 |
The web page of the Italian WHO
Documentation Centre.
Rosalia Ferrara, Cristina Mancini
e Gabriella Poppi
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Abstract
A web site, accessible from the page
of the World Health Organization/Regional Office for Europe (WHO/ROE),
was developed in order to disseminate information about the tasks of the
Italian WHO Documentation Centre (WHO/DC) which is active since 1992 at
the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) - the Italian National Institute
of Health.
-------ooo-------
Introduction In the Internet era the digital library plays an essential role in the spreading of information at all levels. As a matter of fact, the electronic earthquake which upset the library environment during the last decade has offered a wealth of friendly accesses to an information often overwhelming, fragmentary and not credible. Consequently librarians and documentation specialists have to face a new challenge in order to retrieve pertinent and reliable information: the development of competitive web sites providing organised information suitable to the needs of a scientific community which claims more than ever the access to the right resources in real time. Within this context the Library of
the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) - the Italian National Institute
of Health - as the Italian WHO Documentation Centre has projected the development
of a web site to widely disseminate information about the activity of the
Centre itself.
Italian WHO/DC web site The web site consists of six pages: a home page and five web pages devoted to the following items: general information, services, WHO documents held by the Library, Italian WHO Collaborating Centres, WHO Documentation Centres. The home page provides links to the English/French edition of the page - available soon - and to the e-mail service - already active (Fig. 1). Besides internal and external navigation links are provided on each of these pages to allow movement inside and outside the site. A description of any single page is given below. General information A brief history of the Italian WHO Documentation Centre is provided with details about its structure and organisational functions and responsibilities. Special attention is devoted to its tasks and programs. Services The Centre provides access to the collection of WHO documents held by the Library and assists patrons in retrieving information about WHO literature available through the Internet. In this page users can find detailed information about the services offered by the Centre: bibliographic searches, document delivery, Italian translations. Link to the full text of the Italian translations edited by the ISS is also available. WHO documents held by the Library The Library holds the most complete collection - in Italy - of the documents edited or published by the World Health Organization Headquarters and Regional Office for Europe besides a wide range of literature produced by other regional offices and joint committees. In this page the catalogue of WHO documents held by the Library is available. The catalogue, produced by the Library with the technical support of the ISS Processing Data Service, contains data output from the OPAC of the DOBIS/LIBIS (D/L) system1 and will be updated quarterly. WHO Collaborating Centres Collaborating Centres are national institutions designated for a limited period of time by the WHO Headquarters in order to support WHO in its international health work and programme priorities. A list of the WHO/CC active in ISS and in Italy is provided in this page. WHO Documentation Centres Documentation Centres are national institutions designated by the Regional Office for Europe in order to be supported in promoting and spreading WHO documents in each member State. A link to the list of the WHO/DC active in Europe is provided in this page.
Figure 1. Italian WHO/DC
home page
Methodology The intent was to develop the site as a tool to support WHO/ROE activity and to facilitate end-user interaction with the content of specific information resources. To this purpose the web page of the Italian WHO Documentation Centre was developed in the following sequence: The structure Web sites of organizations involved in public health and related fields - with special attention to the WHO and WHO/ROE web sites - were examined to arrange information clearly and systematically. In order to give an immediate answer to the questions who/what/where/how, the web pages was essentially structured through a limited use of graphic devices. The content The content was developed through different steps: 1) choice of the main and subordinate entries of each web page; 2) selection and activation of the web links to information resources related to any single page topics; 3) identification and selection of the bibliographic record fields to output the WHO catalogue from the ISS Library OPAC; 4) checking and updating of the WHO/CC list active at ISS and in Italy; 5) checking and updating of the Italian translations of WHO documents with special concern to the translations edited by ISS. The catalogue of WHO documents As the ISS Library OPAC is not yet
available through the Internet, the online catalogue of WHO documents was
realized processing bibliographic records stored in D/L1 files
in order to obtain a product readable in a Windows environment. Consequently
the database construction required five different phases: 1) bibliographic
data retrieval through the downloading of two D/L queues from the mainframe;
2) retrieval of other data not included in D/L queues through PL1 programs;
3) the import of the obtained data on a PC for the conversion to the Microsoft
Access 97 application; 4) selection of the WHO data and identification
of the record fields through the Access software; 5) conversion of the
obtained database to HTML language for the publication on the web site.
Conclusion Experience has shown how important is to have a variety of accesses to appropriate resources on specific topics. This web page was planned to mediate between diverse and distributed information sources and an increasing range of WHO document consumers, to fill the existing gap and to create a "bridge" between the WHO/ROE and ISS web sites. In order to improve the effectiveness of the Italian WHO/DC web page, some implementation are foreseen: It is hopeful that this page in the framework of a knowledge organization contains not only information that is convenient to have, but also includes data easily accessible and useful for daily work. References - Kochtanek T.R., Hein K.K. and Kassim
A.R.C. (2001), "Digital library resource web site: project DL", Online
information review, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 29-40.
Following are the web sites cited in the text: Istituto Superiore di Sanità
(http://www.iss.it)
|
|
 |
|
