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NNLH Update

Update of the National Network of Libraries for Health/Réseau national des bibliothèques pour la santé (NNLH/RNBS)Task Force

September 2004

submitted by the NNLH/RNBS Task Force

  • Patrick Ellis, Jessie McGowan (Co-Chairs)
  • Liz Bayley, Charlotte Beck, Jim Henderson, Penny Logan, Helène Valin (members)

The year has been very busy, new opportunities have arisen, and it was agreed at the pre-conference board meeting that the task force's term be extended to June 2006. At the same time membership was expanded to include Charlotte Beck as a "western" representative, and CHLA/ABSC president, Penny Logan, as an ex officio member.

Following the "roundtable" discussions at the Edmonton conference, in June, 2003 a summary of each chapter's report was drafted and routed back to each speaker for confirmation. This summary provided the text for the "Provincial Initiatives" section of our website:

A remarkable amount of effort is being expended around the country, building and seeking support for local models of what could become viable components of the NNLH/RNBS. Before, during and after the Edmonton conference, we continued to build a list of "decision making" contacts in each region. We began the development of a communication strategy, the first step of which was the NNLH/RNBS website.

In November 2003, Task Force members Jim Henderson, Jessie McGowan and Helene Valin met with Muir Gray in Ottawa. Dr Gray is a driving force behind the United Kingdom's National Electronic Library for Health (NeLH) He recognized the impediments to the creation of NNLH/RNBS and advised that we just go ahead and start it. So we did. The website for NNLH/RNBS was coded by Liz Bayley, with the logo designed by Tim Tripp. An announcement was sent in French and English, first to the chapter presidents' listserv and one week later to CanMedLib.

Our ambition for this site is to use it as a promotional and explanatory tool, with links and text that will support our project. Next steps include building up the content and links.

We are working with CISTI and the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre to organize a stakeholders meeting to build support for NNLH/RNBS. We will be holding a planning meeting for this event in conjunction with the Cochrane Colloquium, to be held in Ottawa in October 5, 2004. We are also investigating the possibility of using nation-wide access to the Cochrane Library as a proof of concept for Canada-wide licensing of products.

At the St John's conference in May, 2004, we held another "roundtable" session. It was agreed by the attendees that we need to get the word out beyond our community. There was much endorsement for promoting the NNLH/RNBS through our individual library sites. In aid of that idea, Tim Tripp (Public Relations, CHLA) developed a website with text and logo, that we can--when appropriate--link to from our institutional websites. We all hope this can raise the profile and a few questions from your workplace colleagues:

The task force members continue to work on other fronts, meeting and corresponding with agencies such as CHIR, CHSRF, NLC, CARL. We meet monthly through a teleconference supported by Health Canada.

We are very grateful for Helene Valin's hard work on our behalf, and the ongoing support of the CHLA/ABSC members and Board.
CHLA/ABSC facilitates and enables credible knowledge transfer in health sciences through leading edge technologies and partnerships. Our mission is to lead health librarians towards excellence through professional development, networking and advocacy.
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