International

1994 - EAHIL Oslo (Norvège)

Health Information - New Possibilities

IFLA Section of Biological and Medical Sciences Libraries Newsletter, 1995, vol. 16, n° 1, pp. 6-7.

Oslo NORWAY - June 28 -July 2, 1994

After three highly successful conferences in different parts of Southern Europe (Brussels-Belgium 1986; Bologna- Italy 1988; Montpellier-France (1992), European medicallibrarians met again, but this time reaching Northern Europe, its white nights and midnight sun, in Oslo, according with the World Health Organization's global strategy for "Health for all by the year 2000".

"It is of first importanceto improve and develop the co-operation among health care libraries throughout Europe "said Per Vaglum, Oslo's dean of the faculty of ~edicine, in his welcome address. And he added, in Norwegian: " Velkommen til Oslo! "

Over 550 people attended the Conference from Albania to the U nited States, Croatia, Iceland or Portugal (35 countries had sent representatives).
Thirty librarians invited by the Organizing Commit tee from Eastern Europe and fifty exhibitors (among them the publishers Elsevier, Blackwell and Lippincott; the Vidal dictionary, Micromedex...) were present.

But, let us see the Conference time schedule:

A pre-conference seminar was held in Stockholm (Sweden), at the Karolinska Institute Library and Information Center (KIBIC), considered as the National Swedish Library in medicine, odontology and research. As Medlars Center, one department, MIC, proposes the access to 31 U.S. NLM databases and 19 Scandinavian, as well as the electronic document delivery through Microforum, the system used by most EAHIL members for electronic mail.

Continuing education courses: 5 courses (4 in English and 1 in French) were given:

• Creating your own CD-ROM disc, networking and the use of CD-ROMS;
• Databases in medicine and nursing research/health care: introductory Course;
• Evaluation and costs of library services.
• INTERNET for beginners;
• Improving the librarian s image;
• he future for biomedical information.

The audience was excellent with more than 200 par- ticipants taking the Continuing Education courses.

The General Assembly of the European Association for Health Infonnation and Libraries (EAHIL) represents the main opportunity for the 500 members of the Association to be gathered, but in Oslo there were insufficient members present on the lune 28th (first day of the Conference) to meet the 50% quorum required by the rules procedure, It was decided that some matters would only be formally approved by a postal ballot.

The 1995 election vote results were announced during the Assemb1y: on lanuary 1995, the new President of the Association will be Elizabeth Husem from the Institute of Psychiatry of the Oslo University (also organizer of the Fourth conference); lean-Philippe Accart, librarian at the Hospital of Argenteuil (France) has been elected as French member among the eight members of the EAHIL Executive Board; and finally, the election of 19 new national delegates.

The first EAHIL Honor Prize was awarded to Marc Walkiers, librarian at the faculty of Medicine in Brussels, in,recognition of the key role he played in set ting up the Association and guiding it through its fragile years.

Paper and Posters: the opening session was introduced by Astrid Noklebeye Heiberg, teaching at the Institute of Psychiatry in Oslo; Lots Ann Colalanni from the National Library of Medicine; and Patricia Mesmacque, from the City of Sciences of La Villette in Paris (France).

The program Committee, chaired by Arne lakobsson (Spri Library -Stockholm) had provided an extensive program of a hundred conference papers and thirty posters, One of the main topics was Network, both with its hum an aspects and technical ones.

The human networks had several parallel sessions: Trends in consumer health information provision; The library in the learning environment; Insights in resource management; The provision of nursing information; Defining our professional role and services; the National, European and International networks.

The technical networks with new technologies included Health informatics: education and practice; Innovation in electronic delivery; Online and CD-ROM Services and other topics including Integrating the library within the organization; Information skills for the learning process; Special needs and special users.

During the Conference, five sub-groups were created in psychiatry , history of medicine, pharmaceutical industry, hospitallibraries, veterinary libraries.

The Closing Ceremony gave the opportunity for most European medicallibrarians to hear the president and founder of ISI, Eugene Garfield. And, at last, the EAHIL award for "best paper presented by a young librarian" was awarded to a librarian of the British Medical Association.

Health Information-New Possibilities, theme of the conference, had been very widely explored in human, technical and professional aspects. The Fifth Conference will take place in Coïmbra (Portugal)

from September 18th to 21st, 1996. Theme chosen is: Health Information Management: What Strategies ?.