Indiana University medical librarian, Carole Gall, made her sixth visit on February 4-12, 2010, to the Elias Santana Center, a hospital facility in Los Alcarrizos, Dominican Republic. The Santana eye center has an accredited ophthalmology residency program, and a medical library is needed to fulfill the accreditation criteria. More on Santana at http://www.mmint.org/Countries/CentralAmericaandtheCaribbean/DominicanRepublic/EliasSantanaCenter/tabid/89/Default.aspx .
The goals of the trip were to do literature search training on the newly redesigned PubMed, provide awareness of quality, free resources on the internet, and build relationships. New books were needed and the library had had few donation since Carole's last trip in 2005. Carole took a donation to the Santana hospital library of the 13-volume 2008-2009 Basic and Clinical Science Course (BCSC). She ported the books in her luggage. Taking the books through customs at Santo Domingo was no problem, unlike a decade ago.
The residents and attendees have access to two current journal subscriptions. One morning hour of class was turned over to Carole to present online access to resources available to the Dominican residents.
In 2008 the hospital acquired WI-FI, which Carole used in the mornings by the classroom where the residents come and go to help them with research and information needs. Half (12) of the residents were from the Dominican Republic and mostly on scholarship. The other half (11) were from India, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Georgia (the country, not the state) and Venezuela. English is the second or third language for some of them. To be admitted to the residency program, they must have English proficiency. They use the terms PDF, WI-FI, wireless, and texto completo. No "full text" comprenda. The tech staff were four men, and very good.
Carole Gall
Indiana University School of Medicine Libraries
Email: cfgall@iupui.edu
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