Access to information on the human genome for librarians and documentalists in health sciences
Wednesday 22nd (half day – 4 hours)
Course leader(s): Fernando Martin-Sanchez & Ana Yarte

PRESENTATION:
The recent publication of the sequence of the Human Genome constitutes one of the events with greater repercussion on society and on the progress of Science in general and, in Biomedicine, in particular. The information generated by these studies and by those that are in progress now (individual genetic variability, new medications, gene-illness interactions) is voluminous, dispersed and complex in its structure.
Access to this information will constitute an habitual and routine practice of Health Sciences professionals. Therefore, this type of information could represent a new role for the documentalists that work in Health Sciences Libraries. It would entail facilitating the access to all the resources related to the Human Genome and their applications in Medicine. Documentalists specialized in this area will acquire experience in handling the main resources and in data management techniques that take into account the special character of this information, since for the most part it is available on the Internet. They will also know the links that allow integrating data and literature on genetics and disease.
Detected this need, the Institute of Health ‘Carlos III’ through two of its units (the National Library of Health Sciences and the Bioinformatics Area) designed this course whose objective is the training of documentalists in these matters.
This course was included in the program of the National School of Public Health of Spain two years ago. At present, it is also imparted at the international level. It was recently taught as Continuing Education in the Regional Congress of Information in Health Sciences, CRICS 6 that took place in May of 2003 in Puebla, Mexico.

OBJECTIVES:

• To introduce basic notions on genetics and the Human Genome.
• To describe the main types of biological and genetic data (DNA, RNA, proteins, maps, genomes), their structure and their interest in medicine.
• To show the sources of basic genetic information (databases of sequences, structures, mutations, genetic diseases)
• To illustrate how to locate and use the basic tools (software programs and web utilities) to look for, recover and process genomic information of medical interest.
• To enumerate the most important resources of information on these topics.

PROFILE AND REQUIREMENTS OF THE PARTICIPANTS:

• Documentalists and librarians whose work is carried out in areas related to health sciences and/or those that provide support services to biomedical research.
• Knowledge in biology and genetics is not essential.
• Basic knowledge of the use of the Internet and the Web is necessary.

CONTENTS:

• Introduction to Genetics and Genomics.
• Types of genetic data (DNA, RNA, Protein, Genomes).
• Structure of the information (Sequence, graphics, maps).
• Types of tools (computer programs, searchers).
• Search and recovery of basic information on the Human Genome (Molecular Biology databases).
• Search and use of basic tools to process information (Bioinformatic software).
• Additional information resources.