZA Conference '07

Some of the papers to be presented at the 2007 LIANZA conference later this year look really interesting. You can find the programme and abstracts at http://www.lianza.org.nz/events/conference2007/programme.html
Please contact me if you're attending and interested in blogging from the conference and/or writing a report for HLA News.

ALIA Board meeting report - May 07

Click here to view notes from the May '07 ALIA Board meeting. Points of interest include:

• no new e-lists to be created until a new policy on list use/responsibilities is finalised
• Lesley Piko, an external expert, will be asked to continue on the Finance, Audit and Risk Management Standing Committee with an honorarium
• the Governance Standing Committee has commenced a review of Committees and external representation; its next job will be a Board Readiness project
• a national event celebrating ALIA's 70th annivesary is being planned for the last quarter in 2007
• an Education Summit will be held in early 2008
• ALIA Conference guidelines are currently being revised and updated
• a review of the PD scheme will occur in the second half of 2007; PD participation currently sits at around 9% of total ALIA members
• a qualitative assessment of members needs for training will commence once the results of the surveys on training needs by Dr Gill Hallam (neXus stage 2), CAVAL and AGLIN have been received
• the ALIA Core values statement are to be approved without changes; statements on free access to information and professional conduct will be further amended
• Board agreed to further fund and seek further sponsorship for Alan Butters work on the development of an international ISO Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) standard [http://www.sybis.com.au/Pages/rfid%20new.html]
• The Board identified the following activities as priority for the 2007/08 period:
  * Advocacy (noting that it is a federal election year and ALIA's 70th Anniversary could provide an opportunity for engaging with Ministers and Shadow Ministers);
  *Education - particularly the development of discussion paper and the Education Summit;
  * Supporting ALIA Groups;
  * Engaging with members (including through National Advisory Congress meetings);
  * Management of the Association's finances;
  * Conferences - finalisation of the revised guidelines and working with Committees organising conferences;
  * Reviewing the use of Web 2.0 in ALIA services, including setting up a wikis and blogs.
• NAC meetings will be held around Australia and a "virtual" NAC meeting, using Web 2.0 technology, will be held in late 2007
• survey of members will be held later this yearALIA has been advised that Brisbane along with Singapore and Kuala Lumpur have been short listed as a suitable location for the 2010 IFLA World Congress

How informational professionals add value to their organisations: survey results

LexisNexis has release the results of a survey carried out in the US on how information professionals add value to their organizations through technology and knowledge management. Ninety three percent (93%) of librarians said they currently use intranets for managing and distributing information, and see collaborative workspaces (57%), wireless (44%), and portals (51%) as very important for the future. Click here to read more, in particular the top five responses to the question: "What is the most successful new initiative/service that you have launched in the past year?"

June issue of HLA News now published

Members will have received by email the June '07 issue of HLA News. Content includes:

Wireless connectivity (hotspots) at TQEH | Convenor's report | The role of research in Australian library and information studies | A report on presentations given by Tony McSean and Carol Lefebvre to the HLA Regional QLD group | A report from NLA's Innovative Ideas Forum | EBSCO product update | Left Field: 'Where's the evidence' by NICS | Q'Health Libraries' new director | Anne Harrison Award Winner

Thanks again to our sponsor, EBSCO.

As editor, I hope you find HLA News a valuable publication. Feel free to leave your comments on the blog.

HLA News - April 07 issue up on website

Members would be aware that HLA News is forwarded exclusively to members via email as a PDF attachment.

For interested non-members, the April issue of HLA News can now be viewed on the ALIA HLA newsletter web page. Content includes:

National access to electronic health information | Convenor's report | Searching for Australian grey literature in health | Workshop report: Electronic information in health libraries | HLA symposium report: Information Rx | Book review: Medical Library Downsizing | EBSCO product update | 2007 HLA Executive uncovered | Left Field: Using semantics to generate information | Guidelines for contributors | Call for applications for the Anne Harrison Award.

Australasian Cochrane Centre: Symposium for Australasian Review Authors

For those of you involved in producing reviews for the Cochrane Collaboration, the 2007 meeting for Australasian contributors coincides with a major update to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and the release of RevMan 5. The Symposium will be held in Brisbane, July 12-13.

There are pre and post workshops including Introduction to RevMan 5 and Developing a Protocol for a Systematic Review.

New issue of CHLA journal available

Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association Volume 22 Issue 2 Spring 2007 is now available at http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/jchla/jchla2-07.html

Applicants sought for the annual Roger K. Summit International Scholarship

Thomson Scientific, part of The Thomson Corporation, is seeking applicants for the annual Roger K. Summit International Scholarship. Thomson Scientific awards two scholarships annually, one to a student in the Americas and one in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, or Africa.

The €5,000 Scholarship is awarded to a graduate student enrolled in an accedited library or information science course. A panel of information professionals selects the regional winner after reviewing academic achievement, interest in electronic information services, proficiency using Dialog online services and faculty recommendations.

The deadline for applicants is October 31, 2007.

Applications are available at here.

Australian Health Librarian wins Thomson Scientific-sponsored Info Pro Award

Congratulations to Stephen Due, Chief Librarian at Geelong Hospital/Barwon Health Service, who was named the 2007 Information Professional of the Year by the SLA Australia/-New Zealand Chapter.

The annual award is sponsored by Thomson Scientific and is given to an information professional who has displayed great achievement in the information industry.

From the press release, which you can read in its entirety here, Stephen "has gone above and beyond to share his expertise and knowledge with his colleagues and peers...He has been extremely proactive in advancing the professional status of health librarianship within his organization and through his involvement with industry associations."

Notes from the HLA General Meeting 2 Feb 07

In an effort to keep members abreast of the HLA Executive's discussions, every effort will be made to get the minutes of meetings up onto the ALIA HLA website. The first to go up are the notes of the HLA General Meeting, held during the HLA Symposium, Information Rx, on 2 February 2007 at Sydney's Darling Harbour Conference Centre.

You can direct any queries or feedback to HLA Convenor,Heather Todd.

Latest SPARC Open Access Newsletter - balancing author and publisher rights

The June issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter "takes a close look at attempts to balance author and publisher rights, primarily in the "author addenda" from CIC, SPARC, and Science Commons, and in the position paper by the ALPSP, AAP/PSP, and STM. The round-up section briefly notes 99 OA developments from May."

As for all those acronyms:
CIC - Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a OA-friendly consortium of 12 research universities
SPARC - Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Constortium
ALPSP - Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
AAP/PSP - Association of American Publishers / Professional/Scholarly Publishing
STM - International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers

You can subscribe and unsubscribe to the newsletter and discussion forum: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/soan

The current and back issues can be found at:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm

CINAHL on the OVID platform - the real story

Check out the Krafty Librarian's blog post regarding the removal of CINAHL from the OVID platform. Make sure you read Scott McFarlane's (OVID VP) comments at the bottom, which aim to set the story straight.

CHLA 2007, Friday 1st June

The last day of the CHLA conference! The official program closed at the end of the morning sessions, which again were three keynote addresses.
Ingrid Parent, Assistant Deputy Minister, Documentary Heritage Collection Sector, Library and Archives Canada was the first speaker. In her talk, Ingrid focussed on the need for digital archives to be stable since one of the major issues facing any digital archiving of material was to ensure that it would have stable urls to ensure retrieval in the future. There have already been two harvests of government internet domains for archiving of internet pages, and this produced a terrifying amount of data. There are already many collaborative digitisation projects underway, but mass digitisation of print material held in the national archives will begin in the new financial year.
An update from CISTI – partnerships and digital initiatives, was given by CISTI’s Director General, Pam Bjornson. CISTI is part of the National Research Council and has 15 locations around Canada, with its headquarters in Ottawa. A major project is the development of a federal science e-library which involves negotiating government-wide licences of scientific and technical publications. This project, not surprisingly, is very complex, and has been planned for some years. CISTI is also involved in collaborative projects. I’ve already mentioned the National Library for Health; it also works on the OSPRey partnership – a joint submission and peer review system – with Australia’s CSIRO. CISTI’s Doc Delivery service has partnered with My I Library to provide digital ILLs of books – all of CISTI’s e-books are available via My I Library on ILL.
The final speaker for the morning struck a less formal but nonetheless provocative note: “Study says Canadians think cancer news media is blatant product placement wrapped in human melodrama.” The speaker was Alan Cassels, creator of the website Media Doctor Canada (www.mediadoctor.ca) whose main research area focuses on consumer perceptions of health reports in the media. Alan freely admitted that he pinched the idea for his website from an Australian colleague’s site, Media Doctor Australia: (http://www.mediadoctor.org.au/ )
The conference concluded with thanks to the conference committees, and an invitation to delegates to attend next year’s meeting in Nova Scotia.
The afternoon was devoted to more continuing education sessions for those with stamina! The lunchtime session was provided by Embase, during which there was a presentation of how the Emtree heading differ from MeSH, and how they are used in indexing drug-related material.
In the afternoon, John Loy and I conducted an information / demonstration / hands on session in the University of Ottawa Library’s computer lab on Chasing the Sun. This gave interested people the chance to see what it’s actually like and to ask more specific questions. Again, the interest was pleasing, and John and I have many contacts to follow up regarding Canadian participation in the CTS service!
I had two main reasons for attending the CHLA conference – the Chasing the Sun paper and training session, and to take the display material and leaflets about ICML Brisbane 2009. The koalas ran out. Most of the leaflets were taken. I was asked to leave the rest of the leaflets as they’ll be given out at future meetings. Many of our Canadian colleagues are planning to come to Australia – it’s a wonderful opportunity to come, they say! Many Canadian health librarians have also indicated that they’d like to join the CTS service and are keen to work with the UK and Australia in the future. So from my perspective, the conference was an outstanding success. The fact that I also found the papers to be stimulating, encouraging and informative was a bonus, but really to be expected, as health librarianship is much the same in Canada as Australia. In fact, there are many similarities between the two countries. I feel quite at home here – in fact if I weren’t careful, I could end up sounding like a Canadian – eh!

CHLA 2007 Thursday 31st May

Day two of the CHLA conference opened with the CHLA AGM, so I took that as an excuse to sleep in after the previous night’s effort! The first keynote was at 9.30 am and was given by Jeremy Grimshaw, Director, Clinical Epidemiology Ottawa Health Research Institute. His talk concentrated on the new buzz term : knowledge translation (KT) – how the evidence (knowledge) translates into practice, or changes the way in which clinicians practice. Jeremy started by reminding us that it was nearly 10 years ago in 1998 that Schuster et al wrote of the lack of the use of evidence in practice in the Millbank Memorial Quarterly. He warned of believing some of the hype that can surround research results, (beware of the noise to signal ratio) and felt that the development of clinical practice guidelines has been one of the most positive and helpful development of recent years. Jeremy recommended publications by JP Ioannidis, who’s written a lot on knowledge translation into practice. He particularly recommended his articles in Nature Genetics (2001), Am J Med (2003), J Translational Med (2004) and JAMA (2005).
Second speaker of the morning was Anne Brice from the UK National Library for Health. Anne’s brief was to give a summary of the UK situation, and she amused us mightily by describing the changes and reorganisations the UK NHS has gone through in the last 10 years. John Loy, UK Chasing the Sun Administrator, who’s worked for the NHS for 5 years, has already been through two major reorganisations. NHS staff don’t have business cards any more. Their titles and organisations’ names change too frequently! Anne mentioned the work of Muir Grey in creation of the National Knowledge Service, and that within the NKS, the National Library for Health aims to provide a modern hybrid, network-based, library service for the NHS, providing seamless access to knowledge resources. As an aside, Anne mentioned that she works one day a week on a project known as Duets, based in Oxford. Duets = Database of Unknown Effects of Treatment – that is, a database of what we don’t know! She ended her talk with one or Muir Grey’s beliefs – that what will transform health care in the 21st century is the well-informed patient.
After morning tea there was a panel discussion on the progress of the development of a National Library for Health for Canada. Its development is being driven largely by CHLA with input from other large bodies such as CISTI. This session generated much heated discussion, as it’s clear that there are several models for the NLH and sound justifications for them all. One concern that emerged more than once was the importance of local input / badging of any service. Several delegates feared that local identities may be at risk of being lost. Clearly, Canada and Australia face similar issues in the development of any nation-wide service, and CHLA will be sharing information regarding developments of the Canadian NLH with HLA.
Lunch and Learn with Ovid was a light-hearted update from the local Ovid team, with plenty of trivia questions and prizes. (I didn’t win anything!)
After lunch, I attended a session with three varied papers: the first, an analysis of how well various search engines find open access journals, the second, a summary of classes in Google searching and finally, a fun session on using web 2.0 tools. Not surprisingly, paper 1 reported that open access publications aren’t as easy to find as they could be, and some resources do a better job than others. The sample was small (14 titles), but making allowances for the small number it’s interesting that PubMed was 2.5 times more likely to find OA journals than Medline (searched via Ovid).
Google – the course was developed with the idea “if you can’t beat them, join them” and to instil better searching skills into the users. The course was a success, not only because they were well attended, but also because it raised the profile of the library, the librarians were perceived as “knowing stuff”, and the users came back for training in the more traditional library databases, realising that they needed those skills after all! Hmm.
The Web 2.0 tools paper covered some of the tools that can be used effectively by libraries – blogs, podcasts, rss feeds and instant messaging are right up there. I want to start playing with these toys – I mean tools – and soon!
After the break, John Loy gave a talk on the Chasing the Sun service, with both of us fielding questions afterwards. There’s a lot of interest on the part of Canadian health librarians in the service, and John and I continued discussions after our session and through into the gala dinner at the Arts Centre.
Don’t worry – we stopped enough to enjoy a Shakespearean Troupe’s execution (note the word) of Romeo and Juliet (rap style), and what was probably one of the funniest renditions of the wall scene from Midsummer Night’s dream I’ve ever seen. It had nothing to do with the liquid refreshment at all! Another late night.

CHLA 2007 Wednesday 30th May

Here is a brief report of what was a very full start to the CHLA conference in Ottawa this week.
As with the MLA conference, there were some continuing education offerings on Monday and Tuesday before the conference proper started on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the UK coordinator of Chasing the Sun, John Loy, and I had a meeting with a lengthy agenda (the usual for our irregular face-to-face meetings!). We discussed the developments in the QuestionPoint software and went through the paper on Chasing the Sun and training session material for later in the conference. There was a 6pm "getting to know you" function for first time attendees to the CHLA meetings, which was fun. As an ice-breaker we were all taught the salsa. I'm a changed woman. The exhibition opened on Tuesday evening. I'd taken most of the display material for the ICML 2009 Brisbane with me, and assembled it in the exhibition area, where even at the opening it attracted quite a bit of attention.
Three keynote speakers supplied the morning programme on Wednesday: Greg Notess from Montana State University spoke on using the best of both web 1.0 and web 2.0. Web 2.0 applications offer some interesting flexibility in the way services can be delivered, and Greg demonstrated a couple of sites / applications which could be useful. See http://www.slideshare.com/ – a site which enables sharing powerpoint slides and Scribd – an alternative to pdf files. Greg also demonstrated embedding files on web pages, which while meaning that the embedded document is always current, it takes away the evidence of where it’s from, giving rise to questions of quality assurance and authenticating sources. Embedded items are not trawled by all search engines.
Greg also mentioned custom search engines such as healia http://www.healia.com/healia/ in the health area, but stressed that these are still in beta stages, so we’ll have to wait to see if they will last in their current forms. However, customisation of search engines will probably be a development to watch.
One interesting beta site is Google Co-op which includes different subject areas, one of which is health. Contributors’ credentials can be seen, and some key organisations such as the Mayo Clinic are starting to get involved. http://www.google.com/coop/
And Greg made some comments about federated search engines: they don’t always do a thorough job and can be superficial, and because of the scope of what they’re doing, they’re SLOW, and don’t always produce the concise results required by a quick search.
Heather Joseph from SPARC – www.arl.org/sparc gave an excellent summary of the state of play in the area of open access publication. She feels that it’s now in the mainstream and is here to stay, but the models of scholarly publication are still undergoing change. Recommended reading on OA and the gains to the community: Steve Lawrence (2001) Nature 411 (6837) 521. Gunther Eysenbach has also published in PLoS Biology. See also the sites of OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals). Heather felt that one of the big issues for authors was retaining copyright rights of their articles: SPARC has produced an Author Addendum which authors can add to publishers’ contracts in which they require that the copyright remains with them. (Of course, not all publishers like this approach. Authors unite!)
Cameron Macdonald from NRC Press, a smallish Canadian publisher (his words), had a hard act to follow. As a publisher, he saw his main clients to be the authors, who, of course, want their works to be read. Cameron covered that thorny issue of mandatory open access to publically-funded research results, indicating that publishers did need to cover their costs and somehow these costs need to be met in the publishing continuum. He mentioned the ‘A’ word – Advertising!! and brought up the issue of potential conflicts of interest in peer review. Would OA improve the peer review process?
Three afternoon sessions I attended provided three case studies of provincial health libraries forming consortia of various sizes for various purposes – resource sharing and joint purchasing being the two prime movers. The quote of the afternoon came from the Ontario Public Health Libraries Association: “Availability more than quality determines which information resources will be used.” Not all worthwhile resources are necessarily available on the internet! We know that, but it’s nice to have it confirmed occasionally.
The final session of the day was a reception in the poster area and presentation of poster awards.
Today, someone said that the occasional personal note was okay in a blog. Okay. It's 11.20pm now. Can I go to bed?? Night!
Mary.

MLA 2007, Wednesday 23rd May

We attended the final plenary session, known as the Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lectureship presented by Kent Smith on "Law, Leaders, and Legends of the Modern NLM" on Wednesday. Kent gave a historical account of four major pieces of legislation; spanning the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Act of 1956 through to the creation of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Even though the topic was quite dry, Kent did a very entertaining job of covering the history. All of the key players were introduced and the presentation included their photos. The legendary people included Michael De Bakey, Senator Lister Hill and Senator Claude Petter. Many of the major reports, press releases and descriptions of the actions taken to lobby were detailed. So much has been achieved through the established of the NLM and the National Centre for Biotechnology. The rest of the world has a great deal to be greatful for these achivements, as where would we be without free resources, such as PubMed and NLM Human Genome Resources?
Lisa Kruesi & Mary Peterson

MLA 2007 Tuesday 22nd May

Tonight, we're summarising two days - the 7am starts plus jet lag equalled two tired ladies last night!

Monday.

Both of us went to the breakfast meeting hosted by BioMed Central on open access publishing. After an explanation of how BioMed Central operates, which I think is familiar territory for most of us, the attendees were split into three groups which discussed different aspects of open access publishing and how it could or was affecting library service:
a) How librarians could collaborate with research administration and funders to set up central university funds for open access charges;
b) Administering funds for open access publication charges: memberships, individual payments, reporting and accountability;
c) How could BioMed Central adapt open access payment models to meet the needs of the medical research community?
The first two questions generated lots of discussion. Essentially, publication of research always has a cost, and which of the two publication models will prove strongest is yet to be determined. However, the move towards more open access publishing will probably be driven by the degree to which it becomes mandatory for publically funded research to be freely available. The discussion also touched on the use of institutional repositories. A highlight of the session was a talk given by Ellen Finnie Duranceau from MIT on the role of the librarian in an open access world, and how we can become actively involved in the publication contiuum.

During the day, there was considerable interest shown at the ICML stand in the Exhibition hall.

The highlight for Mary was the Emerging Technologies panel discussion session in the afternoon. A selection of new technologies was discussed which included web 2.0 and the impact of tagging as a navigational tool - user generated taxonomies or folkonomies which are a form of self cataloguing (cataloguers were warned to block their ears!) with examples brought up by the session web jockey from sites such as del.ici.ous (see the Evergreen Pines catalogue as an example of these alternative possibilites for a catalogue): Mashups, which will be big ( see the Wall of Books). In 2006 OCLC held a contest for the best mashup called Mashing up the Library. Currently, mashups need some programming skills but will become easier as mashup software is developed : Virtual Worlds (see Second Life) which are increasingly being used to provide user education programs. There was a final wrap up discussion which gave the audience a chance to vote (with clickers) on what the thought the greatest technological challenge would be for them in the next year. Interestingly, there was no one issue which stood out, but web 2 and access issues were big ones.

Tuesday was the final day of the exhibition. After the exhibition closed, Lisa attended the International Cooperation Section meeting at the end of the day. Tony McSean gave his report and handed over to the new chairperson. Bruce Madge has taken over from Becky Lyon as the representative on EAHIL. Lisa gave a report on ICML 2009.

For the Chasing the Sun participants among us, Mary had a special all-day meeting with OCLC regarding the new Flash chat screens and their increased functionality, the administration behind the scenes and the streamlining of the international CTS service with the view to its expansion - hopefully after the training session to be held during next week's Canadian Health Libraries Association conference. (Yes, I'll be blogging that one, too.)

During the evening, Mary attended a dinner hosted by NEJM and Lisa attended two dinners, first with health librarians from New Jersey, followed by a second with some British colleagues. Lots of networking underway.

That's all for tonight folks! It's after midnight.

MLA 2007 Sunday, 20th May

The MLA conference starts in earnest! That means 7am breakfast sessions, even on Sunday mornings. Mary went to hear about the latest coming up with the EndNote bibliography program and ISI's Web of Science. The next version, EndNote X1, will be coming out in the middle of the year, and includes several improvements on the EndNote X version. EndNote web has been developed for use with the Web of Science - it enables students to start learning about the techniques of researching and maintaining records of their references. For those of you who use / teach EndNote, watch out for the announcements of the new version.Lisa went to the Ovid breakfast (7 am) it gave a general update of developments in store: contextual design - Ovid SP. Watch out for more LWW backfiles; in particular nursing, psychology and psychiatry. CINAHL is definitely going from the Ovid platform. New journal titles to come include Disaster Medicine & Public Health Prepardness to help us deal with the next tsunami, 9/11, Sars etc... American Medical News (health press coverage) (we will need to compile the Australian equivalent) and others! EBM will link directly with Cochrane. Our favourite Anatomy.tv (known in the USA as Primal Pictures) now has Neuroanatomy and Anatomy for Acupuncture. It was worth getting up and I really enjoyed my blue-berry bagel. The plenary session covered peer review. The consensus seems to be that the speaker was good, but covered a lot of ground with which we as an occupational group are already familiar. There were special group / section meetings for most of the afternoon, which meant that we had time to visit some of the other exhibitors' stands.This evening was filled by an International Delegates' Reception, the Ovid party on the banks of the Delaware River and finished in one of the ballrooms with classic rock provided by the Bearded Pigs band. Who? Well, here's a hint. One of the guitars is played by Bruce Madge, formerly of the British Medical Association library and President Elect of CILIP. They're all librarians - and they weren't bad!We're posting this before we turn into pumpkins. There's another 7am meeting tomorrow!

MLA 2007 Saturday 19th - Exhibition

Koala frenzy! THe MLA trade exhibition opened on Saturday 19th May, and the stand for ICML Brisbane 2009 was a big hit! Already at least 300 of the 500 koalas have found good homes. What we're doing is attaching baby koalas to delegates' lanyards to help promote ICML Brisbane 2009 at this meeting. This is working! In addition, we're giving our calendars to start the planning process, as the US delegates need time to put away funds for the big trip. Excitement is in the air as they all consider the possibility of coming to a destination many have only dreamed about. Otherwise, there's a real buzz of activity. For us, it's exciting to be around health information professionals en masse.

Saturday, 19th May

Continuing education course: Statistics for the Statistically Challenged presented by Dr Ann McKibbon, Associate Professor, Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Health Information Research Unit, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.The goal of the course - to show what we already know about statistics in our daily workplace; to present statistics in healthcare papers in such a way that are understandable; and to remove the stigma of statistics. This might look boring but in fact it was a whole lot of fun, stimulating and understandable. What's even more exciting is that she's coming to Brisbane to attend the informatics conference. She's indicated that she'd be willing to run the course in Brisbane. Are you interested? Please blog! We need to know! We'll organise it. You'd need to come to Brisbane as she's only here for a short time.

MLA and CHLA

Watch this space over the next few weeks for postings from the Medical Libraries Association meeting in Philadelphia and the Canadian Health Libraries Association meeting in Ottawa. Lisa Kruesi will be at MLA promoting the Brisbane ICML so we hope to attract many delegates to our shores! A training session for the Chasing the Sun after-hours virtual reference service is planned after the CHLA conference, so we might have some participants in the service from North America joining us.
Mary Peterson, HLS Secretary.

Your input needed...does health librarianship need a recognised specialist qualification at the tertiary level?

Recently a post went out on aliaHEALTH advertising units in Law Librarianship which can be undertaken in 'intensive' mode as part of QUT's Graduate Certificate in Information Management (Library Studies), its Master of Information Management program, by cross-institutional or visiting students, or as a single unit.

This has reignited discussion among the HLA Executive about exploring a similar course for health librarianship. I say reignited because the HLA strategic plan for 01/02 notes:

...it is intended that HLA will seek to influence curriculum development at the tertiary level in order to provide a recognised specialist qualification (at least one unit) at the tertiary level.

I show my personal bias here but a specialist tertiary level course would:

• provide a benchmark in 'best practice' - currently young librarians learn on the job primarily from their seniors
• make the newly qualified more 'job ready' for the specialist environment
• give recognition to the specialist skills and knowledge required of a health/medical librarian
• increase exposure to health/medical librarianship as a career option to young, up and coming librarians, of which we so urgently need in our greying profession

among other benefits.

Over to you. What to you think? Leave a comment.

Librarian presents at RACP Congress

This week Austin Health librarian, Dominique Collins, presented a session on Online Clinical Resources at the Professional Skills Day, held as part of the The Royal Australasian College of Physicians Congress.

A link to Dominique's presentation can be found on the Austin Library website.

It's great to see librarians involved in such a notable event. Well done Dominique and the Austin Health Library team!

Open letter of complaint to publishers of Pediatrics

If you haven't seen this already, Oliver Obst, Head of the Central Medical Library at the Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat Munster, and past Vice-President of the German Medical Library Association, has written an open letter of complaint to the American Academy of Pediatrics, publishers of Pediatrics. In it, Obst states his objection to the price hike for subscriptions and the cost of site licences. 'As long as you keep to this pricing scheme, you are no longer "dedicated to the health of all children".'

Better Connected Intranets

For those of you involved in the development of your organisation's intranet, the April '07 issue of CILIP's magazine, Update, has a news story (p.11) featuring the release of a report from the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm), Better connected intranets: emerging good practice.

From the report's introduction,

Intranets have been a neglected area for development compared with public websites, but now the demand for service transformation is putting much greater emphasis on the requirement for employees to have easy access to information that they need for their work. Using ideas, experiences and lessons shared at a series of workshops in 2006, we have investigated what good practice in developing intranets involves.

Unfortunately the report is not a free download but the Update story does outline the top 10 applications for intranets.

• phone directory
• bulletin boards: classifieds, discussion, lost and found, events
• HR applications: absence recording, flexi-time mgt, expense claims
• job vacancies
• room bookings
• catering: lunch menus, online food ordering
• geographical information systems
• committee information system: agendas and minutes
• leader's briefing/monthly message from heads of directorates
• employee discounts: cut-price cineman tickets, restaurant meals, travel

It also shares these great ideas:

• photo libraries to help employees who are preparing web pages, leaflets and other publications
• a chief executive's blog (variation on the monthly message)
• turning the intranet's "how do I?" section into a wiki so employees can share their knowledge with others

HLA makes submission to Valintus

In the lastest issue of HLA News convenor, Heather Todd, makes reference to the business case being developed by Valintus [on behalf of the Health Information Management Principal Committee (NHIMPC), which is a Principal Committee of the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council (AHMAC)] to determine the viability of the national licensing of key Electronic Clinical Knowledge Resources (ECKR) for health professionals employed in the government sector – Australia wide. HLA has now forwarded its submission to Valintus. Please contact Heather Todd should you like a copy.

Bumper issue of HLA News just published

The first issue of HLA News for 2007 has just been published. HLA members will have received their copy by email overnight.

In the lead article Lindsay Harris proves a superior tour guide as he tracks the journey towards national access to electronic health information; Desley Reid-Orr recounts the difficulties encountered when searching for grey literature in health care; and this issue's Left Field column is penned by David Hansen, leader of Health Data Integration and e-Health Metadata and Ontologies research projects at the e-Health Research Centre, who provides insight into the importance of semantics in healthcare. Also read reports from the HLA symposium, Information Rx, and the two day NSW Health Libraries workshop held late last year, and much more!

Thanks goes to our sponsor, EBSCO Australia. You can find a product update from EBSCO on page 11.

If you are an HLA member (or think you are!) and didn't receive the newsletter, contact me directly.

HLA News is the quarterly bulletin of the Australian Libraries and Information Association’s group, Health Libraries Australia (HLA). It has the simple aim of reporting the practices, policies, research, events and initiatives of Australian health and biomedical libraries, which may influence the practice and thinking of HLA members and other health and biomedical library workers. A by-product of this is a publication that showcases Australian health and biomedical library practice to the rest of the world.

Calling all special libraries: ALIA's Great Ideas LIW Competition

You've got until this Friday (20th April) to submit your dream Library and Information Week promotional idea to be in the draw to win a funky @ your library USB wristband. There will be one winner from each sector. Health librarians are known for their great ideas so get cracking!

Library and Information Week 21-27 May 2007

ALIA Election Results/Board changes

The following positions/changes come into effect as of the ALIA AGM on May 15:

• Derek Whitehead (Swinburne Uni of Technology) has been elected Vice-president / President-elect. You can keep up with Derek's ALIA activities via his blog Derek's ALIA Blog;
• Damian Lodge (Centre for Information Studies , Charles Sturt Uni) and Kate Watson (Uni of the Sunshine Coast) have been elected as Directors;
• Roxanne Missingham (Aust Parliamentary librarian) will take over from Dagmar Schmidmaier as ALIA President; and
• Of interest to health, Anne Ritchie's (Dept of Health and Community Services, NT) term as a director comes to an end while Philip Keane (Royal Adelaide Hospital - IMVS) continues as a director into 2008.

See ALIA Board of Directors for more information.

Roadshow: Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia

education.au is holding its first seminar for 2007. Guest speaker is Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. Hear, discuss and debate how the way knowledge is created is changing.

Health librarians, if you get a group of 10 ALIA members together you will receive a 10% discount on the price ($300 which includes GST, morning tea and lunch). Forward details of your group of 10 including name, position and the location you would like to attend to Jill Yvanovich at ALIA national office. Attendance can earn you 5 points in the 'informal learning activities' category of the ALIA PD scheme.

Dates and times:

23 April Adelaide Hilton Hotel, 9:30am - 4:00pm

24 April Perth Burswood Entertainment Complex, - 9:30am - 4:00pm

26 April Sydney Hilton Hotel, 9:30am - 4pm

27 April Melbourne ZINC at Federation Square, 9:30am - 4:00pm

Judy Burnham's "Web 2.0: Tools for Clinical Practice"

In case you missed the post on the aliaHEALTH discussion list Web 2.0 junkies and novices should check out Judy Burnham's (University of Alabama) Web 2.0: Tools for Clinical Practice.

Thomson Scientific update sessions

Thomson Scientific will be conducting Web of Knowledge and Bibliometric Analytical tools update sessions across Australia late May/early June. RSVP is required, no later than May 5th, as the sessions have a fixed capacity. Contact Dharshani on 61 2 8587 7704 or dharshani.goonetilleke@thomson.com for more information or to book.

Perth, 9-11.30am 31st May
Curtin University of Technology
Room 218, Level 2, Robertson Library (Building 105)
Kent Street, Bentley

Melbourne, 9.30-12pm 1st June
University of Melbourne
Tute & Committee rooms, Baillieu Library
Gate 12, Royal Parade, Parkville

Sydney, 9.30-12pm 4th June
University of Sydney
Training Room 3, Fisher Library
Eastern Avenue F03, Camperdown Campus

Adelaide, 9.30-12pm 5th June
University of Adelaide
Ira Raymond Room, Barr Smith Library, North Terrace Campus

Brisbane, 9.30-12pm 6th June
University of Queensland
Library Conference Room
Duhig Building, St Lucia

Health LIS 2.0

I have only just stumbled across the blog Health LIS 2.0 after browsing the L2.0 presentation Gillian Wood and Graham Spooner delivered at the Information Rx Symposium. The comments collected during their presentation are quite fascinating!

With its health library focus this is a blog worth subscribing to.

Info Rx presentations

Presentations from the HLA Symposium, Information Rx, have been added to the ALIA HLA web site. Presentations up so far include:

• What's Expert About Expert Searching?
• HLA Input into National Health Information Provision
• Library 2.0
• Chasing the Sun
• Seamless e-Resource Integration

Some presenters have submitted for publication and as such are unable to provide their presentations. We plan to link to the published papers once they become available. Stay tuned.

Doing research? Think Anne Harrison Award

Following on from my previous post about the research-practice gap, give some thought to applying for the Anne Harrison Award or at least encouraging someone you know who's engaged in research to do so.

And don't discount the possible significance of any action-research you might be conducting in the workplace. If you're unsure whether your local project is up to par, check with the AH administrators (all lovely, approachable indiviuals) or drop me a line and I'll pass it onto the right people.

The other group of professionals who should consider the AH Award are those doing relevant post-grad studies, where the course includes a research component. What better way to support and/or get that hard work out to the masses...via the AH Award!

The Award makes available $3000 for:

• A research project which will increase the understanding of health librarianship in Australia;
• Exploring the potential for the further development of health librarianship in Australia;
• Assistance towards enrichment of knowledge and skills of Australian health sciences librarians, including funding to help meet expenses of an approved course of study or study tour, or to help meet expenses arising from a publication in the field of Australian health librarianship.
  

EBLIP Vol 2, No 1 (2007)

Remember to take a look at the first issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice for 2007. While not the only paper of interest we have to give special note to our own...those SPICE girls, Suzanne Lewis and Lisa Cotter, and their paper Have the Most Relevant and Answerable Research Questions Facing Librarians Changed Between 2001 and 2006?. In their paper, Lewis and Cotter reason that the disparity between questions being asked by information professionals and the evidence being generated by researchers equals a research‐practice gap. They also found that of the list of "focused and answerable questions representing current workplace issues" (p.1), as reported by delegates attending 2 EBP seminars in June 2006, the most commonly asked fell into the management and education domains! Interesting stuff. For the full list of questions, refer to Appendix A of the paper.

2007 ALIA BOD elections: VP candidates blog

Elections are being held to fill two positions on the ALIA Board of Directors and to elect someone to the position of Vice-President. Members should have their ballot papers by now. Voting closes at 5pm on 11 April.

Of interest, there are 2 candidates standing for the VP's position and both have blogs. Should you like to know more about them, visit Kevin Dudeney and Derek Whitehead.

We've moved our feeds for HLA Blogs!

...to Feedburner.

While the old feed URL has been redirected to FeedBurner, we encourage all existing subscribers to rescrubscribe using the new feed as this will allow us to accurately track user statistics and better know our subscribers' interests.

Feedburner is compatible with your preferred reader or you can subscribe to receive new posts once a day via email.

Breaking news: Lisa Kruesi, 2008 MLA Cunningham Fellow

Congratulations go to Lisa Kruesi who has been awarded the Medical Library Association's Cunningham Memorial International Fellowship for 2008. Lisa is the third Australian to receive this award after Frances Bludhorn in 1987 and Saroj Bhatia in 2003.

Lisa is the Manager of the Health Sciences Library Service at the University of Queensland (UQ) Library. She is also Treasurer of the ALIA HLA group and joint convener of the 10th ICML (International Congress of Medical Librarianship) that will be held in Brisbane in August/September 2009.

Well done, Lisa!

New book on on assessment and evaluation for hospital librarians

Using Benchmarking, Needs Assessment, Quality Improvement, Outcome Measurement, and Library Standards: A How-To-Do-It Manual by Ros Dudden has just been published. Neal-Schuman are offering a discount to MLA members but you will need to contact the publisher regarding the cost of international post (so it may be easier to contact your local bookseller!).

Learn more about social software

About Five Weeks to a Social Library "is the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries." Though the course was run back in February all the course content is freely available via screencasts, webcasts, podcasts and links to readings, among other things. The course covers Blogs, RSS, Wikis, Social Networking Software and SecondLife, Flickr, Social Bookmarking Software and Selling Social Software @ Your Library. This site looks well worth exploring.

Upcoming professional development opportunities

FOLIOZ - Designing & Delivering Information Skills Training Courses: presented by ScHARR and ALIA, this online course is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to design and deliver successful information skills training courses. Register now! The course runs from 26 March to 25 May 2007.

Survival of the Fittest: Strategies to Prove Your Library’s Value: pay to access video-on-demand of the original Webcast (available March 13–April 12, 2007) and the participant's manual.

Negotiating E-Licences: an ALIA/CAVAL workshop being held in most major centres from the end of March through to early August.

Copyright Council 2007 training: the Copyright Council is holding training aimed at libraries and archives in major centres throughout 2007.

4th International Evidence Based Library & Information Practice Conference: EBLIP4 is being held from 6-11 May 2007 in
Chapel Hill-Durham, North Carolina.

MLA ’07 Information Revolution: Change Is in the Air: the MLA conference is being held in Philadelphia from 18-23 May 2007. Early bird registration is available until April 16.

28th International Association of Technological University Libraries Conference: the theme for this conference being held in Stockholm, 11-14 June 2007, is "Global Access to Science - Scientific Publishing for the Future".

Members invited to attend ALIA GM, 15 May 2007

The ALIA General Meeting is being held at 6:00pm on Tuesday 15 May 2007 at The National Library of Australia, followed by drinks.

Motions are due by Thursday 15 March 2007. If you plan to attend, RSVP to Kamara Schlegel/02 6215 8214.

Donate your hospital's history to NLM

Becky Lyons recently posted to the MLA's Hospital Library Section's e-list.

The National Library of Medicine holds some 2400 hospital histories from around the world. We would be delighted to receive donations of hospital histories that we do not already hold.

Information on how to donate books to NLM is here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/donate.html

Health-e-Nation Conference, 21 March 2007, Star City Hotel, Sydney

Members may be interested in the upcoming Health-e-Nation Conference and Exhibition being held in Sydney starting 21 March. From the website:

Health-e-Nation conferences provide a unique opportunity to learn, network, participate and most importantly to challenge the status quo of Health ICT activity.

The conference will be exploring the theme "Health-e-Wellness: consumers participating in their own health management."

The conference is hosted by CHIK Services (CHIK) Pty Ltd which is a not-for-profit company established to provide global communication services bridging the health and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sectors.

Latest issue of JCHLA now available

The first issue of the Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association for 2007 contains the rewritten Standards for Library and Information Services in Canadian Healthcare Facilities 2006. Our Canadian colleagues have adopted to follow the shorter MLA model of outcomes based standards.

Also, those of you interested in Web 2.0 should check out Allan Cho's introduction to mashups.

2007 HLA Executive

The HLA Symposium, held in February, marked some changes to the membership of the HLA Executive. Below is the HLA Executive for 2007. Feel free to approach any committee member with feedback, suggestions or issues of concern.

Heather Todd (QLD) - Convenor
Lisa Kruesi (QLD) - Treasurer
Mary Peterson (SA) - Secretary
Cheryl Hamill (WA) - Committee member
Veronica Delafosse (VIC) - Committee member
Jenny Hall (QLD) - Committee member
Bronia Renison (QLD) - Committee member
Sheelagh Noonan (NSW) - Committee member
Melanie Kammermann (Hong Kong) - Newsletter Editor

Each committee member will be profiled in the upcoming March 2007 issue of HLA News.

Finally, Lindsay Harris, Greg Fowler and Janiece Michael have now officially stepped down from the committee and we thank them for their hard work.

Library Workflow Redesign: Six Case Studies

I haven't had a chance to look at these workflow redesign case studies published by The Council on Library and Information Resources but they certainly warrant it from the description.

You can read the documents for free at the CLIR website.

Call for nominations - Information Professional of the Year

Thomson Scientific and Dialog announced at the Information Online conference that they will continue their sponsorship of the Australia & New Zealand Chapter of the Special Library Association's (SLA) Information Professional of the Year Award. From the Thomson press release:

"Nominations should be e-mailed to Marie McKenzie, past president of the SLA Australia and New Zealand Chapter at mckenzieinfo@aapt.net.au. Any questions regarding the nomination process and selection criteria should also be directed to Marie. The deadline for submitting nominations is May 11, 2007. Individuals may nominate themselves or others."

So...what are waiting for!

MeSH® Subheading Consolidation Decision

From the NLM Technical Notes post of 30 Jan 07, "Last year, the National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) proposed to consolidate the 83 existing qualifiers (subheadings) in the Medical Subject Headings and create a smaller set"..."in part due to budget constraints and limited resources, NLM has made the decision to retain the qualifiers in their present form."

EBLIP4 Conference

Two pieces of news about the forthcoming Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Conference being held from May 6-11 2007 at Chapel Hill-Durham, North Carolina:

1. the deadline for poster abstractshas been extended until 5 March 2007

2. registration to the conference is now open.

HLA General Meeting, 2nd Feb from 3.30pm

The ALIA Health Libraries Australia (HLA) invites members and non-members to attend its General Meeting. There is no need to RSVP. Those not attending the HLA Symposium on this day are welcome to attend the meeting only.

AGENDA
ALIA Health Libraries Australia General Meeting to be held in the Ballroom at the Sydney Convention Centre, Darling Harbour on Friday February 2nd 2007 at 3.30 - 5.00 pm.

Items of Business
1) Welcome and introductions to the new Executive (Heather Todd)
2) Anne Harrison Award report (Veronica Delafosse)
3) Ane Harrison funds management (Cheryl Hamill)
4) Special interest groups: REBLs (Veronica Delafosse)
5) FOLIO courses update (Veronica Delafosse)
6) Regional groups: HLAQ (Heather Todd
7) HLA News report (Lindsay Harris)
8) Revision of the health libraries guidelines - 4th edition (Lindsay Harris)
9) Future direction of HLA (Heather Todd/Cheryl Hamill)
10) Future conference planning status ICML 9 (Heather Todd)
11) Other business
12) Date of next general meeting

If you wish to attend other Symposium sessions you must register for the HLA Satellite Event, Information Rx.

Jan issue of Elsevier's Library Connect Newsletter now available

The theme of this issue is "The End of Print". You'll also find a link to the pamphlet, "15 Ways to Promote Effective Use of
Online Products".

Information Specialists Breakfast - 31 Jan, 7.45 am

The Information Online Group will be holding a breakfast during the Online Conference to discuss professional opportunities for Special Librarians (including conferences). More details and registration to this free event can be found at http://www.information-online.com.au/index.php?pagename=Information%20Specialists%20Breakfast.

New issue of CHLA journal available

Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association Volume 27 Issue 4 Fall 2006 is now available at http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/jchla/jchla4-06.html.

Outcomes of the ALIA Proposed Governance Changes

For those of you who may not have heard, the majority of motions relating to the way ALIA is governed were defeated at the ALIA AGM held on 30 November 2006. One minor proposal was passed; this related to tidying up of the Constitution by removing 13.2, a reference to interim directors. An unofficial report of the meeting was posted on the aliaNATSPEC discussion list (available to e-member list members only). I'm not sure if national office has released anything on the subject as yet.

Information Rx - HLA Symposium 2-3 Feb 2007

The program for HLA's Symposium has now been loaded on the Information Online 2007 satellite events page. You'll need to scroll down to the Information Rx heading for more details including registration information. Early bird registration is available until this Friday, 19th Jan.