"DISCOVERING NEW SEAS OF KNOWLEDGE" : EAHIL2010 Must Read Advice!

How open are Medical Library Conferences? How easy is it to get the material discussed or presented there? And is it supposed to be available all the time and for free?
In this age of Open Acess, web 2.0 and the expectancy of the "users" -being us librarians, spoiled with Google:-) one would assume that much(if not all) is freely available via Conferences websites and/or social media. Why then do I find it hard to find the extra info about those events, including papers and slides and possibly even webcasts? Are we still not into the share-mode and overprotective to one's own achievements, or is it a genetic defect just being too modest as a librarian, satisfied with a quiet role in the background?
Please anyone, fill my gaps of knowledge in this. Is it ignorance by me, or is there a real issue? Hiding content behind a registration I cán understand, but it is missing the actual elementary necessity of trying to keep all medical librarians up to date in their struggle for basic "survival" and/or finding the new (digital) divides we need to tackle in this day and age of "medical information on the loose" on the web.
We need to share more. For the EAHIL you can see or find much of the content at:

• the EAHIL website
• The EAHIL Public Page (Netvibes)
• The EAHIl Search Engine that connects all content spread over the various Conference and Workshop websites.

The experience of the 12th EAHIL Conference in Lisbon and Estoril was impressive. It seems every year the EAHIL community gathered together for that one week gets more and more intense, socially and content-wise.
The Continuing Education Courses of this year touched the actual needs of many librarians. I want to bring a few special ones under attention.

• Scholarly publishing and open access | Eloy Rodrigues
  A general overview of evolution and current situation of scholarly communication system and scholarly publishing but will focus on Open Access (OA) to promote research visibility, usage and impact. Open Access origins, objectives, definitions, routes (“Green” and “Gold”) and types (“gratis” and “libre”) will be presented and discussed. The most relevant and recent developments of Open Access will be also analyzed
• BioMedical web nuggets | Friedhelm Rump
  General search engines serve the biomedical librarian little in a scientific context. Special search engines come closer to fulfilling this task. However, there are great differences between them. New ones are emerging every week. Some last some vanish as quickly as they appeared. There are now many full text search engines and repositories, RSS-feeds search engines, RSS-feeds repositories and gadgets. In addition technical platforms for embedding search engines or make them available while reading a scientific text for example in a WORD-file or a webpage have become available. Likewise there are addons to search engines with astounding facilities in terms of gaining instant access to information. The question poses itself: What is good and will last, what is new and going strong. This workshop introduces the up and coming sites and software as well as it reviews the proven. In addition insight into how the somewhat more challenging applications are made the best use of, will be provided. The course will be highly up-to-date, as the author will monitor the Internet for new arrivals until a few days before the course will actually be given. All contents will be available to take home on a CD-ROM set in HTML, so it will be possible to start browsing right from there.
• Writing for scientific / academic publications | António Vaz-Carneiro
  Introduction and needs assessment; the basic structure of the scientific paper (IMMRD); supporting information (tables, figures and references); practical exercise: appraisal of published papers; closure and satisfaction inquiry)
• Strategic planning for health information libraries: a Quantum workshop | Gabrielle Derriks
  This session offers techniques and a hands-on approach to evaluating the current strengths and weaknesses of your information services, aligned against the goals of your health institution. This interactive session helps participants to formulate innovative strategic alternatives for the future and to create an action plan to apply the appropriate resources and tactics. Strategic planning is a management process requiring ongoing assessment and review. In order to be successful it needs to involve all stakeholders of your institution: health librarians, managers, physicians, nurses and other health care professionals, all have a role to play.
• PICO workshop | Hans Ket and Marion Heijmans (all day)
  The learning goals of this CEC are:
  - being able to use the PICO-format to formulate clinical questions and deriving search terms from it
  - evolving your search skills, both in quality and in efficiency
  - presenting the search process in a clear and objective way
  - (pro-)actively working in a clinical setting
  - strengthening your confidence
  - sharing PICO-experiences with other information specia¬lists/cli¬nical librarians/medical librarians
  - combining live presentations of PICOs with good theory about the background of the PICO and evidence based medicine.
  This workshop will be highly interactive. At the end of this course you will have done several PICOs and you have picked up a lot of tips, tricks & expertise, which will make YOU the PICO-search-expert! ZINES ADEUS in Lisbon on the 15th of June!
• Navigating the evidence base: planning and delivering effective library services | Andrew Booth
  
  
  
  This brand new half-day workshop is designed to allow health librarians to experience for themselves the practical realities of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP). Working in small groups, organised around common library scenarios, participants will follow the five steps of a revised Evidence Based Practice process (named “EBLIP Five Point Zero” following the EBLIP5 Conference in Stockholm, 2009); Articulate, Acquire, Assess, Agree and Adapt. Essentially a team process, in contrast to the individual practitioner model favoured by evidence based medicine, this variant is best experienced rather than simply observed.
  
  This course aims to provide only a brief narrative commentary from the presenter linking participants through the five stages of EBLIP Five Point Zero, supported by follow-up resources, tools and references to further reading. This leaves the focus on experiential learning in rapidly-constituted action learning sets. In this way the course, which requires no previous knowledge of evidence based library and information practice (although a basic grasp of evidence based healthcare may be useful), will simulate how teams of librarians make evidence based decisions in the workplace. Practical benefits of the course will include a broad perspective of the potential offered by EBLIP, a realistic experience of the process and a transferable model for adoption in the participants’ own libraries.
  Course Outline:
  • Charting the EBLIP Process
  • Articulating Your Question
  • Acquiring Disparate Evidence
  • Assessing the Evidence Base
  • Agreeing a Plan of Action
  • Adapting and Adopting
  • The Journey Travelled

Two courses were offered in English as well as in Portuguese:

• Emerging technologies and tools | Guus Van den Brekel
• Access to fulltext articles

I am trying to get as much of the course materials online, but so far I only got the CD from Friendhelm Rump and my own course as Netvibes Public page. Below you will find a few Slideshares, Posters and other social media.

Maybe when Course lecturers read this they can send me their materials if they are prepared to share and publish it?

The Scientific Program (with all abstracts& slides)

Absolutely the best Opening lecture I have ever attended at EAHIL was

"The evolution of knowledge and its impact on bioethics" | by Alexandre Quintanilha, Universidade do Porto (abstract)

The slides are available, but the delivery of the presentation was impressive with great global overview of bio-ethic topics.

• Opening Lecture - Alexandre Quintanilha   

Here are my tips for must-reads:

•  Karen Buset - Use Web 2.0 to learn Web 2.0 - develop competences for the next generation library.   
• Liz Brewster - "Read this, it's good for you!": using qualitative methodologies to explore service user needs and strategic aims.   
• Medical Information Library & Knowledge: MILK or discovery of scientific information on health through social labeling: Connotea and CiteUlike.
  Julia Alonso-Arevalo, Helena Martin-Rodero, Carlos Lopes, Maria Garcia-Puente, Angels Carles-Pomar (Spain)   
• Blair Anton - An Embedded Informationist Service Model: expertise follows electronic resources wherever patrons are.    
• Sheila Corrall - Positioning the Health Librarian as a Blended Professional: a framework for development.   
• Tamas Doszkocs - Integrating Semantic Search, Federated Search and Biomedical Knowledge Base Technologies for Improved Services by Medical Libraries.   

The Posters
52 posters were available. As test we are uploading them to the EAHIL2010 Slideshare and link them to the overall EAHIL group. Hopefully the amateur pictures will be replaced in many cases by the digital version.
The current number of views seems to indidate that the posters find many viewers easily.


The Social Element
Many of the presentations need a good read afterwards, now made easier with the complete slides and papers available!
I found a wonderful social tool to share great meals and cookery: YUMIT, an original Spanish initiative, thanks to @bibliovirtual.
A lot of information about EAHIl2010 can be digested via social media:

• Twitter: read the EAHIL Tweet Archive via TWUBS or Twapperkeeper
• Slideshare: see the presentations uploaded
• Flickr: the EAHIL2010 Pool
• Delicious EAHIL Bookmarks