Wednesday 3 June 2009 9.00 -13.00 THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL

Librarians and information specialists are increasingly being asked to support and facilitate the process of systematic reviews, health technology assessment documents and clinical practice guidelines. They are required to use specific searching techniques and build specific search strategies. Apart from thorough knowledge of different database contents they have to know other sources and the Internet is a good point to start with.

The aim of this course is to introduce the participants to these new resources.

The course will be divided in two parts: first of all, the speakers will explain the theory behind it all, then there will be a hands-on session to put into practice everything learned in the first half.

Chiara Bassi is in charge of the Medical Library of Ce.V.E.A.S (Centre for the Evaluation of Effectiveness in Health Care) since 1997.
She is a teacher at several continuing education courses and university Masters to medical doctors, nurses and information professionals on the use of bibliographic databases and management of scientific publications, in particular on evidence based medicine. From March 2006 until December 2006 she was employed as Clinical Effectiveness Librarian at the Royal Free Hospital Medical Library (London) providing literature searching in response to a clinical question, which can then be used for various clinically-related reasons, including guideline development, individual and general patient care, research, audit, publication and teaching. She is involved in continuing collaboration with Soprintendenza dei Beni Librari e Documentari della Regione Emilia Romagna in biomedical libraries field. Sheis a member of the Board of a medical libraries consortium in the Emilia Romagna region.

Vanna Pistotti is, since 1970, the head of the library at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, a not-for-profit biomedical research organization whose main goal is to contribute to the defence of human health and life. Her main interests are in information science, bibliometric studies and use of new technologies in these fields. She is a teacher in several courses and university Masters to medical doctors and information professionals on the use of bibliographic databases and management of scientific publications, in particular on evidence based medicine. She is the author of several articles in English and Italian on medical librarianship and evidence based medicine. She is one of the founder members of the Italian Cochrane Centre that started its activities in 1994. She is member of the Executive Board of the Lombardy Biomedical Library Consortium, a network that serves, through Internet, the scientific community in this District. The project started in 1994 and is under the umbrella of the Health Division of the Lombardy Region, a governmental body. Recently she became a member of the Scientific Committee of a project run by the Mario Negri Institute called "Partecipasalute": a website for consumers and their associations.