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.

ALIA BOD approve HLA Symposium

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

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

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

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

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

Student Members $190
Student Non Members $250

More details will be released over the new few weeks.

ALIA General Meeting 30th November 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

JMLA Case Studies

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

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

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

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

Australian author publishes in JMLA

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

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

EBLIP4

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

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

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

Registration for the conference has not opened as yet.

Communicating the value of hospital libraries

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

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

neXus Census - deadline looms

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

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

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

Web 2.0 technology for health librarians

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

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

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

aliaNEWS

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

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

Guidelines for the Introduction of Electronic Information Resources to Users

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

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