WHO
Documentation Centres in Europe
Intensify Networking with EAHIL
Report
on the Open Session of the WHO Documentation Centres in Europe,
9th
European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries,
Santander,
Spain, 20-25 September 2004
WHO
Documentation Centres in Europe convened to an Open Session at the
9th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries
in Santander, Spain, 25th September 2004 (https://ibio.humv.es/biblioteca/eahil/
). The invitation to hold a Session of WHO Documentation Centres
in conjunction with the 9th EAHIL Conference came from the EAHIL
Chair, Arne
Jakobsson.
The
Session, hosted by EAHIL, was jointly organized by the WHO
Documentation Centres of Finland, Italy – Istituto Superiore di
Sanita, ISS - and Lithuania in consultation with the WHO Regional
Office for Europe Health Documentation Services.
Aim
The
aim of the Session was
-
to look at the current state of activities of WHO
Documentation Centres in Europe,
-
to review the recommendations and the terms of reference
unanimously agreed at the Vienna meeting A
New Approach to New Challenges in October 2002, as well as
-
to highlight new trends and developments.
Participants
The
Session was attended by twenty participants from ten countries, of
whom fourteen came from eight WHO Documentation Centres in Europe.
The WHO Documentation Centres represented were:
- Czech Republic - National Medical
Library, Prague
--Helena Bouzkova;
Denmark -
Danish
Institute for Health Services
Research,
Copenhagen
--
Ilse
Schödt;
- Finland
– National Library of Health Sciences, Helsinki
-- Päivi
Pekkarinen, Pirjo Laitonen, Raili Alanne;
-
Italy – Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome
-- Gabriella
Poppi, Rosalia Ferrara,
Adriana Dracos, Cristina Maucu, Franco Toni;
- Istituto Regina Elena – National Cancer
Institute, Rome
-- Gaetana Cognetti;
-
Lithuania – Kaunas University of Medicine Library
-- Meile
Kretaviciene;
-
Norway – Directorate of Health and Social Affairs, Oslo
-- Helge
Mjelde;
- Russia
– Public Health Research Institute, Moscow
-- Tatyana Kaigorodova, Pavel Mikheev.
Other
countries and institutes represented were: France: Sylvie Guillo,
Federation nationale des centres de lutte contre le cancer;
Hungary: Livia Vasas, Semmelweis University, Budapest; Norway: Hanne
Wollebak, UBO Library of Medicine and Health Sciences;
Russia:
Elena Gannina, Larisa Zhmykhova – Medical Academy for
Post Graduate Study;
Sweden:
Anders Rydqvist, University Hospital, Malmö.
Opening
of the Session
The
Session was chaired by the Finnish representative, Päivi
Pekkarinen,
who opened the meeting and welcomed all the participants to the
Open Session of WHO Documentation Centre in Europe, and explained
the aim and the structure of the Session with two parts: papers by
the Russian representatives being followed by an Open Forum
discussion.
Papers
The
papers “Use of WHO
Documents to provide information support to decision makers”
(https://ibio.humv.es/biblioteca/eahil/
)
and
“Electronic Library of
Health Reform Projects in Russia - ZdravInform” (http://mednet.ru/whodc/eng/index.php)
by Tatyana
Kagorodova and
Pavel Mikheev
respectively, which analysed the different WHO information needs
of different groups of health policy makers in
addition to reporting on the impact of a new database of
health care reform projects in Russia, served as stimulating
background information to the Open Forum topics and discussion.
As
a link to the papers given in the Open Forum, the Chair invited Rosalia
Ferrara
from the Istituto Superiore di Sanita – ISS - Rome, to give a
brief presentation on the development of the website of the WHO
Documentation Centre based at the ISS.
Open
Forum
There
were four items on the Agenda of the Open Forum:
-
The recommendations and terms of reference of the Vienna
2002 Meeting;
-
Experiences after two years, including statistical data on
usage;
-
Guidelines for the WHO Documentation Centres;
-
New developments.
For
all four items, background documents were distributed to the
participants of the session as follows:
-
Fourth
Meeting of the WHO Documentation Centres in EURO: A new approach
to new challenges: report on a WHO meeting, Vienna, Austria 14-15
October 2002. –
Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for
Europe, 2003. – 9 p. – (EUR/03/5041604).
-
Proposed
revised terms of reference for the [WHO] Documentation Centres of
the [WHO] Regional Office for Europe.
– 2 p. – (5041604/BD1.rev.1).
-
Guidelines
for WHO Documentation Centres: draft for a proposal
by Gabriella
Poppi, Rosalia Ferrara.-
[4] p. – [Rome] July 2004.
The
recommendations and terms of reference of the Vienna 2002
Meeting
The
Chair referred to the outcome of the Vienna meeting:
First,
to the recommendations recorded in the report of the meeting
concerning
-
Catalogue of WHO Regional Office for Europe information
products, their development and distribution
-
Language and number of WHO information products
-
Permission for translation into national languages
-
Target groups of the products
-
Press material to support WHO events
-
Period of designation as a WHO Documentation Centre,
then
to the revised terms of reference, based on the new WHO EURO
policy “Matching Services to Needs” (http://www.who.dk./AboutWHO/About/20020809_1),
and opened the discussion.
The
two statements about the new role of the WHO Documentation Centres
and their network made at the Vienna Meeting and, accordingly, the
two concepts lying behind these statements:
-
the concept of the WHO Documentation Centres as a national
support to the WHO Regional Office for Europe
-
the
concept of the WHO Documentation Centres as an unofficial
network
were
also referred to by the Chair as the basis of future developments,
and
commented on and discussed by the participants.
To
conclude, it was emphasized that feed back of the use of
WHO information products given regularly to the Health
Documentation Services of the WHO Regional Office for Europe is a
necessary requirement for a WHO Documentation Centre to function
as a ‘national support’ to the WHO Regional Office for
Europe. In this respect, the WHO Documentation Centre of Russia
serves as a good example of collecting statistics and conducting
surveys on an annual basis.
The
Guidelines for the WHO Documentation Centres: a draft for a
proposal
After
thanking Gabriella
Poppi
and Rosalia
Ferrara
for their efforts in drafting the first version of the Guidelines
for the WHO Documentation Centres in consultation with the WHO
EURO Health Documentation Services, the Chair invited Gabriella to
introduce the Guidelines. “They
are recommendations systematically developed in order to support
WHO DC activity aimed at an appropriate management of WHO
information”, she quoted the draft text.
The
draft had been sent out to the WHO Documentation Centres for
comments twice, once in July and again in August, but regrettably
no comments were received by the date of the Session.
All
the participants agreed on the usefulness of the Guidelines as a
clarifying companion text to the terms of reference, as well as on
the importance of finalizing the draft and translating the text
into other languages, in particular into Russian. Gabriella and
Rosalia expressed their willingness to
carry on with the work, and they invited all the members of the
WHO Documentation Centres to comment on the next version.
Finally,
Gabriella extended her cordial thanks to all the members of the
WHO Documentation Centres and to all WHO colleagues for a most
interesting and rewarding cooperation and introduced Rosalia
Ferrara as the Chief of the WHO Documentation Centre at the Istituto
Superiore di Sanita, Rome, after her retirement in October 2004.
New
Developments
Websites
Access
to the WHO electronic information and the websites of the WHO
Headquarters and the
WHO EURO were discussed quite heatedly under the topic of new
developments. It was pointed out that the wealth of information
available on these WHO websites makes it difficult to find a
specific document or specific information. Both the
representatives of Italy and Finland demonstrated the benefit of
setting up individual WHO Documentation Centre websites,
highlighting the special resources of the country and focusing on
the special needs of certain user groups of that country (
http://www.iss.it/sitp/whodc/)
(http://www.terkko.helsinki.fi/english/who/)
.
The
individual Websites of such countries could also be developed as a
communication channel between Centres.
Communication
Communication
between the WHO Documentation Centres on the one hand, and between
the WHO Documentation Centres and both the WHO EURO and the WHO
Headquarters on the other could still be improved. It was also
pointed out that, recognizing the unofficial ‘WHO structure’
of the WHO Documentation Centre network, communication and
networking could be enhanced by forging closer and more official
links with EAHIL.
WHO
DC SIG at EAHIL to enhance communication
It
was suggested that
- a Special
Interest Group of the WHO Documentation Centres would be set up at
EAHIL - this would work even better in 2006 when the membership fee
would be abolished and all librarians and information specialists
in the WHO European Region countries would be able to join EAHIL;
- Since the WHO Documentation Centres have two
official representatives on the EAHIL Board, Meile Kretaviciene
and Gabriella
Poppi,
and since Gabriella will leave the Board in December 2004,
Meile could maintain
that role;
-
the EAHIL newsletter could be used as a communication channel.
Conclusion
In
her summing up of the discussion, the Chair highlighted once more
the shift in the terms of reference introduced in Vienna
2002, the shift from dissemination to management of WHO
information
and
concluded that all the representatives of the WHO Documentation
Centres present
-
Agree
on the usefulness of the Guidelines as a companion text to
the terms of reference to be finalized and translated into other
languages;
-
Recommend
that all the WHO Documentation Centres use them as general
guidelines towards best practice in managing WHO information:
recalling
the management facets of dissemination and evaluation,
-
- that every WHO Documentation Centre in Europe define the target
groups and their needs and collect statistical information on the
usage of the WHO documentation, its content and language;
recalling
the management facets of promotion and networking,
--
that every WHO Documentation Centre in Europe – considering its
human, financial and technical resources - set up a website or
portal and these individual websites of the WHO Documentation
Centres build a decentralized communication network;
--
that collaboration and links with EAHIL will be intensified:
---a Special Interest Group of the WHO Documentation
Centres will be set up at EAHIL
---a special representative of the WHO Documentation
Centres on the EAHIL Board will take an active role
---the WHO Documentation Centres will use the EAHIL
newsletter as a communication channel for news,
features and surveys, informing about their activities;
-
Propose
that next meeting, hopefully with WHO representation,
will
be organized in 2005
either
in conjunction with the EAHIL Workshop in Palermo
or
hosted by the Italian WHO Documentation Centre – Istituto
Superiore di Sanita -
ISS in Rome;
or
will be organized in 2006
in
conjunction with the 10th EAHIL Conference in Cluj,
Romania.
The
Chair thanked all the participants for their contribution to the
Session, for a stimulating discussion, and for valuable
suggestions for new developments.
Päivi
Pekkarinen
WHO
Documentation Centre
National
Library of Health Sciences
Finland
paivi.pekkarinen@helsinki.fi
Published in : Journal of the European Association for Health
Information and Libraries, vol. 1, no , February 2005: s.40-45.
