EAHIL Workshop - Continuing Education Courses

Title of Course:	Using Evidence in Day to Day Practice: an EBLIP Update.
Duration:	8 hours
Lecturer:	Andrew Booth
	Reader in Evidence Based Information Practice, School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) - University of Sheffield, England

Course description

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP), formerly known as Evidence Based Librarianship, is a new and exciting paradigm currently gaining in popularity throughout the library world. This model to improve the day-to-day decision-making of practising librarians is supported by its own online open access journal, by an established international conference series and by a substantial body of professional literature. This course aims to translate the theory into practice by presenting and modelling approaches to integrating evidence into daily decisions. The course will follow the stages of the well-recognised evidence based practice process accompanying a didactic introduction, to help participants to understand key concepts, with case study materials that simulate real-life decision-making.

This course, which requires no previous knowledge of evidence based library and information practice (although a basic grasp of evidence based healthcare may prove useful), will examine tools and techniques for treating EBLIP as an integral part of day-to-day practice, not an optional extra. It will look at integration into library policies and procedures, into strategy meetings and professional development sessions and into project management. Implementation methods will be examined such as guidelines, digests, journal clubs, decision analyses and algorithms. Every stage of the evidence based practice process will thus be exemplified with reference to real library questions and concern. Practical benefits of the course will include a more systematic approach to decision-making and project management and development of personal strategies for critical analysis, problem solving and reflective practice. A particular feature of the course will be its presentation of current developments in EBLIP as showcased at the EBLIP4 Conference in North Carolina USA, May 2007.

Course Outline:
Overview of EBLIP
Burning Questions/Current Issues
Sourcing the Evidence
The EBLIP Journal Club
Making Sound Library Decisions
Decision-making tools and aids
Getting research into practice
Managing Projects Effectively
Towards Reflective Practice
Current Developments/Future Prospects

Biography

Andrew Booth BA, MSc, DipLib, ALA, is one of the UK's most experienced trainers of health librarians both face-to-face and, more recently, via e-learning as Programme Director for the Facilitated Online Learning Interactive Opportunity (FOLIO) Programme for the UK National Library of Health. Combining an academic role as Reader in Evidence Based Information Practice with a senior management role as Director of Information Resources he has worked at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) since 1994. His portfolio includes significant support to the evidence based practice of others through systematic review and critical appraisal activities and, increasingly, work within the evidence base of library and information practice. Andrew has developed and delivered the ADEPT course on applying evidence based literature searching across most UK health regions. Andrew attended the first UK Workshop in Teaching Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford and has subsequently tutored at three Evidence Based Practice Workshops in Durham and two in Oxford. Andrew is on the editorial boards of Evidence Based Library & Information Practice, Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, International Journal of Mixed-Methods Research and he contributes the quarterly Using Evidence n Practice column to Health Information and Libraries Journal (HILJ). He co-edited (with Jonathan Eldredge) a special issue of HILJ on Evidence Based Health Information Practice and is co-editor of Evidence Based Practice for Information Professionals: a handbook (Facet Publishing, 2004). He has contributed articles on evidence based library and information practice to the Journal of EAHIL, Performance Measurement & Metrics, and VINE. Together with colleagues in the Information Resources Section at ScHARR he organized the first Evidence Based Librarianship Conference in Sheffield in September 2001. He has subsequently chaired the International Programme Committee for the 2nd (Edmonton, Canada, 2003), 3rd (Brisbane, Australia, 2005) and 4th (Raleigh, North Carolina, 2007) EBL Conferences.

Title of Course:	Using the MESH Translation Maintenance System
Duration:	8 hours
Lecturers:	Stuart J. Nelson
	National Library of Medicine, Head of Medical Subject Headings Section, Bethesda, MD USA
	Jacque-Lynne Schulman
	National Library of Medicine, Senior Technical Information Specialist, Bethesda, MD, USA

Course description

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) produces annual editions of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSHR), the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity. Translations of MeSH are done to make the vocabulary useful for non-English users. However, MeSH translators have encountered difficulties with entry vocabulary as they maintain and update their translation. Tracking MeSH changes and updating their translations in a reasonable time frame is cumbersome. NLM has developed and implemented a concept-centerd vocabulary maintenance system for MeSH. This system has been extended to create an interlingual database of translations, the MeSH Translation Maintenance System (MTMS). This database allows continual updating of the translations, as well as facilitating tracking of the changes within MeSH from one year to another. The MTMS interface uses a Web-based design with multiple colours and fonts to indicate concepts needing translation or review. Concepts for which there is no exact English equivalent can be added by the translator. Use of the system and its support is provided to translators without charge, as is the provision of the completed translation back to the originators on a regular basis. This workshop will review the overall structure of MeSH, introduce or reacquaint translators to the MTMS, and equip them to maintain their translation of MeSH in the MTMS. It is suggested (but not required) that enrollees in the workshop provide NLM with any efforts they have made in developing a translation, in a term by term format. These efforts will be loaded into the MTMS, making the practical experience in using the MTMS richer.
Workshop Outline:
I. Overview of the MeSH vocabulary
    A. Overall MeSH Structure
    B. Concept oriented approach to MeSH
II. The MeSH Translation Database
    A. Structure
    B. Interface
    C. Design
    D. Implementation
    E. Copyright and other Considerations
III. Coordinating Translations
    A. Enrolling in MTMS
    B. Adding Concepts
    C. The Production Cycle
IV. Practical Experience in Using MTMS
    A. Getting Started
    B. Adding Translators
    C. Practicum

Biographies

Stuart J. Nelson MD, was born and raised in California. His undergraduate education was at the University of California at Berkeley. He took a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics in 1970, and moved to Brooklyn, New York, to attend medical school at the State University of New York. After obtaining the MD degree, he interned at Philadelphia General Hospital on the University of Pennsylvania's medical service, and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Metropolitan Hospital Center in New York City. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1978. From 1978 to 1991, he served on the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1991 he moved to the Medical College of Georgia. His research interests are in the area of computer applications to medicine, and he collaborated for several years with Dr. Marsden S. Blois, one of the founders of the field of Medical Informatics. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. In 1996 he came to the National Library of Medicine as the Head of the Medical Subject Headings Section. He has published extensively in the field of medical informatics, especially in the area of computerized vocabularies.

Jacque-Lynne Schulman has a BA in Sociology from George Washington University, MA in Social and Organizational Behavior, also from GWU, and a Master of Science in Library Science from Catholic University of America. She is currently enrolled at Virginia Tech, pursuing a PhD in Science and Technology Studies. After receiving the MSLS, she joined the staff of the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, George Washington University Medical Center. She was responsible for reference service and at GWU, first began using MEDLINE in the early 1970's. She joined NLM in 1983 and worked in several public service areas. She has been in MeSH since 1988. As an online searcher and trainer of online searchers, she brings that perspective, along with her cataloguing and reference experience, to the creation, maintenance, and distribution of the MeSH vocabulary.

Title of Course:	Statistics for the Statistically Challenged: A Primer for Understanding the Numbers and Statistics in Healthcare Research Reports
Duration:	4 hours
Lecturer:	Ann McKibbon
	Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Course description

Statistics and numbers are important ways of presenting and understanding health research. They can be confusing and often intimidating for those who seek to read and understand healthcare literature. Although statistics seem to be incomprehensible we already deal with many of them on a daily basis. This course is meant for beginners and those who are very uncomfortable with numbers and statistics. We will use a hands-on approach and look at various statistical concepts in our daily life and see how these already-known concepts can be translated into an understanding of reports of clinical research. We will use published papers and their data and learn how to understand their results via understanding the numbers and statistics used. At the end of the class participants will be more comfortable with the numerical aspects of clinical research. The aim of the course is to impart a broad understanding of how numbers are used in clinical research and what they say.

Biography

Ann McKibbon BSc, MLS, PhD, is a medical librarian who has been working in the areas of evidence-based medicine, medical informatics, and knowledge translation for more than 25 years at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON Canada. Her work includes studies of clinicians using Medline and other information resources as well as the Clinical Queries in PubMED. She received a PhD in medical informatics at the University of Pittsburgh in 2005 and is an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster. She continues her research and teaching in informatics and knowledge translation in the medical school and to other audiences outside the university. She has over 50 peer-reviewed publications and has taught more than 100 workshops to librarians and health professionals. She enjoys making difficult-to-understand topics (e.g., statistics) easily understood and believes strongly that librarians have a major role to play in research inside librarianship and in other disciplines.

Title of Course:	Weblogs and Mashups Services
Duration:	4 hours
Lecturers:	Oliver Obst
	Central Medical Library of the University and Regional Library Munster, Germany
	Guus van den Brekel
	Coordinator Electronic Services, Central Medical Library. University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands

Course description

To be well informed and always up to date, you have to read blogs and subscribe to RSS feeds in these days - especially if you are an information specialist. This session will empower you to start a weblog by your own, make creative use of them as well of RSS feeds. You will learn how to make, locate, merge, and re-use News feeds. We will work with Google reader, Flickr, Del.icio.us, to name just a few. At the end we will discuss the benefits of "blogging" - e.g. marketing, customer relationship, reputation, visibility, community building.

Biographies

Oliver Obst Oliver Obst, PhD started his career as a researcher in cardiovascular medicine before being attracted by library science. Currently he is the head of the Central Medical Library of the University and Regional Library Muenster, Germany. He founded the Journal "Medicine, Library, Information", and since 13 years he initiates homepages, mailing lists, and weblogs related to medical librarianship, and delivers respective workshops

Guus van den Brekel is the Coordinator Electronic Services of the Central Medical Library of a large academic teaching hospital in the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). He is a Medical Information Specialist as well as IT coordinator and responsible for Library Services Development and Innovation. He has been involved in developing and introducing the local Metalib system for the University Libraries (RUGCombine)), as well as SFX implementation (RUGLinks), the Electronic Reference Desk and the QuickSearch Library Toolbar. More information about Guus can be found at his personal blog.

Title of Course:	"I didn't Know that Exists" - Internet Search Tools for the Biomedical Librarian
Duration:	4 hours
Lecturer:	Friedhelm Rump
	Library of the Veterinary University of Hannover, Germany

Course description

The course focuses on the refinement of Internet searches with specially devised tools to improve the number of relevant hits. This covers both classical and technically enhanced search methods. In the latter case many add-ons are now available for integration into the browser either as silent application, to be put to use with a right-click of the mouse, or as a toolbar or an optional function of the browser itself. Thus one can create a highly customized browser or homepage and utilize many advanced search techniques. A CD-ROM arranged as an HTML-page of descriptions of the techniques and all the free tools and add-ons covered in the course with links to the download-sites will be given to the participants of the course.

Biography

Friedhelm Rump holds a diploma (1973) and a PhD (1978) in Geochemistry from Göttingen University. He undertook his library training at Göttingen University Library and Fachhochschule fuer Bibliotheks-und Dokumentationswesen in Köln (1980 -1982). He has held positions at the Göttingen University Library, the Municipal Archives of Göttingen and Hohenheim University, Stuttgart. Since 1990 he has been library director at the Veterinary University of Hannover. He has held a number of honorary positions: Chairman of the examination board for Library Assistant Trainees of Lower Saxony, Treasurer of the European Veterinary Libraries Group, Council member for the implementation of an automated library network in 7 German States, Chairman of the Council of Library Affairs to the Lower Saxonian Minister of Science and Culture, Member of the editorial board of the EVLG-Newsletter, Spokesman of the European Veterinary Libraries Group, and German representative to the council of EAHIL.

Title of Course:	Making Library Instruction Count: User Education Methods and Techniques
Duration:	4 hours
Lecturer:	Michelle L. Zafron
	Senior Assistant Librarian, Health Sciences Library, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA

Course description

Imparting information literacy skills to health sciences students is a necessary but sometimes challenging undertaking. Librarians are crucial in fostering information literacy competencies in students, and can make a significant impact on their professional research and life long learning skills. In this class, we will focus primarily on using active learning techniques to overcome these obstacles. We will engage in exercises designed to provide users with a better understanding of concepts such as database strengths and weaknesses, subject headings, and evidence-based medicine. We will also explore ways of using course management software (commercial and open-source) such as Blackboard, Web CT, or Moodle as a vehicle for better integrating library instruction into the class. Some experience in library instruction will be beneficial, but is not required. Participants will leave the class with interactive activities that they can then modify and implement at their home institutions.

Biography

Michelle L. Zafron has a BA in English and Political Science and a MLS from the University at Buffalo. After receiving her MLS, she worked at D'Youville College in Buffalo and Genesee Community College in their respective reference departments. In 2003, she became a medical librarian in the Reference and Education Services department at the Health Sciences Library at the University at Buffalo. She serves as the library liaison to the School of Public Health and Health Professions for which she has conducted numerous library instruction sessions. For the past four years, she has co-instructed a course on evidence-based physical therapy where she has been able to experiment with various techniques and exercises.

Title of Course:	Knowledge Translation and Knowledge Syntheses: What Every Health Librarian Should Know
Duration:	4 hours
Lecturers:	Ann McKibbon
	Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Course description

Producing new evidence is relatively easy-getting it applied (i.e., Knowledge Translation) by individual clinicians, organizations, and policy groups is much harder. One of the corner stones of knowledge translation is knowledge syntheses. These syntheses are systematic reviews, clinical practice guidelines, economic evaluations, health technology assessments, and decision analyses. Librarians are vital to the effective production all of these synthesized products. This course will discuss each of the types of syntheses with emphasis on economics studies, health technology assessments, and decision analyses. Knowing what makes a high-quality synthesis allows us to be better able to partner with those clinicians and researchers who work to build syntheses of knowledge as the foundation of good knowledge translation

Course Outline:

What is Knowledge Translation (KT)
What other names does KT have
Why are knowledge syntheses important to KT
What are they types of syntheses
Systematic reviews
Clinical practice guidelines
Economics studies
Health technology assessments
Decision analyses
What are their distinguishing characteristics
Where can librarians partner to build them well

Biography

Title of Course:	Measuring Impact: Cost Justification for Information Services
Duration:	4 hours
Lecturer:	Liz Blankson-Hemans
	Director, Information Professional Development (International), Dialog.

Course description

Librarians have usually been diligent in measuring operational indicators such as requests, loans, transactions, search sessions, and so on. Such measurements should continue, but it is critical to measure the right things and to interpret the numbers for meaningful indications of changing needs. Measuring and analyzing library activity is not all, however. It is equally important to measure impact. Measuring impact involves charting metrics for deriving expressions of the library's value in monetary terms, or from demonstrable benefits such as reduced turnaround time, improved accuracy, risk avoidance, and the like. The emphasis of this workshop is to show how the use of externally purchased content or services in planning for the content requirements of the organization can help define the impact of the information center in supporting key business initiatives. It offers the "big picture" view on how to help the information center justify its costs and ultimately, its existence. In justifying costs for the information center, the inevitable trade-offs in time, cost and quality, during the budgeting process are considered.

Biography

Liz Blankson-Hemans is Director, Information Professional Development (International), at Dialog, a Thomson Scientific business. She manages the deployment of Quantum2 (the company's Leadership Development Programme for information professionals) in Europe and Asia Pacific; the Thomson Scientific Customer Advisory Board for the International region, and the Graduate Education Programme outside North America. She also coordinates the company's interactions with professional groups such as CILIP, CiG and the Special Libraries Association (SLA) in Europe and in Australia/New Zealand. She was president of SLA Europe in 2004-2005, a committee member of the SLA's Diversity Leadership Development Programme from 2003-2006, and currently sits on the SLA Nominating Committee. In addition, she regularly presents papers and workshops at a number of industry conferences. Liz has an information career spanning more than 15 years, and prior to Dialog, worked at Clifford Chance, the global law firm.

Title of Course:	Make Your Own Library Toolbar
Duration:	4 hours
Lecturers:	Guus van den Brekel
	Coordinator Electronic Services, Central Medical Library. University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands
	Dorien Kieft-Wondergem
	Central Medical Library, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands

Course description

A library toolbar gives your users a great tool to find and access your library resources and searchengines from any place! From home, on the road, on a laptop, your user has your library always very close. It is a perfect solution to create extra awareness of your library services with a minimum of effort and no costs, for small and larger libraries. This workshop offers the opportunity to make your own library toolbar during the course. All details and functionalities will be shown and discussed. Search engines will be implemented on the fly. Web-based editing and maintenance, creation of tailor-made searchboxes from the Toolbar, how to "market" your Toolbar, usage reports etc.
Al the end of the course you will walk out with your own library toolbar to take away to your users

Biographies

Dorien Kieft-Wondergem began her career as a nurse and later as a schoolteacher. Both of them proved to be a useful background for working in a medical library. Currently she works in the Central Medical Library of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). There she follows attentively new developments and wants to contribute in the changing role of the (medical) librarian.