EAHIL LOC Blog

Science is the proud publisher of six journals, Science, Science Signaling, Science Translational Medicine, Science Immunology, Science Robotics, and Science Advances (our open access journal). Join us for this brief presentation on what our family has to offer (with sample articles illustrating each journal’s scope), how the research published in the Science family of journals advances human health, and to understand which of your patrons you could expect to use the journals.

Presenter: Marco Castellan

Date: Friday, 13 July 2018

Time: 10:15 AM to 11:00 AM

Location: Seligman Studio

The importance of continuing professional development (CPD) should not be underestimated.  As information professionals our roles develops and so does our training needs.

The Continuing Education Courses (CEC) selected for EAHIL 2018 are directly informed by medical and healthcare librarians.

The topics are selected from a survey conducted at the 15th EAHIL Conference and from an online questionnaire sent to healthcare information professionals.

The training needs from these responses reflected the roles and responsibilities are diverse. They varied from Information retrieval techniques, innovative teaching skills and to systematic review training.

Whether you are based in a hospital library or a health/medical library setting in a university, there is a CEC for you.

As information professionals we need to stay current with the latest developments, skills, and new technologies that are of relevance to our profession.

Check out the CEC’s and register for EAHIL 2018. Don’t forget CEC: 3 sponsored by EAHIL board. This CEC is free and eligible for members of EAHIL.

• Written by Mala Mann

Planning for the 16^th EAHIL conference in Cardiff has really ratcheted up in the last few weeks. It’s all go!

All exhibitors have confirmed and we’ll have their information and logos up on our website soon so that delegates can plan their time at the exhibition effectively. There are twenty eight companies in this year’s exhibition and we are very grateful to all for their support.

Registration is in full swing, and at least one of the Continuing Education Courses is already full and others are heavily booked. So book quickly if you want to attend one of these courses.

One or two delegates are combining their conference with a holiday in Wales.

As Wales is the ‘land of heaven’ what could be better! If you want details about what to do in Wales, and there is so much choice just send us an email. Wales offers hills, mountains, castles, seaside, as well as great shopping, eating and drinking, and wherever you go you will have a warm Welsh Welcome. Not forgetting music and song of course.

We are also planning the visits and social programme in and around Cardiff with all visits taking place on Thursday 12^th July in the morning. Full details and how to register will be on the website soon.

For more energetic delegates please bring your running shoes. Thanks to Tom Roper (UK) a morning run is being organised in Bute Park which is right next to the conference venue. Day will be confirmed so watch this space. The route is likely to be no more than 5km and as this follows the river Taff it is flat and in parkland. Thanks Tom for organising this.

Those less energetic will have the chance to do some slow walking in the park as one of the Thursday morning activities.

So keep sending us comments, queries via the generic email or by Twitter. It’s your conference after all.

Welcome to the new year and another EAHIL LOC blog! This is the year when the EAHIL conference will be held in Cardiff, Wales. Wow it was exciting to say that!

This time the meeting was held on the 25^th January in the Public Health Wales building in Cardiff with a few people video conferencing into the meeting.

There was a lot of discussion around the prices for the conference along with when registration will be opening, there really is a lot more to these kind of decisions than we at first thought. We come to our decisions and the prices will be available during February when the registration for the main conference, continuing education course, and the social events will all be open.

Talking about social events there were a lot of thoughts as to what our various delegates and their partners might find interesting. It’s always tricky trying to think like a tourist in your home country/city. If anyone out there has any burning desire to see something specific within the South Wales/Cardiff area please do let us know and we’ll certainly look into it. It’s worth mentioning that these social events will go ahead whatever the weather so you will need to pack anything from factor 50 sun lotion to a rain coat.

Don’t forget to keep those conference hints and tips coming for those who are new to these kind of events. Anything you can think of might very well be a big help to someone new.

• Sarah Bruch

The December LOC meeting took place in the lovely (but slightly labyrinth!!) Glamorgan Building, location for the EAHIL Board meeting scheduled in July.

There was a lot of excitement at this meeting, Lori had distributed a draft programme, and was starting to receive speaker confirmations, and it is all feeling much more real now! It’s wonderful to see the conference start to take shape, and we hope you will enjoy the exciting programme we have planned. You will be able to see it for yourselves soon, keep your eyes on the EAHIL blog over the next couple of months.

One aspect that will be particularly interesting will be the Innovation Hub. The team are working hard on ensuring it meets the brief to showcase the ‘innovators, creators and entrepreneurs’ amongst us.

And, for those of you who sometimes find conferences a bit overwhelming, there will be a wellbeing theme running throughout, with plenty to encourage you to relax and decompress. Hopefully you will come away from Cardiff feeling inspired, revived and ready for action!

We would love to create a section on our blog for conference hints and tips. So, if you have any tips on what to bring to a conference, or advice you want to pass on to first-timers, then please do get in touch. We can then share them on the blog.

We finished off our meeting, and headed off for our Christmas meal and drinks at a fantastic tapas place (Curado Bar) opposite the Principality Stadium, definitely somewhere we will be recommending to delegates in July!

Kristine Chapman

The LOC November meeting took place at the Royal College of Nursing at Ty Maeth in Cardiff on 30^th November. We had the slightly daunting task of pulling together our successful submissions for workshops, presentations and posters into the first draft of the Programme for the 2018 Conference.

LOC and IPC committee members had done great work earlier in the month reviewing and considering the original 171 submitted abstracts received in the call for papers to assemble a great mix of titles reflecting the themes of Inspiring, Involving and Informing.

In our meeting Lori Havard, Programme Lead, coordinated our approach as we used flip chart paper and post it notes to create a draft Programme that we really believe has something for everyone and LOC members were getting very excited about the interesting mix of topics reflecting all aspects of health information and librarianship. The photos below show LOC members hard at work.

We were fueled by chocolates and biscuits, with thanks to members who contributed these and many thanks to Angela Perrett at the RCN for providing lunch.

Look out for more Speaker and Programme information appearing on the website in the early months of 2018.

LOC have one more meeting in 2017, then it won’t be long until we can say the conference is happening this year!

Katrina Hall

September’s meeting last Thursday included an exciting update on the development of exhibitor and sponsor packages. We’re hoping for a range of exhibitors from publishers to e-resource suppliers to attend so if you’re interested in exhibiting at this wonderful and engaging health information and libraries conference watch this space for further information.

Work on the programme themes is progressing – leads have been busy contacting lots of potential speakers and encouraging them to submit abstracts. If you’re thinking about submitting an abstract but not sure how, we found this great article from the London School of Economics and Social Science (LSE) blog or you can always contact us – we’re a friendly bunch and happy to help – just look at our lovely, smiley faces:

In addition to all of this, we now also have some confirmed keynote speakers! We’ll be adding more information on our speakers over the next few weeks.

Lastly, but certainly by no means least – Sue, the LOC Chair had a very pleasant surprise in the post. A letter, from none other than Prince Harry*! The LOC wrote to ask whether the Prince would be available to make an appearance at the conference but sadly he is unable to attend but does send his best wishes for a successful conference – we’ll take that 🙂

Until next time,

Rachel

*Kensington Palace, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry’s communication team – but still exciting!

In our last local organising committee meeting, we thought it might be nice to share with you what we get up to.

We usually meet up every two weeks to discuss on-going work to make sure we organise the best conference for you.

Keep an eye on the blog for updates from our meetings 🙂