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

July 1997,
Volume 18, No. 3
ISSN: 1025-5680

Reports From The Chair

COPENHAGEN 1997: THE BIOMEDICAL SECTION ON THE WAY TO ITS FUTURE

As Chair, I was very glad to participate in the promotion of our Section and to develop a worldwide collaboration between medical librarians. It was true in Beijing where our meetings were really successful, and I am sure that it will be the same in Copenhagen.

In two years, we have tried to give more solid basis to the Section and to continue what has been done previously. With a few dynamic people, the Section has always been present in the iFLA official program offering Open Sessions and Workshops. Communication was another way to enlarge our audience. Our newsletter is now electronic and can be reached through the IFLA Web Page. Our brochure has been updated too. INSPEL published a special issue Beijing Program last January. Cooperation has been enlarged with other associations and institutions, inside IFLA first with the Science and Technology Section (see our 1997 Program) and with EAHIL (the European Association for Health Information and Libraries), : with the US National Library of Medicine, and with the nomination of representatives for some parts of the world (Arabic countries). During these last two years, mails and surveys have tried to reach many.

I would like to thank the Standing Committee and all the people that have been working for the Section, and of course Lucretia McClure for her constant help on our Newsletter. I will go on with IFLA, but not in the medical field. I have been nominated into the Social Sciences Standing Committee that corresponds to my new position.

Good luck to the Biomedical Section
Jean-Philippe Accart, Chair

IFLA 63rd General Conference
Copenhagen, Denmark

Proposed Agenda

1. Welcome from the Chair
   
2. Approval of the Agenda
   
3. Approval of the Minutes of the Beijing 1996 meeting
   
4. Welcome to new members of the Section
   
5. Chair's report
   
6. Other reports:
   
   • Report of the Section Newsletter's editor, Lucretia McClure
     
   • Report of the Sections Secretary-Treasurer and Information
     
   • Coordinator (includes the 1996 - 1997 financial report) - Monique C. Cleland)
     
   • Report on the Friday, August 28, 1997 Coordinating Board meeting
     
7. Outline of the 1997 Conference program (papers and workshop)
   
8. Project for automatic electronic mailing of the Newsletter
   
9. Membership development project
   
10. Leadership development project
    
11. Sponsorship of the Bireme Conference
    
12. Resignation of the Chair and Secretary-Treasurer
    
13. Nomination / Election of new Standing Comittee Officers
    
14. Second Standing Committee meeting
    
15. Any other business

Friday, 29 August

12:30-16:45:

Coordinating Board I (for Officers only)

Saturday, 30 August

12-14:50:

Biomedical Standing Committee I (for all the members and invited colleagues)

Wednesday, 3 September

Morning:

IFLA Booth

12:30 - 15:00:

Open Program Session jointly with Science and Technology Section in Simultaneous Interpretation

Theme: Improving Access to Electronic and Medical Information

3 papers proposed:

1. Re-ingineering the library to improve access to electronic health information: one research library experience / by Karen J. Graves, University of Illinois at Chicago

2. Changing roles of health librarians in the electronic environment / Ann C. Weller, University of Illinois at Chicago

3. Communication by Mr Arnaud de Kemp from Springer Verlag

Thursday, 4 September

Full day Workshop at the Royal Danish School of Pharmacy

Theme:Resource Sharing in Medical Libraries: Informatics and Human Aspects
(see program)

Friday, 5 September

8:30-10:20

Standing Committee II

11:30-13:20

Special Libraries CB II

Progamme
Copenhagen - Thursday September 4th. 1997

• Registration and coffee
• Welcome and Happy 10 year anniversary of EAHIL
• Elisabeth Husem, President of EAHIL
• Monique C. C1eland, Former President of EAHIL and Secretary of the IFLA Section of Biological and Medical Science Libraries.
• Papers and discussion:
• Chairperson: Alice Norhede, The Danish Pharmaceutical Library
• Derek Law, King's College, London: New Directions in Networking
• Remco van de Merwe, Ovid Technologies Amsterdam: Sharing Medical Information: Combining Local and Remote Resources
• Helen Henderson, Information guest: Resources Sharing and the Integration of Web, Searching, Electronic Document Delivery services
• Irene Wormell, The Royal School of Librarianship, Copenhagen: Telematics - Psycho-social Problems and Professional Competence
• Jean-Philippe Accart, President of the above IFLA section. Centre d' Information et de Documentation, ANACT, Lyon: Networks and New Ways of Working: Human Aspects
• Lunch, sponsored by Ovid Technologies

• Presentations of new products from Sponsors:
• Dawson Europe, France
• Joke Dijkstra, Ebsco Information Services, The Netherlands
• Soren Mortensen, Compact Data, Denmark
• David A. Siddebottom, Regional General Manager, Swets &
• Zeitlinger, Netherlands: Sharing Resources using SwetsNet: The single Source for Electronic Serials

• Coffee Break Sponsored by Compact Data

• Workshops based on the issues of the morning session, chaired by: Remco van de Merwe, Ovid technologies, The Netherlands Jean-Philippe Accart, France
• Short reports and final discussion

Venue for the workshop:

The Royal Danish School of Pharmacy,
Universitetsparken 2,
2100 Copenhagen B. Benzon Auditoriet.

Public transportation:

See website http://www.dfh.dk

Registration fee:

• Free for EAHIL members attending the IFLA Conference
  
• BF 1,500 for EAHIL Members not attending the IFLA Conference
  
• BF 1,800 for non EAHIL Members

The fee includes:

Participation in the EAHIL/IFLA Workshop September 4th, 1997 in Copenhagen, Lunch, Coffee and workshop material.

For further information:

Alice Norhede,

The Whole World May Be Converging on London

Although it is still three years away before July 2nd to 5th, 2000, the 8th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (8ICML) is already taking shape as over a hundred librarians from all over the world are working on programme, accommodation, travel and of course social events. Our title is Converge on London, which ties in with our core theme of the increasing convergence of librarianship, publishing and computing and the implication this will have for our professional futures. Several important sub-themes are also being developed to ensure that the congress will give a balanced picture of the state of the medical librarian's art at the turn of the millennium.

A Global Congress

Five (Or More) Conferences in One

London in 2000

• invited speakers
  
• contributed papers
  
• scientific presentations (poster sessions)
  
• continuing education
  
• visits

. . . with a social programme which will have a centerpiece for the whole conference together, and also a range of optional events which will reflect the depth and range of London's theatres, restaurants, clubs and tourist spots.

The Venues

Continuing education sessions will be located in various locations in the Harley Street area one of the traditional centre of London's medical world and only a short distance from the Oxford Street shopping area.

Accommodation, Travel and Tourism

In Conclusion

If you would like to be part of the Forum, please write to:

ICML 2000 Conference,

For all other information about the 8th International Congress on Medical Librarianship, please contact me at:
The British Medical Association Library,

The Wellcome Institute Library

The Library forms part of the Wellcome Institute, whose other half is made up of an Academic Unit of teachers and researchers. As well as running historical courses for medical students and others, an extensive programme of lectures and seminars is mounted every year. The Institute as a whole is a constituent part of the Wellcome Trust, a charity established under the terms of the will of Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936) to foster research in medicine and its history. Sir Henry was a pharmaceutical businessman, who entered into partnership with Silas Burroughs in 1880 to form the Burroughs Wellcome drug company. Wellcome became sole owner after Burroughs's death in 1895, and subsequently changed the company's name to the Wellcome Foundation. The Trust derived its income from the profits of the Foundation until the late 1980s, when a series of sales of the shares led to a much more diverse portfolio of investments. It is now one of the world's leading biomedical charities, disbursing funds of over £250 million annually. The great majority of this money goes to support current medical research, while a modest but respectable proportion goes towards the work of the Institute.

Our collections are founded upon those of Sir Henry Wellcome, whose energies during the last 30 years or so of his life were largely directed towards amassing huge collections of books, manuscripts and artefacts of all kinds relating to the history of medicine. Sir Henry's definition of the subject was decidedly broad and could almost be said to be the history of mankind; his Trustees spent much effort in the years after his death in rationalising it and redistributing some parts which did not fit the medical historical theme.

The Library was formally opened to the public in 1949 and since then has steadily developed its collections and services. A series of published catalogues has been generated, starting with Noel Poynter's Catalogue of incunabula (1954) and going on to include both the western early printed books and the oriental collections. In 1979 the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre was founded within the Library, to acquire and catalogue institutional and private papers with a significant bearing on twentieth-century medicine, and the ongoing flourishing nature of this enterprise is a testament to its success. Automation came to the Library in the 1980s, and much of the printed stock is now represented on an OPAC which gives access to about 450,000 records. Much work has gone into sorting and cataloguing the iconographic collections, and in 1992 a videodisc became available in the Library reproducing about 57,000 images. We are now freely open to the public six days a week, throughout the year, and welcome over 15,000 readers annually.

What of the future? No service like ours remains static and there are many challenges ahead, quite apart from the underlying requirement to continue to develop the collections and build upon Sir Henry's legacy. We must exploit them too, using appropriate new technology - our automated system will shortly be replaced, we must develop our world wide web site, and we must keep abreast of electronic information resouces which can further the work of medical historians. We must play our part in the creation of the digitized library of the future, and we must have a voice in the ongoing professional debates about the problems caused by decaying modern paper and the transition from print to electronic forms of communication. We are keen to raise the profile of the Library, to encourage people to recognise the breadth and potential of its holdings, and to get across the message that we are here to be used. We anticipate closer collaboration with the Trust's currently separate Information Service for contemporary biomedical matters, and appropriate co-operation with other libraries in London and elsewhere.

One of our more interesting intellectual challenges focusses on our holdings of primary medical texts. We have many books about the practice of medicine as well as its history - for earlier centuries, such books constitute the bulk of our holdings - but in the twentieth century, there are increasingly strong dividing lines between the clinical texts and the medical historical ones. Today's medical textbook is tomorrow's medical history, but the published record of twentieth-century medicine is vast. It has been said that over half of all the medical literature in existence has been issued since 1970. We are not a working medical library, acquiring current materials for clinical or teaching needs, and we cannot hope to achieve the kind of comprehensive coverage of primary medical texts of our own century which we might reasonably aim for from centuries gone by. Neither should we abdicate responsibility and leave it to someone else, because libraries attached to healthcare organisations have different priorities and retention policies. The Library has extensive holdings of the primary medical literature of the first 60 years or so of the current century and we anticipate building on that in a collaborative way, taking into account the holdings of other libraries and utilising the possibilities of new technology.

Sir Henry Wellcome believed that knowledge of the history of medicine had an important part to play in the ongoing pursuit of the betterment of the human condition. He formed his collections not merely as an antiquarian hobby, but because he believed that an understanding of the past should inform the decisions of the present. The history of medicine is worth preserving purely as a part of our cultural heritage, but anyone involved in medicine today which is all of us, either as patients or practitioners - stands to gain a sounder understanding of what medicine is all about by looking at the ways in which previous generations have tackled its challenges. The Wellcome Institute Library stands at l83 Euston Road in London, very close to the new British Library (opening in November 1997) and just across the road from Euston Station. IFLA colleagues reading these words will always be welcome to visit us - no appointment is needed - but if, in the meantime, you have questions which our resources may be able to answer, we are happy to receive enquiries by phone, letter, fax or e-mail.

David Pearson
Librarian, Wellcome Institute.

The Library's www site, giving more details of access arrangements, can be reached through the Wellcome Trust pages at http://www.wellcome.ac.uk.

Or write to us at:

the Wellcome Institute Library,

For a list of Publications available from the Library,
e-mail: t.tillotson@wellcome.ac.uk.

Editor's Note:

It is a pleasure to introduce David Pearson to the Newsletter readers. Welcome!

From the Editor

First the author declares that the library that does not enlarge its service by interpreting the books in its collection and developing their use to the utmost is not fulfiling its mission. We say exactly the same thing today as we encourage librarians to evaluate and interpret the literature in our collections, though we may be referring to journals, multimedia, or databases rather than books.

Hazeltine quotes Dr. Canfield, the librarian of Columbia University, who says that a trained librarian can do better and more work with an unabridged dictionary than an untrained person can do with a thousand volumes. That sounds a bit boastful, but knowledge is the key to this statement. He is correct in that librarians do know how to use every scrap of information and the experienced librarian with a computer and the Internet can and does exceed that volume count. Our equipment has changed, but the value of learning and expanding our knowledge has not. We were in the knowledge/information business then and we are today.

In 1922 librarians had ways to keep records of reference questions and answers. Not as convenient as the bookmarks in your computer files, perhaps, but useful nonetheless. She suggests a special filing box where the notes can be kept on P slips or on the back of spoiled catalog cards. There are probably no spoiled cards or P slips in your library, but the process is the same.

If you rewrote Hazeltine's piece using today's technology, the end result would still be that librarians must know the contents of their sources print or digital. Librarians must still know how to utilize the knowledge in their resources for the benefit of users. It is not our format that makes us skilled professionals, it is our understanding and use of knowledge. That is as true in 1997 as it was in 1919 or 1922.

Lucretia W. McClure,Editor

Abstracts

Abstract: Organizational changes such as downsizing, reinventing the organization, mergers, and customer-focused services are buzz words for the 90's. One way that organizations are dealing with change is by re-engineering. Re-engineering is reinventing the way one does business, by stepping back and examining values, goals, and the system processes used to meet these goals. Process redesign is often an outcome of this evaluation. However, the customer remains at the center of each process with systems being redesigned to meet customer needs and demands. Technical Services at the University of Illinois at Chicago is going through the re-engineering process which has had a major impact on public services offered to library patrons. This paper will describe two of these re-engineering projects: access for electronic reserves and access to full-text journals. Issues related to these projects such as staff involvement and training, equipment, copyright, and user reactions to these new services are discussed.

Changing roles of health sciences librarians in the electronic environment, providing instructional programs, improving access, and advancing scientific communication.

Abstract: The electronic environment has created significant role changes for health sciences librarians. This presentation will examine how librarians should expand their expertise into the areas of instructional programs, improving access, and advancing scientific communication. Librarians should design both training and instruction to programs to help users understand and take advantage of electronic resources effectively. Three types of electronic access will be discussed: full-text with a print counterpart, unique electronic text, and electronic information available on the Intyernet. Access to electronic information raises a number of important issues: ownership, agreement with vendors, who uses the information, price, and the design or quality of the software systems. Librarians have the skills necessary to evaluate and organize health sciences information on the Internet. Librarians contribute to the growing body of scientific knowledge on the information seeking behavior of users and the evaluation of programs. Decisions for future directions should be based on scientific evidence.