The Finnish health sciences librarians association, Bibliothecarii Medicinae Fenniae
had its autumn meeting in Helsinki in late October. The membership being only 80
librarians, participation was considered rather high, when more than 20 of us gathered at
the beautiful new premises of the National Health Sciences Library. The chairperson, Ulla
Neuvonen from the Helsinki University Medical Faculty Library continues to lead the
association, and Merja Jauhiainen from the Library of the National Institute of
Occupational Health was elected as a new member of the board.
Approximately every fifth year we make the autumn meeting a bit more festive, and this
time our honorary member, Aili Ryynaenen from Turku, told us at the dinner, about the
origins of the Turku University Medical Library in the 1920s. Turku University
and its Medical Faculty was founded in the 1920s to be the first Finnish-language
university in Finland (Swedish was the dominating language in Finland in the old days).
The first two officials at the Medical Faculty were the professor of pathology and the
librarian! Later on the life of the library was not so easy, and especially during the
war, in the 1940's, meant hard times even for the library. The library recovered rather
rapidly after the war, as did the whole country. It was very interesting to hear of the
really difficult times - especially for those who have come to the library community only
after computers.
The Finnish Physicians' Association Duodecim has turned to the medical libraries in
Finland and asked for their help in carrying out literature searches for clinical
guidelines and good practice recommendations, which are now being built up by them. All
five medical faculties in Finland are heavily involved in making guidelines, and the
literature searches for them are very extensive and deep-going. At the same time, we are
also educating the physicians to do good searches on Medline, the Cochrane Library and
other databases.
We, medical librarians, think that this is a good opportunity to show that we are
really needed with our expertise and professional skills. The physicians now understand,
especially after we have been blessed by the Internet, that searching for the right
information at the right time is not always easy. We are in fact very glad that this form
of cooperation with the health sciences community which we serve, has arisen.
NOUVELLES DE FINLANDE (In
English)
L'association finnoise des bibliothécaires en sciences de la santé, Bibliothecarri
Medicinae Fenniae, a tenu sa réunion d'automne à Helsinki fin octobre. Les membres se
limitant a quelque 80 bibliothécaires, le taux de participation a été considéré comme
relativement élevé quand plus de 20 d'entre-nous se sont retrouvés dans les locaux
neufs de la Bibliothèque National des Sciences de la Santé. La présidente, Ulla
Neuvonen de la Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Médecine de l'Université d'Helsinki,
continue a diriger l'association et Merja Jauhiainen de la Bibliothèque de l'institut
national de Médecine du Travail a été élue comme nouveau membre du bureau.
Environ tous les cinq ans, nous rendons notre réunion d'automne un peu plus festive et
cette fois, notre membre honoraire, Aili Ryynänen de Turku, nous a conté au cours du
dîner les tout premiers moments de la Bibliothèque Médicale de l'Université de Turku
dans les années 20. L'université de Turku et sa faculté de médecine ont été fondées
pendant les 20'ies comme première université finnophone en Finlande (le suédois a été
la langue dominante du pays dans le temps). Les deux premiers fonctionnaires de la
faculté de médecine étaient le professeur de pathologie et le bibliothécaire ! Par la
suite, la vie de la bibliothèque ne fut pas toujours facile et la seconde guerre mondiale
a été une période particulièrement pénible, même pour la bibliothèque. Après la
guerre, la bibliothèque s'est remise rapidement, comme le reste du pays. Entendre parler
des époques vraiment difficiles était très intéressant, spécialement pour ceux qui
n'ont intégré la communauté des bibliothèques qu'après l'informatisation.
L'association finlandaise des médecins, Duodecim, s'est adressée aux bibliothèques
médicales du pays pour leur demander de l'aide pour la réalisation de recherches dans la
littérature pour des recommandations de bonne conduite et des lignes directrices
cliniques, qui sont maintenant construites pour eux.
Les cinq facultés médicales de Finlande sont plutôt lourdement impliquées dans la
création de lignes directrices et les recherches de littérature pour celles-ci sont
très extensives et profondes. Dans le même temps, nous formons aussi les médecins à la
recherche efficace dans Medline, Cochrane Library et d'autres banques de données. Nous,
bibliothécaires médicaux, pensons que c'est une bonne opportunité de prouver que notre
expertise et nos connaissances professionnelles sont vraiment nécessaires. Les médecins
ont maintenant compris, spécialement après l'arrivée d'Internet, que rechercher la
bonne information au bon moment n'est pas toujours si facile. Nous sommes en fait très
heureux que cette forme de coopération avec la communauté des sciences de la santé que
nous servons se présente aujourd'hui.
NEWS FROM GERMANY by Ursel Lux
Annual Conference of the German Medical Libraries
Association (AGMB)
Berlin, 30 September - 2 October 1998
The Charité Hospital at Humboldt University, Berlin was the venue for this year's
Annual AGMB1 (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Medizinisches Bibliothekswesen)
Conference, which was organised by the Charité Medical Library. Over 200 delegates
attended the AGMB Conference, including visitors from Austria, the Czech Republic and
Switzerland. This record attendance is evidence of the association's appeal and vitality.
The three AGMB study groups met in an afternoon session on the 1st day of the Conference.
In addition to a programme of lectures, they discussed topical problems of the respective
library groups (pharmaceutical libraries group, hospital library groups and university
medical libraries group).
The Annual Conference itself was opened on 22 September by AGMB Chairman Dr. Volker
Johst (Medical Library of the Charité University Hospital, Berlin), in Berlin for the
first time since reunification. In their welcoming addresses Professor Cornelius Frömmel
(Vice Dean for Research at the Charité Medical Faculty of the Humboldt University,
Berlin) and Dr. Norbert Martin (Deputy Director of the Library at Humboldt University,
Berlin) referred to the current state of change in scientific libraries.
In his talk entitled "From Medical/Surgical College to Teaching Hospital:
Professor Peter Schneck (Charité University Hospital, Berlin), sketched the chequered
history of the Charité from its origins as a house of the plague in 1710, via its
development into one of the most important medical centres of the world, employing
renowned physicians such as R. Virchow, R. Koch and F. Sauerbruch, through to its current
role as a teaching hospital combining the clinics of the old Charité in central Berlin
and the R. Virchow hospital in the Berlin-Wedding district.
Dr. Gabriele Menzel (Central Library of the Charité UH, Berlin) then introduced the
Medical Library of the Charité University Hospital in her talk entitled "Information
and Literature Resources at the Charité".
In his talk on "Springer Verlag: Past, Present and Future", Klaus Michaletz
outlined the consistent, successful development of this publishing house, from the retail
bookshop founded in 1842 by Julius Springer to one of the world's largest scientific
publishing groups and a leading supplier of specialist electronic information.
In his detailed presentation on "Medical Librarianship in the Czech
Republic", Dr. Otakar Pinkas (Prague University of Economics, Faculty of Informatics
and Statistics, Prague) described the National Medical Library in Prague, which also
serves as the central medical library of the Czech Republic.
Dr. Norbert Martin (University Library of Humboldt University, Berlin) reported on the
University's "Electronic Dissertations Project". The purpose of the project is
to get away from the poor availability and documentation of dissertations and replace it
with an optimized system for the provision and archiving of electronic dissertations.
In his interesting presentation on "Experiences with the use of electronic
journals", Dr. Oliver Obst (Münster University Library, Medical Branch) addressed
one of today's most pressing problems in medical librarianship, i.e. the fact that the
information monopoly of libraries may be threatened by the use of these alternative
sources.
In a retrospective assessment entitled "One year of SUBITO: Experiences, Problems,
Perspectives", Ulrike Engel (Deutsches Bibliotheksinstitut, German Library Institute,
Berlin) described the initial thoughts on the use of SUBITO2, the new document
delivery service. The readiness to accept SUBITO was greater than expected by both the
non-commercial and commercial user groups. Sigrid Schmidt-Rohland (Library of the Medical
Faculty at Hannover University) and Peter Stadler (Central Library, Roche Diagnostics
Boehringer Mannheim GmbH) then described the use of SUBITO from the standpoint of a
university medical library and an industry-based library respectively.
In his presentation entitled "Performance Measurement in Science using Citation
Frequencies", Dr. Johannes Stegmann (Med. Library of the Benjamin Franklin University
Hospital, Berlin) explained how to determine the citation frequency of publications and
the impact factors for non-JCR (Journal Citation Reports) journals.
In his talk on "Free Medline versus networked Medline CD: a report from the
Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Centre) in Heidelberg",
Peter Kraft (Central Library of the German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg), compared
the PubMed versions of Medline via the Internet, as used in the GCRC, with the CD-ROM
version of Medline supplied by Silver Platter as used in the central library's internal
network. The Internet version is used more for current searches and the CD-ROM version for
retrospective searches.
Rüdiger Schneemann (Technical University, Hospital Documentation System, Berlin)
reported on the "HECLINET InfoService: From the literature database to information
sources on the Internet" (HECLINET Health Care Literature Information Network). Since
1969 the "Hospital Documentation System" specialist documentation unit has been
collating literature on the specialist areas of hospital systems, healthcare and nursing,
and storing this information in the HECLINET database provided by DIMDI (Deutsches
Institut fur medizinische Dokumentation und Information, German Institute for Medical
Documentation and Information).
In his talk entitled "Introducing a Central Point for Information and
Documentation: the Trier Central Agency for Psychological Information and
Documentation", Professor Günter Krampen (CAPID, Trier) reported on the work areas,
products and on-going projects of this central, trans-regional documentation and
information facility in Germany for the subject of psychology.
In keeping with the traditional custom developed over many years, Dr. Werner Stöber
(DIMDI) presented the annual report of DIMDI. This German Institute for Medical
Documentation and Information currently offers access to the bibliographic databases of
the NLM free of charge. The new Payment Regulation of 1 July 1998 provides for significant
price cuts and simplified price structures.
To conclude the conference, Ulrich Korwitz (German National Library of Medicine,
Cologne) outlined the latest developments at the German National Library of Medicine. The
international workshop organized by the library and entitled "The Future of
Biomedical Information and Biomedical Libraries" took place in September 1998.3
The results are scheduled to be incorporated in the library's data processing concept to
be drawn up in the context of the Science Advisory Board's review procedure.
The incoming Chairman of the AGMB, Ulrich Korwitz, closed the conference and especially
thanked the outgoing Chairman, Dr. Volker Johst, for his many years of commitment to the
chairmanship and the extremely successful organisation of this year's conference.
A new Executive Committee for the term of office 1998-2000 was elected during the
Annual General Meeting and consists of the following members:
- Ulrich Korwitz (German National Library of Medicine, Cologne): Chairman
- Dr. Oliver Obst (Münster University Library, Medical branch): 1st Vice Chairman
- Alena Ittner (Berlin-Buch Hospital): 2nd Vice Chairman
- Dorothee Boeckh (Medical-Scientific Library of Mannheim Hospital): Secretary
- Ursel Lux (Central Library of Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma KG): responsible for
Publications
The next Annual Conference of the AGMB will be hosted by the Library of the Medical
Faculty at Hannover University from 20-22 September 1999.
1 AGMB http://medsun08.uni-muenster.de/agmb/
2 SUBITO http://www.subito-doc.de/
3 http://www.uni-koeln.de/zentral/zbib-med/forum/workshop/eichholz.html
One day in the diary of
Donna Flake (6th EAHIL Conference, Utrecht, the Netherlands)
Thursday, June 25, 1998
I opened the morning session with extending greetings to the EAHIL conference from the
Medical Library Association. This was followed by a session on copyright. Dutch lawyer,
Madeleine DeCock Buning presented a paper entitled "Libraries without limits: limited
by copyright?". Copyright differs from country to country in Europe, but a 1997
European Directive on copyright was drafted to try to harmonize the different countries
differing laws. Ms. Buning calls for strong librarians' lobbies in each country to
liberalize the copyright laws for better success to information.
Next Charles Oppenheim of the United Kingdom presented a paper entitled
"Information ownership, copyright and licences". He says the draft European
directive on copyright is too limiting for libraries and will only decrease the tension
between librarians and publishers.
A number of parallel sessions were held on topics such as library cooperation, document
delivery, and empowering the end user.
At the General assembly, the membership voted to move the EAHIL office and duties of
the Secretariat to the University of Amsterdam. Also, Manuela Colombi of Italy will become
the new EAHIL President in January 1999. Jean Shaw was awarded the 1997 Medical Librarian
of the Year Award of Honor, and Roselyn Hoet received the award for 1998.
Lunch and learn sessions were offered by a number of vendors. Afternoon tours to
conference participants to various libraries and places of interest. I went to the medical
library of the University on the end of town. Gertie Veltman is the library director. We
also saw their fascinating Museum of Anatomy which was started in the early 1880's. Actual
and simulated human body parts were there. The most unusual thing I saw was the human head
of a baby wearing a white fur hat with a feather and a white fur collar submerged in
formaldehyde. We were told wealthy people would often display fetuses or malformed babies
on their mantelpieces as a conversation piece.
In the evening, there was a cocktail party at the Stadskasteel Oudaen and Huis
Drakenburg, this is a fortress like patrician house which dates from the 14th century.
Return to Table of Contents
Last Updated March 22, 1999 by Suzanne Bakker |
