Librarians Without Borders® Activities at the International Congress of Medical Librarianship

Two ICML courses were provided at the International Congress of Medical Librarianship, Brisbane, Australia, from August 30 to September 4, 2009.

ICML Course – 'HINARI Training the Trainers'

Particulars of Workshop:

The 6-hour course was held on September 1, 2009. Eight individuals participated equally split between health librarians from the Australia and the USA and those from HINARI eligible institutions.

The industrialized countries participants primarily were from institutions that have linkages with HINARI eligible organization. For this group, the objectives were to train these individuals to teach graduate students or visitors from HINARI eligible institutions, conduct workshops at partner institutions and/or become facilitators for HINARI distance learning courses.

For those from HINARI eligible countries, the objectives were to increase their baseline skills and introduce new tools that would be of use – MY NCBI, MY Collections, EndNoteWeb, PubMed Limits, etc.

The course material emphasized on HINARI overview – general environment, background, eligibility/registration process, do's and don'ts, HINARI, which includes the Basics using the 'Short Course' (searching skills, HINARI website, Partner Publishers' websites, HINARI/PubMed, MY NCBI), training materials overview, funding options and a Questions and Answers session (teaching environment, potential participants, logistics of workshops, travel considerations, etc.).



Uniqueness of the Workshop:

The 'hands on' activities of this course focused on the unique details of
HINARI and HINARI/PubMed. (e.g. HINARI and Free Full Text tabs, MY NCBI with filters for saved searches). The Internet access was industrialized country level and, consequently, there were no bandwidth or electricity issues. The training room at the University of Queensland was the best facility that I have taught in.

The participants' skill level was high as many of these individuals who have experience teaching in health libraries (although different material) or were active users of HINARI. Regarding the instruction, the most difficult aspect was knowing the level of detail necessary for the participants. At times, more detail and hands on activities were requested.

The interaction between the HINARI users and those from organizations with linkages was excellent. The participants from industrialized countries got insight into the users’ environment and, in one case, two participants plan to develop a partnership.


Several of the participants from Australia already had groups that they plan to train. For example, Monash University has a M.A. Nursing program for individuals from Papa New Guinea.

The turnout was somewhat lower than expected perhaps because the location was quite a distance from the hotels and Congress venue. At the Congress itself, I was able to talk with several individuals interested in working with HINARI eligible institutions; hopefully, some of these individuals will follow up on what we discussed.

ICML Course – ‘Authorship Skills'

Particulars of Workshop:

The 6-hour course was held on August 31, 2009. Ten individuals participated split between health librarians from the Australia and the USA and those from HINARI eligible institutions.

The material is a supplemental HINARI course with the objective to facilitate publishing from HINARI eligible countries. The modules are relevant for participants from industrialized countries. For both groups, the objectives were to increase the participants’ skills for publishing and to give them resources to use in training at their institutions.

The course material included How to Publish a Scientific Paper, Frequently Asked Questions – discussion, Web-bibliography, Intellectual Property: Copyright/Plagiarism and Strategies for Effective Writing.

The course also contained numerous ‘hands on’ exercises including
developing structured abstracts, assigning keywords, reviewing Web-bibliography links, from abstracts and scope of journals, selecting journal to submit the article to and multiple choice, true false and open-ended questions for the Intellectual Property and Effective Writing modules.

Uniqueness of the Workshop:

This was the first day long-course devoted to the authorship skills material and two new modules were introduced (Intellectual Property: Copyright and Plagiarism and Strategies for Effective Writing). With the group being split between those from industrialized countries and HINARI eligible institutions, the course participants had a broad perspective and this enhanced the discussions.

Both groups felt that the material was relevant and useful for their own interests in publishing and also as training material. These comments were noted in the evaluations. Since two new modules were piloted, I received ‘feedback’ from the students that resulted in several corrections on the slides and revisions to the exercises.

This teaching experience reinforced that the modules are valuable and that time should be devoted to this material during the four-day HINARI workshops or as a one day additional course.

I also presented a paper titled ‘HINARI Access to Research Initiative:
Overview, Training and Impact’. As previously mentioned, several industrialized country participants who attended this presentation spoke to me about working with institutions in HINARI eligible countries.



Lenny Rhine
E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator
E-mail: rhinel@ufl.edu