EAHIL Executive Board
The first meeting of EAHIL’s new Executive Board took place in Abcoude, the Netherlands, on January 28, 2005. Suzanne Bakker had kindly invited the Board members and hosted the meeting.
The second meeting of EAHIL’s Executive Board took place in Palermo, Italy, on June 22, 2005, at the Instituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Sicilia.
Roles and tasks of Board Members 2005-2006
Arne Jakobsson: President.
Tony McSean: Past President and Chair of the Accreditation Committee.
Linda Lisgarten: Secretary and Co-ordinator of the EAHIL Special Interest Groups.
Manuela Colombi: Treasurer.
Suzanne Bakker: 1st Vice President and Secretariat Supervisor.
Helena Bouzkova: Continuing Education and Professional Development Co-ordinator.
Meile Kretaviciene: 2nd Vice President.
Marta Viragos: 1st Co-opted Member and Internal Communications Officer.
It was also agreed that Sally Wood-Lamont would receive a standing invitation to attend all Board meetings, ex officio her role as Editor of the EAHIL Journal.
Former EAHIL president Elisabeth Husem has been awarded the Norwegian King's Merit Medal in Silver
Elisabeth Husem has been awarded the Royal Medal of Merit in silver in recognition of her tireless work for the medical library profession over many years. Her citation emphasizes her achievements in promoting and sustaining the development of medical librarianship in the new Baltic States, particularly in Lithuania. She was presented with her award on November 3.
EAHIL Nominations Committee
The present arrangements of nominating members to the post of EAHIL’s president and to the EAHIL board could be improved. The idea of a Nominations Committee was discussed and welcomed both by the Board and by the Council members at their meetings. It is very important to find and promote new, dynamic people to take EAHIL forward. It was agreed to discuss the matter further at the General Assembly in Palermo, and to make sure a Nominations Committee was set up.
At the General Assembly (not quorated) it was decided to have members from Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Europe, who would deliberately seek out and encourage active EAHIL members to stand in Council and Board elections. Of course, this would not preclude any two "ordinary" members from nominating someone of their own choice. It would simply be an extra measure to try to encourage new people to come forward and to revitalize the process. Members present agreed that it was a good idea. Volunteers were found from the North (Eva Alopaeus); the West (Bruce Madge); the East (Sally Wood-Lamont), from the South (Luisa Fruttini).
EAHIL Council Elections
The Board agreed that national Council members should take responsibility for organising the election of new Councillors where necessary.
The Council decided that after January 2006 the election of Council members per country would be to the following quota:
5 members - 1 councillor
25 members - 2 councillors
50+ members - 3 councillors
The EAHIL Treasurer's Report
Professional Accreditation from EAHIL
At the January 2005 Board meeting, Tony McSeán was asked to establish a Registration Group with the aim of bringing a fully worked-out set of proposals to the 2006 General Assembly in Cluj. If approved, these proposals would be ready to be implemented by the beginning of 2007. The Board felt it was important that the new Group should be small enough to be able to work with a minimum of fuss and that its membership should be drawn from right across Europe. Accordingly, there are four members: Helena Bouzkova (Czech Republic), Laura Cavazza (Italy), Tony McSeán (UK) and Pirjo Rajakiili (Finland).
EAHIL scholarships
The EAHIL Board has granted FOUR SCHOLARSHIPS at a maximum of 500 Euro each to facilitate participation at Palermo workshop, 23-25 June 2005.
The EAHIL secretariat
In January 2006 the EAHIL membership database will become the definitive membership list. This will reduce the workload for the secretariat. To be able to run EAHIL as a non-fee paying association, EAHIL must minimize its expenditure on the Secretariat. There would still be several items that needed to be administered centrally – for instance, we would still need to invoice members outside Europe. It was agreed that the Treasurer and the Secretariat Supervisor should get together to prepare a list of “required procedures and services” for the guidance of the Secretariat. All Board members agreed that cost control would be vital to the success of EAHIL when it became a non-fee paying association.
The membership database at present contains 444 valid records. Fees for 2005 have been received from 393 members, according to the following analysis: 227 individual,
152 institutional, 4 collective, 4 affiliated members, and 1 retired member. Suzanne also reported that the work had substantially improved.
Invoices for a series of advertisements will now be sent out for all four advertisements after the publication of the first issue of the year. Fees for advertisements were increased, with an extra sum for prime space, without any comment received.
Journal of EAHIL
Together with the chief editor the Board agreed that the new name of the EAHIL Newsletter will be Journal of the European Association for Health and Information Libraries, which will also include Peer Reviewed articles in the future.
The cost of mailing the Journal of EAHIL continues to be sponsored by EBSCO and the Editor-in-Chief has managed to cut the cost of printing the Newsletter by 50 percent.
Advertising in the Newsletter has always been a good source of income and this is organized by Suzanne Bakker. By reducing the printing costs of the Journal of EAHIL and increasing the income from advertisements the Journal is now financially self-supporting.
The first issue of the Journal of EAHIL included a DVD-ROM to every member, courtesy of Becky Lyon of the National Library of Medicine. This is a wonderful interactive DVD of a conference entitled The Library as Place: a Symposium on Building and Revitalizing Health Sciences Libraries in the Digital Age. On behalf of EAHIL the board would like to thank Becky Lyon and the National Library of Medicine for investing in the production of this DVD-ROM and moreover making it available to every EAHIL member.
Our enthusiastic and hard-working chief editor Sally Wood-Lamont and her editorial team have produced our excellent Journal of EAHIL on schedule.
The production plan 2005 for the newsletter:
Issue 1 – News from Palermo Workshop and WHO Documentation Centres
Issue 2 – Certification & Education
Issue 3 – Palermo Workshop
Issue 4 – Open Access
A special thanks to Eva-Marie Lacroix, Giovanna Miranda and Benoit Thirion for their regular columns and Márta Virágos for her regular Board news, and Suzanne Bakker for her valuable advice.
EAHIL Membership Database
The University of Oslo Library, Library of Medicine and Health Sciences, has agreed to develop and host a web-based membership database where all EAHIL members can access and update their own membership record. This will significantly decrease the administrative work of the EAHIL secretariat and improve the service to all EAHIL members.
An article about the features of the membership database was published in the February issue of the Journal of EAHIL.
The web-based membership database is structured into 3 different levels:
1. The personal level is for individuals, both new and former members. Existing members
can check and modify their own data. From January 2006, a new member can ask for a
membership account. The system will send an e-mail message to the applicant's national Council representative as it will be the responsibility of the latter to approve the suitability of the new member. The Board will also receive a message about the applicant. The form is very easy to complete and the member can decide what data - personal or professional - he/she wishes to make public. The system is password-controlled and there is built-in assistance for anyone who has forgotten his/her password.
2. The councillor level: it is the councillors' responsibility to approve the eligibility of a new member. They have the possibility to check and modify the data of their own country's members.
3. The supervisor level is for the database administrators. A supervisor has access to all records in the database.
The EAHIL Membership Database was launched Thursday 26 May 2005. The database will improve and have more functionality in the future.
From 1 January 2006 new members can apply for free membership through the Membership Database.
EAHIL web
The EAHIL board is very grateful that Benoit Thirion, Coordinator of the CISMeF Project has agreed to be the new EAHIL Webmaster. The EAHIL web has now moved to France and Benoit Thirion, the new EAHIL webmaster, has started the updating. To our surprise it was an administrative nightmare to update information for our domain name www.eahil.org. The best solution was to register a new domain name www.eahil.net and to re-direct from www.eahil.org. Both domain names will be working for at least six months and we hope to overcome the administrative obstacles. The board would like thank the Karolinska Institute University Library, Stockholm for their valuable support to EAHIL in hosting the EAHIL web over the last five years. Due to the inflexibility of the old Domain Name Service Provider, the old domain name was lost at the end of 2005.
A new and more modern design of EAHIL web was launched April 2005.
Special Interest Groups
The Board decided that it would be useful to have a co-ordinator to liaise with the Special Interest Groups, and Linda Lisgarten agreed to take on this role.
EAHIL Pharmaceutical Information Group (PHING)
EAHIL PHING has a discussion list EAHIL-P with 30 members in June 2005, up from 25 members in June 2004. PHING organized a Business Meeting at the Palermo Workshop, 23rd of June, 02.00 pm – 04.00 pm. The meeting was chaired by Giovanna Miranda and Linda Lisgarten, with emphasis on helping medical librarians from all types of organizations, and from all countries, utilize pharmaceutical information.
The group's Web pages have been launched and can be viewed at http://www.eahil.net/pharmaceutical_information_group.htm. The web pages contain a wealth of information, including free e-journals and databases. The group is grateful to Benoit Thirion, EAHIL Webmaster, for doing such a good job of placing our pages online. The group will be constantly updating this site and any suggestions are most welcome; please post these to Michelle Wake at michelle.wake@ulsop.ac.uk.
Looking ahead the group will soon begin evaluating pharmacy databases, a project envisaged as being of interest to all members of EAHIL, and plans are being made for a PHING parallel session at the 2006 EAHIL Conference in Cluj, Romania.
The Business Meeting was followed by a lunchtime reception, which was generously sponsored by Swets Information Services, in the parliamentary gardens overlooking Palermo.
EAHIL European Veterinary Libraries Group
EAHIL EVLG has a discussion list EVLG-L with 44 members in June 2005, down from 48 members in June 2004. EVLG organized a Business Meeting at the Palermo Workshop, 23rd of June, 02.00 pm – 04.00 pm.
An ambitious aim is the creation of a European meta-union-catalogue of veterinary holdings. For this a commercial software solution utilizing the Z.39.50 interface exists in the library of the University of Veterinary Medicine at Hannover. The Italian colleagues expressed that they were willing to discuss the matter with their computer specialists and possibly join. For this purpose they were promised a detailed product description and an example of a Z 39.50 target description which they have received in the meantime.
EAHIL WHO Documentation Centres
In Santander the WHO Documentation Centres in Europe met for an Open Session. The Session was concluded with a recommendation that a Special Interest group of WHO Documentation Centres in Europe would be set up at EAHIL with the aim of enhancing communication and facilitating networking between the centres. As a result, the Board decided to adopt WHO Documentation Centres in Europe as a Special Interest Group of EAHIL. The EAHIL WHO documentation Centres organized a Business Meeting at the Palermo Workshop, 23 June, 02.00 pm – 04.00 pm.
The meeting concluded that the work carried out so far by the WHO DCs has a vital role in the European context. All participants confirmed the necessity of DCs continuing to exist and operate. Above all, the importance of developing sustainable plans for the future of WHO DCs as proposed by the WHO office in Copenhagen, was emphasized. The WHO Regional Office of Europe has, as a result of this meeting, agreed to participate in the next meeting in Cluj.
EAHIL representation on other committees and groups
MLA meeting in San Antonio, May 2005
Tony McSean represented EAHIL at the MLA meeting in San Antonio, May 2005.
MLA Global Initiatives Task Force
The MLA Board of Directors established the Global Initiatives Task Force in May, 2003, charging the group with reviewing MLA's current and prior programs, developing an overall strategy for these programs, and identifying new activities, partnerships, and strategies that MLA should pursue now and in the future. The final report included 17 recommendations. The co-operation between MLA and EAHIL is emphasized in the recommendations. See: Eve-Marie Lacroix report in Journal of EAHIL 2005;1(3):17-19.
Health Information and Libraries Journal.
Marta Vigaros represented EAHIL on the Editorial Board of the Health Information and Libraries Journal.
CERTIdoc meeting
Suzanne Bakker represented EAHIL Executive Board at the meeting of CERTIdoc. CERTIdoc is an EU-funded project in which the (national) library associations of France, Germany and Spain have initiated a co-operation in order to create a system and infrastructure to certify information professionals. For EAHIL it is important to relate the plans on certification to similar initiatives to CERTIdoc and to investigate further the possibility of cooperation.
LIBER
Suzanne Bakker represented EAHIL Executive Board at the meeting with LIBER 5 July 2005. LIBER invited EAHIL to discuss options for cooperation on a European level. This is particularly important if the library community wishes to have a single mouthpiece to act for the community as a whole on relevant subjects with regard to the European Commission. In the same way as EBLIDA is lobbying on matters of copyright, LIBER would like to lobby for the benefit of the research library community.
EAHIL Awards for “Best Conference Presentations”.
The Board discussed the matter and decided that in future the conference or workshop organisers each year should chose winners, probably in three categories (best presenter under the age of 40; best poster presentation from the host country, and best poster presentation overall). There was discussion about appropriate prizes and funding of the awards. It was agreed that it would be the responsibility of the conference/workshop organisers to administer the process of making the awards.
EAHIL conferences and workshops
2005 Palermo - Italy
EAHIL Workshop 2005: "Overall quality - quality for all". Palermo, Italy,
June 23-25, 2005. 120 colleagues will look back on a wonderful workshop in
Palermo: well organized, good quality papers on very relevant subjects, stimulating discussions and renewed friendships. Warmest congratulations to Manuela Colombi and the team from the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Sicilia especially Paolo Tronca for the excellent organization of this workshop.
“Open access: the option for the future?” An IFLA satellite meeting Saturday 13 August in Oslo
The meeting was organized by the IFLA section of Health and Biosciences Libraries and the IFLA section of Science and Technology Libraries. EAHIL was co-sponsoring the meeting together with the SMH (Norwegian Library Association, Section for Medicine and Health), the MLA, the UK HLG and the University of Oslo Library, Library of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Reception for Medical and Health Librarians at IFLA, Monday 15 August 18.00-20.00
All health and medical librarians were invited to a reception at the University of Oslo Library,
Library of Medicine and Health Sciences at Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway. The reception was organized by EAHIL, the SMH (Norwegian Library Association, Section for Medicine and Health), the Swedish Library Association - Special Group for Medicine and Nursing Care, the MLA, the UK HLG and the University of Oslo Library, Library of Medicine and Health Sciences.
2006 Cluj-Napoca - Romania
The 10. EAHIL Conference will be held on September 11-16, 2006. Sally Wood-Lamont and Ioana Robu are in charge of organizing the conference. The venue will be the University of Babes-Bolyai's Collegium Academicum. The report has been published in the May issue of the Journal of EAHIL. Eva Alopaeus and Patricia Flor are in charge of the Continuing Education courses. Sally has applied for a Soros East-East grant to fund travel and hotel expenses for Central and East European medical librarians to enable them to take part in the Cluj conference.
Members of the International Programme Committee chaired by Benoit Thirion, EAHIL President Arne Jakobsson, and Vice-President Suzanne Bakker visited Cluj-Napoca to inspect the conference site and discuss the outline of the programme. Sally Wood-Lamont and Ioana Robu greeted the other delegation members present: Márta Virágos (Hungary), IPC member and Aileen Wood (GB) and Susan Fairlamb (GB), who are members of the Local Organising Committee.
The deadline for the Call for Papers is 15 January 2006. Registration for the conference will be open on the 5th February but please visit www.eahilconfcluj.ro where you will find preliminary information concerning the scientific programme, the social programme and the proposed Continuing Education courses.
2007 EAHIL workshop in Krakow, Poland
The 2007 workshop will be organized by the Medical Library of Jagiellonian University in cooperation with Information Studies Department of The Institute of Public Health of Jagiellonian University. Barbara Niedzwiedzka, chair of the International Program Committee reported that the date of the conference will be 12-15 September 2007. A welcome page has already been opened. The IPC fixed the workshop theme which will be Education, Training and Continuing Development of the Health Library and Information Workforce. The organizers would like a real workshop with a few introductory papers and small-group discussions.
9. ICML
The 9. ICML-International Congress on Medical Librarianship, 19-23 September, 2005, was in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. (http://www.icml.org/). Arne Jakobsson joined the Executive International Committee for this Congress, on behalf of EAHIL. Tony McSean is a member of the International Planning Committee.
Continuing the 8. ICML tradition, EAHIL sponsored a parallel session on the theme of quality in health information services. The session was chaired by Tony McSean and featured three EAHIL members, Arne Jakobsson, Andrea Lane and Carol Lefebvre, plus a guest from Australia in Heather Todd, medical librarian at the University of Queensland and chair of the
organizing committee for the 2009 ICML. The papers presented four contrasting perspectives on the importance of quality in health libraries and our services and were very well received.
11. EUROPEAN CONFERENCE OF MEDICAL AND HEALTH LIBRARIES
The Finnish Medical Library Association (Bibliothecarie Medicinae Fenniae - BMF) has agreed to organize the 11. European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries in Helsinki, 2008. Suggested dates are 23-26 June. There are four prospective conference sites (the Marina Conference Center, the Finlandia House, the Biomedical Center and the Technical University). Arne Jakobsson, EAHIL president, will on 20 May 2006 meet the local organizers in Helsinki to discuss the planning of the conference.
10. ICML 2009.
The University of Queensland Library and the IFLA Section of Biological and Medical Sciences Libraries invite you to participate in the 10. International Congress on Medical Librarianship (http://www.icml2009.com/), to be held 31 August – 4 September 2009 in Brisbane, the capital city of the state of Queensland, Australia. The ICML 2009 theme Positioning the Profession will offer delegates an array of research papers, user studies and innovative solutions from a wide range of local and international presenters. A number of continuing education activities will be offered as well as tours of the region.
EAHIL has agreed to sponsor a parallel session during the 10. ICLM.
Arne Jakobsson
EAHIL President
December 2005
