EAHIL Conference 2006

This blog will be no longer supported as news about the conference are decreasing. But if you like to read something interesting and valuable which every European Medical Librarian has to know about, please give our new blog a try!

http://euromedlib.blogspot.com/

Benoit wrote in EAHIL-L: Please find the full text of the papers presented at the 10th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries, held in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), 13-16 September 2006, at:
http://www.eahilconfcluj.ro/scientific_programme.html

... in his Weblog.

Francoise permitted me to put her slides (and notes!) on the Web. Thanks, it was a skillful study and a wonderful presentation! F. Pasleau (Belgium): Easy access to medical literature: are users’ habits changing? Is it a threat to Science quality? (PDF, 280KB)

Guus (pronounced somewhat like "Chruess") has proposed that the organisation of EAHIL should start an official EAHIL blog and an OPEN ACCESS repository of ALL publications, presentations, posters, proceedings of the EAHIL AT ONE PLACE for everyone to access.

Good idea, Guus. Let's start!

Before leaving Cluj in a few hours, I had to give some report resp. credits to the Farewell Reception & the Gala Dinner (and the conference as a whole). Usually I've got a knot in the throat at Farewell. The conference is over and out, everybody leaves, and you have to say a sad good-bye to a lot of wonderful and inspiring persons, which you may not have known some days before but which you may not imagine living without in the future... On the other hand farewell reception is always (and naturally) an overwhelming and neverending succession of awards and praises. And as the presentations getting better each year, so the celebrations too.

The folk music at the very end was a wonderful finish both for the lovely setting of the conference as well as for the emotional thankfulness to the people in charge, especially Sally and Iona (and there were a lot more, just to mention the adminsitration team of Paul and his wife and Eve, The Remarkable, Diana, the great engaging and motivating dancer and many others too). The scottish(?) hymne celebrates this to an extent one could hardly endure.

The Gala dinner at the Hotel Belvedere moved the serious and deep emotional farewell into a joyful clinging together. At night, the silent and somewhat overseen librarians of daytime evolved into an unimaginable crowd of almost transsylvanian but fabulous singers, dancers, celebraters, and communicators. Nobody outside the field of night time medical librarianship will believe me for sure!

So, instead of being sad and missing the (once) colleagues and (now) friends, I inpatiently look forward to Cracow and Helsinki to meet with these lovely creatures again - Thanks to all of you!

Also, Dymphie is blogging pictures and presentations of the conference at Biomedbiblog on a daily basis in Dutch language, especially on Measuring impact, Het internetten in Cluj,Zoutmijnen, Informatievaardigheden in Cluj, Searching tools: assessment Web of science, Scopus en Google Scholar.

Why do you come to this conference?
Simply, because my boss allowed and told me to. It's a great opportunity to met so many people. Yesterday I talked with dutch, belgian and irish colleagues and that isn't possible in Czech Republic. I attend three continuing education courses, from which two were really excellent and of great benefit for me. I've learned a lot which I can integrate in my professional work at home. At the web tutorial course the exchange of experiences about the different kind of softwares the participants were using, was very creative and inspiring. I liked that very much and it fits perfectly into the things happening in my library.

1) Museum "The Pharmacy History Collection", Address: Piata Unirii 28, open Mo-Sa 10-16
2) Italian Restaurant, Address: Side Street to Fo Roosevelt (close to the italian rest. mentioned yesterday)
both recomm. are from Lise N. Christensen

The third and forth edition of the conference newsletter ist out.

I never thought of the pleasure it could be to be buried alive. That was my exact feeling when walking down the endless passage tunnel from the warm and sunny outside to the dark and cold salt mines. It didn't helped that the different mines were named according to members of the royal austrian family. The walls seemed to consist from mud or dark brown stone. But then, the romanian guide put with his flash light directly at the surface of this stone and you can't imagine my surprise when it turns out to be opac, shining, white salt, only slightly covered by mud.

When we coming to 90 meter below ground, the guide shuts down any light and when our eyes was adapted to the darkness around, we could recognize a dim light, which actually came from the sky 90m above. Then he throws a handful of dust into the opening and suddenly the cave was enlightened by the reflection of the few light beams at the huge surface of the tiny pieces of the dust very impressively.

The next cave contained the original wooden construction for transportation of the 50 kilogramme blocks of pure salt (on a buffalo's skin). Eight horses were needed to drive the giantic wheel for the transportation cable. Children took care for the horses and for the tools and nutrition of the workers too. This were demanding work circumstances - darkness, no sun light, coldness all day - no one can imagine today.

Then, suddenly we stood at the ceiling of a huge cathedral-like cavern, a pyramid with sides 100 meter long or more. This was an incredicble feeling, looking at the ants on the ground of this gigantic structure which pretends to be human beings! Then we hear a heavenly sound filling each edge of the salt mine system. It turns out to be a string quartet playing classic music at the very bottom of the salt cathedral.

What impressed me personally most was the years engraved into the stony salt, indicating the very date when the workers reached a new level in their never ending digging for salt. It started with 1864 at the entrance and finished with 1932 at the ground. This leaves me with the sound feeling of the time consumed over the centuries by this mining process, while in the world above battles were fighten, kingdoms were destroyed, and new countries erected.

All in all it was as well a great personal experience as wonderful and carefully organized, thanks to the engaged persons from the local organizing committee always present.
Further pictures you will find here.

Lars is a remarkable person. Reference librarian, project manager, early blogger, journalist, freelancer, father of three children, and always engaged and curious. He resides at Umea University, 649 km north to Stockholm. He started a swedish blog back in 2001 keeping up to date with internet course instructions. His English language blog "Nowhere North" got major public reputation by blogging notes from this EAHIL conference. As always, this was more accidentally than planned... He just wanted to keep notes from the conference to deliver them afterwards to his colleagues instead of writing a boring report.
"I need to know, what it is, what promises the software or resource hold and which not", he stated when asked why using blog software. "We have to be like the google people: Always be curious, open-minded, and try everything. Actually we're better than them (except the salaries) because we're structured and they're not." And he concludes: "Librarians should be geeky - much like the computer nerds, but in a positive way: We talked to each other."

Here you will find some more new pictures from the conference ...

People asked me to put my presentation online. Here is an old version as PDF (14MB). Enjoy!

Update: Here is the upgraded version (5MB).

The second edition of the conference newsletter Transylvanian EAHIL Echo ist out. Please read the issue as PDF.

Yesterday evening we had the tremendous opportunity to visit a potpurri of opera hits from "Die Fledermaus", "The Merry Widow", "Rigoletto", "Carmen", "Cosi Fan Tutte", "La Traviata", and "Don Giovanni" in the baroque style opera house of Cluj. About 100 musicians and singers delivered an excellent performance and earned long lasting applause.

Sigvor Kvale, why do you attend the EAHIL conference at Cluj-Napoca?
I submitted an abstract and was accepted, my boss paid for the visit and so I'm here! I think of the conference as a perfect place for meeting with colleagues, network building with them, benefiting from their ideas. It's fairly different to read a paper than to attend a conference and actually speake with the people in charge. You can interact with them and learn from their way of "how-to-do" things.

Guus, why do you attend the EAHIL conference at Cluj-Napoca?
I went to the EAHIL conference in Romania for the exchange of information, for getting knowledge by listening to presenters and talking to them on the floor. The second reason is, that my boss told me to deliver a presentation by myself because we have such a good project.

Which empowerment session do you will participate in?
I don't know right now, either the Empowerment Session B "Perfect Interface" because in Groningen we intend to build an own interface by using Metalib or the Session C "Consumer Health" for learning how to integrate Consumer Health information into the Second Life project of an open library.

The conference newsletter Transylvanian EAHIL Echo ist out, thanks to Eve Hollis. Please read the first issue as PDF.

In the side bar on the left you will find some blogs which follow the conference with note and comments.

Here you find further pictures.