| Library Services
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- Health Literatures Services (HLT)
- is an essential component in WHO support services addressed
to both WHO and national programmes for health development. It assists in the
establishment, development and coordination of national and regional health library and
information network (EMLIBNET), responding to requests from WHO staff and key
national institutions and individuals, training of library manpower, access to information
and document delivery services, sharing expertise and resources and bibliographic control
of locally produced health literature. HLT is responsible for all library services in the
Regional Office, WHO Representatives’ Offices and Country programmes supported by
WHO. HLT has a dual basic role:
- To provide library services to
WHO staff members in support of
WHO programmes; and
- To cooperate with Member States to improve health science libraries,
documentation centres and literature services at country level.
- Development of EMRO
INTRANET
- EMRO Intranet was fully developed in 1997 to include all
types of information that the Regional Office staff might need in their daily work and
decision support. This Page includes full text of the Regional Director's reports, some EMRO publications and
documents, online access to EMRO library data bases and indexes, programme budget and
financial data, public information, travel information, health insurance, and
many other information services;
- Development of EMRO
Home Page on the INTERNET
- EMRO Home Page was released late in 1997 after the
development of the initial design, finalization of Internet publishing policy and final
revision and approval of the content and layout. The objectives (as stated in the Regional Director's message) of
EMRO Web information services are:
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To disseminate WHO/EMRO policy and
scientific/technical information; |
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To expand access to WHO and EMRO information
to EMR Member States and worldwide; |
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To increase efficiency and cut costs in
producing and distributing information; |
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To link information from various WHO sources
and other relevant scientific institutions world-wide, with specific emphasis
on information resources in the Region; and |
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To promote awareness of WHO as a whole and
EMRO in particular and its activities. |
| The Home Page includes a full range of information services and
databases. The Page was designed in a way to reflect the needs of Member States for
technical and statistical information. It is planned to include WHO activities at country
level and to allow hosting the Page in locations in Member States for easy access; |
- EMLIBNET development
- Our ultimate goal with EMLIBNET development is to create our
virtual health and biomedical library, which will allow the universal access to health and
biomedical information. This universal access has been our major regional target for this
biennium and most likely it will continue to be for the next biennium when we enter the 21st
Century. The Internet as the network of all networks, has been taken by EMRO as the tool
to use and the model to follow. EMRO for the last two years has been developing its
applications as Internet-enabled. As Internet has been made available in most of EMR
Member States, we would like to use it as our virtual network. By doing so, we can
leverage the cost of building another physical network of our own. The core group of
Libraries that have expressed willingness to participate in the network, has been
published on the Internet, hoping that will help these libraries to communicate directly.
The objective of the Network is to make available and/or
accessible the widest range of health and biomedical literature to potential users in a
most cost-effective way in the Region.
The following basic elements interact to make the above
happen, of course with total commitment of the network coordinating body (EMRO) and the
network members. That’s health science librarians and health care and medical
professionals in the Region:
- Active participation, full commitment and timely involvement
of health care authorities, centres, faculties and institutions in resolution of the
library problems in their constituencies (local, national or regional). EMLIBNET is
managed by the WHO/EMRO and its activities are carried out by the participating
institutions. There is not a body established for the purpose, but the functions of the
Network Coordinating Centre are carried by the Regional Information Centre. Securing the
full cooperation between the participating members and authorities is essential. Without
the commitment of ministries of health, health authorities, faculties of health sciences
and the health care personnel at large, the Network will continue to be a one-way street.
Cooperation is defined here to mean involving participating libraries in specific
responsibilities and commitments on their part. The Regional Office does not envision the
network development as a give way technical or financial assistance, but as a cooperative
agreement with mutually agreed upon responsibilities;
- Defining and selecting a core collection of journals and other
forms of health literature consisting of a global core (applicable worldwide) and a
regional and a national core (specific to EMR or any of its Member States);
- Using appropriate technology for providing intellectual access
to the content of these collections and making available all or parts of the collection as
needed. This can be using the Internet to identify resources and using electronic or else
document delivery services;
- Education and training of health sciences and medical library
staff not only to manage the collections (cataloguing, classification, indexing and all
forms of bibliographic control), but also to train others and generate more skilled
personnel to take part in the services;
- User education and sensitization in ways and methods on how to
make the best use of the resources available in the network, training on the value and
utilization of health literature and orientation on how to use the "information
tools"; and
- Forge links and provide gateways and interfaces to national,
regional and international networks to provide services not available within the Network.
A question was distributed to a number of countries that
kindly filled in. The result has appeared in a directory of Health Science Libraries in the Region. |
- Document delivery
services
- are provided by HIS through different means, mainly
photocopying, database searches, CD-ROM databases, books and journal subscriptions. The
Regional Office collection, local libraries in Egypt, the British Library Document Supply
Centre and the US National Library of Medicine continued to be used. Provision of health
and biomedical databases on CD-ROM expanded in terms of the number of sites and of
countries. A total of 63 (62 in 1997) subscriptions to MEDLINE, 17 subscriptions to
ExtraMED (15 in 1997) and 95 (37 in 1997) subscriptions to other databases were
supported, making a total of 175 (123 in 1997) subscriptions for 19 (18 in 1997)
countries. The library made available 24 (17 in 1997) CD-ROM databases for use by Regional
Office staff, of which some are accessible over the local area network.
The unit continued to support acquisition of health
literature for the Regional Office, WHO Representatives' Offices and country projects. The
unit processed over 360 purchase orders during 1998 for book acquisition, journals and
CD-ROM subscriptions, the value of which was over US$ 1,111,000. The unit continued to
support national training courses, and fellowships were awarded to medical librarians in
Afghanistan, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Palestine, Syrian Arab Republic and Republic of
Yemen. Missions to assist countries of the Region in their information management
activities were undertaken to Afghanistan, Cyprus, Egypt, Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq,
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Republic of Yemen.
Publishing of the Index Medicus for
the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region took a new direction in 1998 as a quarterly
current contents bulletin was initiated and three issues were published and distributed to
350 addresses in the Region. The cumulations of the bulletin are used to update the
database on the Internet for worldwide access. Work continued on the development of the Unified
medical dictionary. Copies of the Windows-based beta version of the dictionary were
distributed to selected individuals and institutions with the aim of testing, evaluation
and feedback.
The unit collaborated with WHO headquarters to streamline provision of health
literature to countries of the Region. One of the most significant efforts in 1998 was the
introduction of the Blue Trunk
Library of basic documents in the Region. An agreement was made with headquarters to
manufacture the trunks locally and to provide the training by the Regional Office staff. A
total of 200 trunks were manufactured and the libraries made ready for distribution in
Egypt. The WHOBIS database was installed in several WHO Representatives' Offices in the
Region and staff from the unit undertook missions to WHO Representative Offices in
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to organize the library and install the documentation module.
- National Training
Activities and fellowships
- National training courses and fellowships are supported for
medical librarians from Member States. Some of this training is done within the Region or
abroad;
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- EMR Index Medicus
- The Index project started in 1987 by indexing the health and
biomedical journals published in the Region in 1984.
- The Index has become current and as up to date as the
journals themselves, which for the first time can provide a current awareness service to
what has been published in the Region. Trial issues of the Index on CD-ROM were produced.
It is planned that the Index will be distributed in three forms:
- Distribution of the
Unified Medical Dictionary (UMD)
- The UMD is the RO project for Arabicization of medical
terminology. The third edition of the Dictionary was published in 1984 with 39,000
entries. HIS in collaboration with other units (WAP and TER in particular) has taken the
lead role in development of the software and management of the medical terminology. The
database currently includes over 150,000 entries. Copies of the Beta version of the
Dictionary CD-ROM were distributed to selected individuals and institutions with the aim
of testing, evaluation and comments. Work is now underway to develop a web interface for
the Dictionary for wide distribution over the Internet. To receive a copy of the
CD-Rom, click here to fill in
the form.
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