hint: Health Information News and Thinking
Volume 5, Issue 1 July 2007
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hint: Health Information News and Thinking Volume 5, Issue 1 July 2007 |
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My attendance at the recent HSLG Conference was a very enjoyable and worthwhile experience. The overall theme ‘Promotion and Teaching Skills within the Healthcare Library’ most definitely enticed me and I was not to be disappointed. Dr Teresa O’Doherty’s presentation on ‘Formulating Effective Teaching Strategies’ was a very practical and useful session. Teaching information skills is fast becoming a necessary expertise for librarians. The key points for me were to become comfortable with my own method of teaching and to apply this to my work setting. It is also important to get the user to articulate their needs as clearly as possible so that the interaction is both positive and rewarding for you and the user. Jen Harvey’s presentation on ‘Principles of E-Learning’ was also helpful with words such as ‘open plan’ ‘wireless access’ and ‘flexibility’ jumping out at us. E-Learning is linked in with teaching strategies and has the potential to make learning opportunities more exciting and dynamic. We as librarians have to increasingly incorporate e-learning into our work and we have a role as facilitators of information and to support the associated electronic links with e-learning. The highlight for me was the presentation on ‘Marketing and Promoting Strategies’ by Tom Prior and Barbara Sen. This was a most enlightening and energising presentation and really made me want to go back and re-vamp areas of my job! The main points were to look at the objectives of our jobs, how we are perceived in our own organisations, our strengths and weaknesses and how we can work towards a marketing strategy. We are all facing the common challenges of ‘lack of support’ ‘unrealistic expectations’ ‘limited resources’ and perhaps our marketing message is not matching our service (definitely a phrase that gives food for thought)! We can strive towards enabling an atmosphere for change and focusing on specific areas of our jobs that we would like to revise. The presentations on the All Ireland Electronic Library for Health and Health and Information Services Directory www.hlisd.org were valuable as I was not aware of developments in this area prior to the conference. All of the presentations were intertwined and were very applicable to our changing roles as librarians in an ambitious and diverse information world. The Hodson Bay Hotel was an excellent venue. The trade exhibition and dinner were both very pleasant. It was great to catch up with friends from last year and to make new friends this year. The participatory group work within the sessions was also very beneficial and it is always cheering to know that we are all in the same boat! And facing the same challenges. I felt invigorated to go back to my own job and to know that there are colleagues that I can call on for advice. I look forward to next year. Liz Dore, Assistant Librarian, Regional Medical Library Who are you? Where do you work? Health Sciences Library, UCD Dublin, (contact me at (01)716 6579 or email: Valerie.kendlin@ucd.ie ) A quick word about UCD…… Modularisation has been implemented, allowing students to pick from a menu of modules within their Programme, changing the pattern of use of the library and its resources. Teaching and research remain at the forefront of everything UCD does, presenting the library with challenges and opportunities! However, our students and staff still need to find, evaluate and use information in all its formats so it is plus ca change….! Who do you cater for? Students and staff of UCD, particularly all the health related schools (Nursing, Public Health and Population Science, Physiotherapy and Performance Science), the general public on occasion, health libraries, academic libraries… – everyone! How do you cater for them? Next January the Health Sciences library will be based in the purpose-built, Health Sciences Centre in Belfield and the Health Sciences library staff will be under one roof. This will greatly assist us in service development, as the academic staff will be on site with us, as well as many of the students in their pre-clinical stage, so there is potential for a really dynamic work environment, with the library at the heart of the UCD Health Sciences academic world! We have a range of electronic Medical, Nursing, Physiotherapy and Public Health resources – our list of databases can be viewed by Subject on our website, as well as books, journals, clinics etc in hardcopy. UCD Library has received IREL funding which has greatly increased our electronic journal content and these are exciting times to be a resource manager! Liaison with the staff and students is the lynchpin on which everything else hangs. I bring the Mountain to Mohammed and actively try to meet the academics outside the library – for coffee or in their offices. I believe this is important if I am trying to reinforce the message that the library encompasses the whole world of information and is not just a physical repository of books, journals and staff! We also assist with information requests, collection development, journal reviews etc. Another large component of the job is the delivery of information skills sessions. I am currently involved in the delivery of classes to undergraduates, postgraduates and staff consisting of demonstration and worksheet components. Innovative teaching and learning methods like Problem Based Learning are increasingly involving the Library and this is something that I (and others) will be greatly involved in next semester. Who works with you? A team of Health Sciences librarians, library assistants and a senior library assistant but I also closely work with library staff from all UCD libraries on working groups and I benefit from the different perspectives on things, enabling me to feed that back into the work I am doing with Medicine and Medical Science. What is the first thing you usually do in the day? Buy a coffee, turn on my PC and check my email and phone messages. What is the most unusual request you have had? This is annoying and illuminating rather than unusual - I got asked how to find a phone number of a Dublin based company – the person had spent a fruitless 10 minutes on Google and hadn’t thought of the phone book! What do you enjoy? The advocacy element of my role! Teaching and presenting – anything that involves spreading the word about the brilliance of modern library resources; working as part of team and having the benefit of the experience of other colleagues to inform my practice; being able to spearhead an initiative if I spot a gap or a chance to insert the library into somewhere it is not already. What are your plans for your library? To get into it! The Health Sciences Library team hopes to develop our services as there will be more staff and amenities available to us – we would like to see things like drop-in sessions, more hands-on teaching, increased library-academic liaison. What is the last thing you usually do each day? Make lists for the following day! My day ends as it starts – coffee at my desk, checking my phone for messages and a final check of my email…Einstein summed it up when he said “Know where to find the information and how to use it. That’s the secret of success.” and if that was good enough for Einstein, it is good enough for me!
EBSCO Information Services would like to congratulate the two members of HSLG that have won the competition to attend the MLA 2007 conference in Philadelphia in May . Michael Doheny, of Athlone Institute of Technology, and Kathryn Smith, of the Dublin Dental Hospital, are the winners of bursaries that will allow them to attend the conference from May 18 to May 23. The bursaries, announced at the HSLG Annual conference in Athlone, funded jointly by EBSCO and HSLG, were an initiative of Jane Farrelly, the association’s international liaison officer, and Julie Boyd-Reynolds, of EBSCO. It will allow the two members to attend one of the profession’s premier conferences, where they will be able to meet and exchange ideas and knowledge with colleagues from all over the globe. We congratulate both Michael and Kathryn and look forward to hearing of their experiences in later issues of HINT. Julie Boyd-Reynolds, Sales Manager, EBSCO In June the Medical Faculty of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland hosted an informal retirement reception for Librarian Beatrice Doran BA, MBA, Dip Lib. Beatrice took on the role of Librarian in RCSI in 1986, having previously held the post of Deputy and Acting University Librarian at University College Cork. As well as holding the Library Association of Ireland presidency three times, Beatrice was a founding member of the Health Sciences Libraries Group and has been a champion for health libraries and health librarians over the years. In order to commemorate her involvement with the HSLG, the committee has instituted an annual lecture to held as part of the HSLG Annual Conference. The Annual Beatrice Doran Lecture will feature a speaker of note who will deliver a presentation that is both challenging and insightful. Beatrice has kindly agreed to be the inaugural speaker at the next HSLG conference in February 2008. Following her retirement, Beatrice is to commence work following as
a principal investigator for a pilot study to introduce the concept
of a Clinical Informationist service to Ireland for the first time.
We all wish her luck in this endeavour and look forward to seeing her
in 2008.
Beatrice Doran and colleagues, RCSI June 2007
Bernard Barrett, Chair of the Health Sciences Libraries Group and Beatrice Doran, RCSI, June 2007
Brendan Teeling and Marjory Sliney, Library Association
of Ireland and Bernard Barrett, HSLG As usual, it's been a busy few months on the International horizon front so I'll attempt to summarize a few of the key developments as best I can! As HSLG International Liaison Officer, my role is to promote the "international" aspect of health information and librarianship, be it in the form of raising awareness of international events and conferences pertinent to the field, encouraging HSLG participation in international events or simply finding and publicizing library stories from around the world that might be of interest to HSLG members. One such story from 2007 that has stood out above all the others, is
the tale of Dr Saad Eskander, Director of the National Library and Archive
of Iraq. Since November 2006, Dr Eskander has been publishing his diary
on the website of the British Library, and it is harrowing stuff. Where
we face negotiations with management for more funding and staffing,
Dr Eskander negotiates with kidnappers for the release of two members
of his staff. In this instance, he is only partially successful - one
staff member is released, the other executed for sectarian reasons.
Where we pore As well as raising HSLG member awareness of international events, this year HSLG in conjunction with EBSCO Information Services, are delighted to have been able to offer two of our members the opportunity to attend the annual conference of the American Medical Library Asssociation, to be held in Philadelphia in May 2007. Michael Doheny of Athlone IT and Kathryn Smith of the Dublin Dental Hospital are the lucky recipients this fantastic prize, and we all look forward to hearing about MLA 2007 in the next edition of HINT! For those of you who attended the Annual Conference in Athlone this
year, you may remember a presentation given by Shane Godbolt, regarding
"Partnerships in Health Information", a UK-based charity dedicated
to building partnerships between health libraries in developed and developing
countries. Shane's presentation was another example of the glaring inequalities
that exist within our profession around the world and highlighted the
difference that access to quality In terms of policy, HSLG launched a new policy document on funding attendance and/or participation at conferences and events whereby anyone considering attending or participating in a health information conference may apply for HSLG funding. Full details are available from www.hslg.ie/policy As regards international library events and conferences, there are far too many to go in to here, but please continue to check out the International page at www.hslg.ie/ilo for a full listing. If there's anything you would like to see added to the page, don't hesitate to contact me at Jane.Farrelly@mailp.hse.ie Jane Farrelly, former International Liaison Officer and new HSLG
Communications Officer 
Good quality information and knowledge is essential to improve the population’s health and decrease health inequalities. Relevant information and knowledge on Public Health tends to be distributed across a variety of organisations and locations. How to manage such knowledge in an effective and efficient manner has been the subject of much debate in both international and national arenas and was identified as a major theme within the Review of the Public Health Function in Northern Ireland and the National Health Information Strategy in the Republic of Ireland. One of the key elements underpinning the management of public health knowledge is the accessibility of key information to practitioners and decision makers. Ireland and Northern Ireland’s Population Health Observatory (INIsPHO), at the Institute of Public Health in Ireland, led the development of an All-Ireland electronic Health Library (AIeHL) with the aim of providing a rational approach to the management of knowledge resources across the island of Ireland. The Library consists of a network of interoperable websites. Each member website contains a range of knowledge resources including policy and strategy documents, data (quantitative and qualitative), research reports, details of programmes and interventions, contacts and websites. The AIeHL links these websites and makes it possible to search all the resources held on its member websites via a single search. To make this approach possible the Library has promoted the use of consistent metadata for classifying all resources including the National Public Health Language (NPHL) – a common public health language which describes the subject of resources and the Public Health Resource Type Encoding System (PHRTES). Dr. Angela Jordan, Institute of Public Health in Ireland
7. Contribution made by Librarians to the Cochrane Collaboration in Ireland Contribution made by Librarians to the Cochrane Collaboration in Ireland
One of the main principles underlying the Health Strategy (2004) is quality and “the need for practice to be grounded in best available evidence so that excellence of care will flourish”. Finding the evidence as well as producing it are crucial to this process and healthcare Librarians have a valuable role within their organisation in information retrieval and in utilising specific searching techniques to satisfy the demands posed by clinical questions. To understand what contribution librarians in Ireland make to the Cochrane Collaboration, a cover letter and short online questionnaire was sent by e-mail to four different mailing lists in September 2006 and a reminder was sent approx. three weeks later. In October, myself and Fiona McCarthy facilitated a workshop at the Colloquium and discussed our roles and skillset required. The greatest barriers identified by the attendees was lack of support, time, funding and the perception by others of their role. Provision of access to electronic resources and training users to search the Cochrane Library were the primary activities carried out by Librarians on the Island as well as supporting systematic reviewers with their searches. Very few were involved directly with Cochrane Collaboration as reviewers, co-authors or handsearchers. Below are the results of the survey. Thanks again to everyone who responded! Joanne Callinan, Librarian
“On the Web” A bit of a motley crew of E-resources this issue and I’ve included one at the end that’s just a bit of fun, which I hope to do in every issue. Please feel free to pass on any sites you like, be they work related or not, for me to include in future issues of “On the Web”.
Niamh O'Sullivan, Librarian, Irish Blood Transfusion Service HINT is the newsletter of the Irish Health Sciences Libraries Group of the Library Association of Ireland. It is compiled & produced by the HINT Editorial Team. Contact details: Send submissions to info@hslg.ie All material in this newsletter is copyright ©, 2007. This newsletter may be quoted or forwarded if the quoted or forwarded passage is attributed to the newsletter. |
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