Newsletter of the IFLA Section of Biological and Medical Sciences Libraries (On-line)

January 1996,
Volume 17, No. 1
ISSN: 1025-5680

From The Editor

We wish to express our appreciation to the Staff at IFLANET and especially Terry Kuny for assistance for making this newsletter available for readers around the world.

Now that we publish electronically, we hope that you will write to the Editor with your suggestions and comments. This can truly be an interactive forum and we invite your participation. The Newsletter solicits news from your region, information about the health sciences libraries in your country, policies or activities that you would like to recommend. Please forward to the Editor:

From The Chair

The theme for the Biological and Medical Sciences Libraries Section will be "East Meets West in Medical Librarianship." Four abstracts from Chinese librarians and two from Western Librarians have been presented for the session. A half-day tour of a hospital or pharmaceutical center of traditional Chinese medicine is also being planned.

Network of Health Documentation Centers

The objectives of the Union include acting as a principal source of advice on hospital and health affairs, developing and maintaining information on the planning and operation of hospital services and of the health systems within which they function, promoting the exchange of programmes and training, maintaining links with the health professionals, and cooperating with international bodies such as the World Health Organization, The Council of Europe, etc.

To maintain an efficient flow of information between all European countries by means of a computerized information system is a "conditio sine qua non" for efficient health care and for analysis, research and communication. HOPE plans, therefore, to stimulate a European network of documentation centers on health and hospitals across Europe to function as a link between existing national and European documentation health centers.

EAHIL, the European Association for Health Information and Libraries, expects to play a strong role in the future network. For example, Ursula Hausen, former EAHIL president, has been involved in the HOPE meetings. She is now retired, but the executive board will continue to send representatives from EAHIL to future meetings. Other members have also been involved, with J. P. Accart giving a paper at the 7th HOPE meeting in Madrid last spring and Robert Gahn attending the Agora meeting in Brussels last October. For further information consult "Looking back and looking forward," a report on five years of HOPE, produced by the Hospital Committee of the European Community in 1993.

Brochure On-line

Jean-Philippe Accart
Chair

Bridging Continents

The 61st General Conference of IFLA met in Istanbul, Turkey, in August 1995 with the theme "Libraries of the Future." Assuming responsibility for an international conference with an attendance of some 3,000 Turkish and foreign librarians is a task both challenging and arduous. In describing the numerous activities Altinay Serniki, President, IFLA '95 Organizing Committee and the Turkish National Library, wrote "we confused the day and the night and cannot tell the moon from the sun." [1]

With the theme of future libraries, Turkish librarians emphasized the development of networking in Turkey that has paralleled networking expansion in other countries. Beginning in the mid-1980s, networking and telecommunications in Turkey has progressed rapidly. The Turkish University and Research Institutions Network (TUEVAKA) provided connectivity to universities and not-for-profit institutions without charge beginning in 1986. TUEVAKA connected to the European Academic and Research NETWORK (EARN) enabling Turkish institutions to access networks around the world. TUEVAKA networking facilities were soon overworked, and in 1991, Turkish Network (TR-NET) was set up to establish and promote Internet connectivity throughout the country.

In 1993, Turkey joined the Internet through a link between the Middle East Technical University (METU) and the U.S. National Science Foundation. The Internet structure in Turkey is not yet fully realized although most universities have connectivity, and commerce is showing interest in the Internet as well. Many Turkish sites have their own Web, and the Sabah Group has made available a magazine, Aktueel (http://www.sabah.boun.edu.tr). As a country that spans two continents, Turkey's telecommunication developments provide a strategic resource as a networking hub for the free flow of information between east and west. Turkish information development helped to guarantee the success of the meeting, as did the industry and hospitality of the Turkish librarians.

This was an election year at the IFLA meeting and President Robert Wedgeworth was re-elected in an uncontested election to complete a six-year term of office. Among his numerous a ccomplishments, he must count the creation of IFLANet, designed as part of his program to reach members who did not attend the meeting. More than one-third of the papers presented in Istanbul were available prior to the conference on the Internet and all papers will presently become available. The IFLA listserv also provides access to basic documents about IFLA, its history and development, and its core programs. As indicated in the title of his opening address, "Beyond the Limits of Space and Time," President Wedgeworth has moved IFLA forward toward a "virtual IFLA," just as the congress participants moved librarians forward.

The Section of Biological and Medical Sciences Libraries provided a section program and, in conjunction with the Section of Science and Technology Libraries, coordinated a Round Table. This being an election year, new officers were named: Jean-Philippe Accart, Centre de Documentation–Bibliotheque, Centre Hospitalier d'Argenteuil, Argenteuil, France, is the new Section chair, and Monique Cleland, Bibliotheque de la Faculte de Medicine, Lousanne, continues as Secretary/Treasurer of the Committee. In conducting its business, the committee of the Section of Biological and Medical Science Libraries made a number of decisions that reflect the times in which we are working. It unanimously agreed to publish the newsletter in electronic form only, beginning in 1996. Means of implementing this motion will be developed over the next months through a survey that will seek to identify members with electronic access who are willing to act as a distribution point for members and interested readers who lack the access.

Plans were developed for the section program for the 62nd annual meeting to be held in Beijing, China in 1996 with the theme, "The Challenge of Change: Libraries and Economic Development." Four abstracts of papers by librarians from the People's Republic of China were reviewed and accepted. The IFLA meeting was particularly encouraging for librarians this year, coming so closely after the Seventh International Congress on Medical Librarianship in Washington, DC, in 1995. It was a pleasure to see again colleagues from around the world and to continue the dialogue begun at the Washington meeting. One of the most important and continuing functions of the Standing Committee continues to be one of acting as a bridging committee in the intervening years between International Medical Library Congresses.

Visit IFLA's World Wide Web site at: http://www.ifla.org/index.htm

Reference [1] Turkish Librarianship 1995 (9,3):229.