Reports on International Trips

Submitted by Lenny Rhine

Moldova Trip Report

Particulars of Workshops:

During early November 2009, three workshops were conducted in Moldova:

1) 3 1/2 day comprehensive HINARI workshop (09-12 November) conducted at the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University ‘Nicolae Testemitanu’ Scientific Medical Library, Chisinau, Moldova. All components of a comprehensive HINARI workshop were taught - Searching Skills, Health Resources on the Internet, HINARI and Partner Publishers’ Websites, PubMed (including the redesigned format), MY NCBI and strategies for marketing HINARI resources, repackaging information and conducting workshops. The workshop consisted of 50% lectures and 50% hands on activities.

The workshop was conducted with Irina Ibragimova and with the assistance of Silvia Cubrei (translator and fellow instructor) and Elena Barbos (translator). A total of 21 individuals attended the workshop. The participants were split between the library staff from the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University and librarians from several research institutes, medical college, and regional hospitals. Five individuals registered their institutions for HINARI.

This is the first workshop that was in three languages. Irina spoke in Russian, I spoke in English and this was translated into Romanian. This means that, for many of the discussions, I only received a brief summary. By paying attention to non-verbal clues, I often could tell how the discussion was going.

Initially, we did not know how this would work as this was Irina’s first HINARI workshop and Silvia’s first as a translator. After two modules, I realized that we had two other enthusiastic and knowledgeable trainers. We all had the same perspective about the importance of the hands-on activities and establishing an inclusive and positive environment.

Since the exercises had been translated into Romanian, the participants in the HINARI workshops were able to complete them in a timely and accurate fashion. With three instructors and assistance from some of the host University’s librarians, we were able to give a lot of attention to those participants that need more help. After each module, we reviewed the content with 4-6 questions and this also was quite useful.

Also, the computer training room was very nice with up-to-date hardware and the Internet access was as good as any other workshop I have conducted. The speed might have been enhanced by the fact that no students were at the University. They had been sent home for a week because of the H1N1 flu outbreak.


2) 3 hour ‘short course’ (12 November) conducted at the Free International University of Moldova. 35 individuals attended this workshop that covered the basics of HINARI. It was a mixture of faculty, students and library staff from that University. The course also was a blend of lectures and hands on activities.

This was conducted in a large computer laboratory. The Internet access was very adequate and the audiovisual equipment was excellent. While a short course can ‘feel’ rushed, we were able to give the participants the baseline skills for using HINARI.

At the end of this workshop, we viewed the Health Sciences Online website (http:://hso.info) as a source of information for instructors to use. What intrigued us was the option of using Google Translator to have the keyword search and resulting documents translated into another language. The faculty and students felt this was quite useful as they could translate material into either Romanian or Russian.

3) 1 day authorship skills workshop conducted at the Free International University of Moldova. 45 professional librarians from Chisinau and throughout the country attended this workshop. Most were from academic institutions although a few public library staff attended.

Material covered included How to Write a Scientific Paper, Intellectual Property – Copyright and Plagiarism, Web-Bibliography and Frequently Asked Questions. Besides the Q&A discussion, hands-on ‘group’ activities were writing structured abstracts and assigning keywords from full-text articles and, after reading an abstract of an article and the scope of four journals, deciding which journal to submit the article to. Several of the PowerPoint presentations had been translated into Romanian and the ‘hands on’ exercises were a combination of Romanian and Russian. This made the completion of the assignments much easier.

Despite the size of this group, the discussions were quite lively as a number of the participants had different opinions on how to write the structured abstracts and which journal the articles should be submitted to. For the questions and answers session, the responses also were lively but not as many strong opinions.

The workshop was conducted in a lecture room with excellent audiovisual equipment. Similarly to the longer workshop, the food at the breaks and lunch was quite nice.

Other comments:

Thanks to Zina Sochirca for her assistance, the Director of the Free International University of Moldova Library. She was the initial contact in this country and worked quite hard to make sure that all three workshops were successful.

The State Medical and Pharmaceutical University Library has an informatics group that is headed by Silvia Ciubrei (the translator/instructor). This is the first institution that I have encountered with such a group. It is devoted to teaching computer and information literacy to the students and faculty. As of this academic year, instruction has been incorporated into the academic coursework – including use of HINARI and other electronic resources.

Several of these individuals assisted with the hands-on activities (and also served as translators). For this group, the workshop was partially a review, somewhat an update on material (redesigned PubMed) and also an introduction to other tools for using the resources (LIMITS, MY NCBI). I know that what has been learned will be incorporated into their searching and teaching.

I cannot emphasize more the importance of having the exercises translated to the local language. This was done at the Mongolia and Moldova workshops and was invaluable. As previously mentioned, this enabled the participants to complete the assignments in a timely and accurate fashion.

Finally, two of the workshops were with only librarians and all female. Both of these things were firsts. Apparently, the only male librarian in the country is the Director of the National Library.

On a personal note, I spent the week eating food that my grandmother cooked – blintzes, cabbage leaves stuffed with rice, pickled tomatoes, potato knishes, cooked beets, pastries, and what I called ‘vegetarian chicken soup.’ I suspect it was the same soup everyone got except mine did not have chicken in it. In 1910, my wife’s paternal grandparents emigrated from a city that was 150 miles north of Chisinau.

Mongolia Trip Report

Particulars of Workshops:

From October 3rd to October 10th 2009, three distinct workshops were conducted in Mongolia:

4) 3 hour ‘short course’ (October 5th ) conducted during the WHO/Country Office retreat – emphasized searching strategies, evaluation of health information on the Internet, searching PubMed using the redesigned website and ‘free full text’ options, MY NCBI and strategies for managing change. An overview of WHO information resources also was conducted by Julius Dizon, Administrative Officer from the Library, WHO/Western Pacific Region.

The course primarily was lecture format and the content was modified after talking with the participants. Many of them were physicians who manage WHO programs in Mongolia. These individuals were quite appreciative of the practical skills that we discussed particularly searching in PubMed and MY NCBI.

5) 4 day comprehensive HINARI workshop (October 6th - 9th) conducted at the Dornogobi Medical College, Sainshand, Mongolia. All components of a comprehensive HINARI workshop were taught - Searching Skills, Health Resources on the Internet, HINARI and Partner Publishers’ Websites, PubMed (including the redesigned format), MY NCBI and strategies for marketing HINARI resources and conducting workshops.

The workshop was conducted with Julius Dizon and with the assistance of Gan-Erdene Gantumur, a.k.a. Gana, as translator. A total of 25 individuals attended the workshop including academic and library staff from the Dornogobi College of Medicine and physicians from several regional hospitals and a Medical College from adjoining provinces. At least six individuals registered their institutions for HINARI.

We also conducted a one hour overview of HINARI that 50+ faculty and students of the Dornogobi Medical College attended.

The most difficult task was the limited English language skills of the participants although there may be some who understood and read more than initially acknowledged. Without the assistance of Gana, the workshop would not have been as successful. His computer literacy and excellent knowledge of English were invaluable. Note – the Mongolian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet.

Three other factors helped significantly in making this a successful workshop. The Internet access probably was the best from all the workshops I have conducted in HINARI eligible institutions (the satellite dish was right outside the window of the computer lab) and the IT staff was very helpful.

The participants also had very good baseline computer skills. This perhaps is a function of the Internet access at this College although the participants from other institutions also seemed to be knowledgeable.

The other key factor was that several essential documents and all the exercises had been translated into Mongolian. This enabled the participants to complete the assignments efficiently and effectively.

Julius and I also visited the College’s Library that definitely needs automation. We are in the process of writing a report assessing the current situation and outlining the ways to go forward.

6) A 2 ½ hour 'short course' was conducted (October 10th) for 8 Ministry of Health physicians who are students in a WHO-sponsored Field Epidemiology program. The course covered the basics of searching strategies, evaluating health information on the Internet, HINARI and the redesigned PubMed site plus MY NCBI.

The timing of this course was excellent as this was at the beginning of their program and the information access skills will be of use throughout the year-long curriculum. All the participants have their own laptop and the training facility has an excellent Internet link.

Other comments:

There is a possibility of further training in Mongolia using funds from the WHO Country office. The training would be for the Field Epidemiology program and would focus on the ‘authorship skills’ material, a 4-day HINARI workshop at a Medical College in the north and a ‘short course’ for Ministry of Health staff.

The WHO retreat was held in the Terelj National Forest that is a striking mountain district, about an hour-drive from Ulaanbaatar. The Dornogobi Medical College is located at the outskirts of the Gobi Desert and is 10 hours by train (a 1970’s Russian-built train) from Ulaanbaatar. It is to the southeast of the capitol and somewhat warmer. Mongolia is a meat-centric country but, for the vegetarian, the staff at the Medical College made potato and carrot dumplings and mushroom soup. Being near the border of China, lots of fresh vegetables are imported. We did encounter snow flurries once but it was the day of our departure from Ulaanbaatar.


Jamaica Workshop Report

Particulars of Workshop:

From February 22nd to February25th 2010, the E-Library Training Initiative conducted a ‘National Health Information/HINARI’ workshop at the University of West Indies/Mona Hopwood Computer Laboratory. The workshop was a collaborative effort of HINARI, University of West Indies/Mona, Librarians Without Borders® and PAHO.

Over 40 individuals attended all or part of the four day workshop. This included 10 librarians, 5 Ministry of Health staff members and 25+ physicians, lecturers and researchers primarily from UWI. Besides UWI, participants came from clinical settings and research institutes in the Kingston area and a regional hospital located in Montego Bay. This is the largest number to attend a workshop that I have conducted. The average attendance per session ranged from 27 to 38 as some of the physicians, lecturers and researchers had to attend to other responsibilities.

The Hopwood Computer Laboratory had ample computers and seating for the large number of participants. Also, the Internet access/bandwidth was reliable and sufficiently robust to quickly download PDF files. All the breaks and lunches were served in an adjacent meeting room - in a well done manner. The planning and instructing at this workshop was a collaborative effort between Lenny Rhine and Swarna Bandera, the Director of the UWI Medical Library.

Uniqueness of this Workshop:

Jamaica is a Band 2 country and the publishers have sizeable limits on what material is available. The University of West Indies/Mona is the institution that subscribes to HINARI by paying the $1000 annual cost. Also, this University has access to approximately 550 e-journals via a Science Direct consortia agreement plus EBSCO HOST and other subscriptions. The University also has access to titles from HighWire Press - which defines Jamaica as a middle income country – and various open access sources. Due to this arrangement, the instructional material was tweaked - as the participants needed to understand how to access the whole range of available resources. Consequently, HINARI and PubMed were taught somewhat differently than would be done in a workshop at a Band 1 country.

Several new modules were developed for this workshop – Information Literacy and WHO Resources – plus the Evidence-based Practice module was taught for the first time. Also, Mrs. Bandera conducted an overview of Publishing Trends and how this has impacted on the UWI environment plus a discussion of Research Ethics that was added to the Authorship Skills material.

Observations:

The participants had excellent computer/searching skills and consequently their needs were on a higher level. Many of the nuances of PubMed (e.g. MY NCBI, Limits) and HINARI were stressed. At times, the participants commented on what they preferred and contributed to the discussion of the instructional material.

The ‘Authorship Skills’ material was of particular interest to the participants as many of them are in an institution that ‘encourages’ publishing. Several participants commented how they would use the material for their post-graduate students or share it with their colleagues. Ditto for the ‘Evidence-based Practice’ module.

The participants also were quite interested in the ‘Health Information on the Internet’ and ‘Evaluating Internet Information/Searching Strategies’ modules. They became aware of gateways and portals that link to ‘gray literature’ from numerous inter-governmental and non-governmental agencies. This material would be of use in their teaching and clinical activities.

One of the byproducts of the workshop was considerable networking by the participants. Several academic departments became aware of the UWI DSpace project (http://dspace.mona.uwi.edu/) and plan to participate. Also, the Ministry of Health staff learned about using Moodle (open source course management system) for continuing education. They have begun to communicate with staff from the Pacific Open Learning Health Network, an organization that has a Moodle server for this purpose.

The overall evaluations were very favorable (averaging 4.54 out of 5). This is quite positive with the number of participants and the range of their skills. Many found the hands-on activities, information gained and support material to be the strengths of the sessions. Several did note that some of the presentations and exercises were somewhat elementary for their skill level.

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