DISCOVERING NEW SEAS OF KNOWLEDGE
Technologies, Environments and Users in the Future of Health Libraries

EAHIL – European Association for Health Information and Libraries is a non-profit association that brings together librarians and information professionals from medical and health science libraries from all over Europe, encouraging Professional development, cooperation and Exchange of experiences among its members through the organization of international conferences every two years.

2010 was the year chosen by the Portuguese Health Librarians for the presenting, through their association, the APDIS – Portuguese Association of Health Information and Documentation, of a candidature to organize the 12th EAHIL Conference in Lisbon, from the 14th to the 18th of June 2010 dedicated to the subject: “Discovering New Seas of Knowledge: technologies, environments and users in the Future of Health Libraries”.

The presence of approximately 500 participants is estimated, thus making it an event the holding and dimension of which involves great responsibility, but for the success of which the members of the local and international committees are totally motivated and committed. Among librarians from several different Portuguese and European libraries, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon (FMUL) is strongly represented on both committees through the participation of three of its collaborators: Dr. Emília Clamote and Dr. Susana Henriques (members of the Local Committee) and Dr. Paula Saraiva (Co-chair of the International Scientific Committee). Dr. Margarida Meira, from the Gulbenkian Science Institute has been nominated as Local Chair of the Conference, and as Chair of the International Scientific Committee Dr. Isabel Andrade, from the National School of Public Health, has been nominated.

Taking advantage of the holding of the EAHIL Workshop, which took place from the 3rd to the 5th of June in Dublin, the International Scientific Committee met in a session moderated by Dr. Paula Saraiva (in her quality as Co-chair of the Scientific Committee), in order to set out procedures and strategies for developing the Scientific Programme of the Conference and of the Continuing Education Courses (CEC), that will take place in a pre-conference period. Twelve CECs were planned (in half-day and full-day programmes) dealing with several different subjects, namely: Evidence-Based Librarianship, Writing for Scientific/academic publications, Bibliometrics, Web 2.0 tools for libraries and new emerging technologies, Open access, among others. The CECs will take place on the premises of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, kindly ceded without a fee for this effect, on the 14th and 15th of June 2010, and at the moment the participation of the majority of the Portuguese and international guest specialists who will lecture these courses have already confirmed their presence.

At the Dublin meeting the main subjects that will make up the scientific programme for the conference were also defined:
• Health technologies assessment
• Evidence-based librarianship
• Bibliometrics
• Information literacy
• Library spaces and places
• Preservation and memory: old collections in a digital world
• Health and biomedical informatics
• Scholarly publishing and open access
• Emerging technologies and tools: Innovative health information management, Web 2.0 / Web 3.0
• Health librarians in the 21st century: Opportunities, roles, competencies, skills, marketing, leadership
• User statistics
• Library management

As this is a Scientific Committee that brings together members from several countries in Europe and a member from the USA, the choice and assessment of the abstracts as candidates for communications and posters will be made through a database, developed for this effect by the Director of the Medical Library of the University of Oslo and member of EAHIL, Arne Jakobsson, which will allow the participants to submit the abstracts online on the Conference site, with the database being open to receive papers from the middle of July to the 6th of November 2009. After the closing of this database, each member of the Scientific Committee in their own country will grade and assess the abstracts in order to obtain a final list of the most voted papers, already grouped into categories. Finally, on the 14th and 15th of December 2009 all of the members of the International Scientific Committee will meet in Lisbon, at the Gulbenkian Foundation, in order to organize the whole of the final scientific programmme based on the abstracts chosen and to pronounce on the selection of and invitations to the Keynote Speakers.

Also at the Dublin Workshop, members of the Local Committee used the occasion to promote the Conference in Portugal and to contact future sponsors, and a formal announcement of the Conference in Estoril was made through an invitation to all of those present by the Chair of the Local Committee, Dr. Margarida Meira and by the Co-Chair of the International Scientific Committee, Dr. Paula Saraiva.

A video was then shown about Lisbon, and the Workshop was closed with a Port wine Toast kindly provided by the Estoril Convention Bureau, served in Dublin by the AICEP – Agency for Portuguese Investment and Foreign Trade.

Susana Henriques, Paula Saraiva and Emília Clamote; Port wine Toast – Dublin

With the first call for papers being announced on the 1st of July, the conference site will be the ideal instrument for accompanying the whole process of preparing the event, and will evolve and take on new specificities as the beginning of the event draws near. Besides incorporating the system of online assessment of the abstracts, the site will tend to stimulate collaboration among the participants and committees through the blog, the online register, the link to new collaboration tools such as Twitter, while in this phase, and still on a private level, the work for organizing the CECs is being done through a WIKI, as this group involves elements of the Scientific Committee of Lisbon, Coimbra and Norway.

In order to fully accompany the organization of this event and perhaps contribute with the submitting of a communication or poster, consult the site of the 12th Conference of the EAHIL on: http://www.eahil2010.org

We are inviting everyone to participate in this international event and to make this conference, organized in Lisbon, memorable in the history of the EAHIL!

Paula Saraiva psaraiva@fm.ul.pt
(Co-Chair of the Scientific Committee)

Institute of Advanced Training
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