New technologies & possibilities for

one-woman medical library

Ana Ivkovic,

Information Specialist, Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, Belgrade

Nowadays, modern libraries set more and more requirements to librarians in Health Care Institutions. The most important thing is to keep up with all trends in medical science following from new achievements in medicine. A librarian has to improve skills constantly to find proper information for library users. This is not easy taking into consideration all requests of medical professionals and developments in oncology. The modern librarian is standing between two sciences with expanding roles - information technology and medical science.

During the last 15 years living conditions in Serbia changed. Now, as a country in transition, electronic services and databases with medical literature are provided by the Ministry of Science and the National Library of Serbia.

Librarians have taken efforts to acquire skills in searching database and electronic services to find a proper literature. All institutions in Consortia of libraries in Serbia have the academic network with free access to numerous publishers and articles in full text.

http://kobson.nb.rs

Free access is provided via KoBSON (Konzorcijum Biblioteka Srbije za Objedinjenu Nabavku) on the site of National Library of Serbia

Where to find the scientific information?

Electronic services with scientific literature and Open Access are not enough for researcher’s needs.

WEB?

New technologies are appearing daily and web 2.0 presents a new and almost unlimited source for scientific information.

Librarians have a new role. To develop information science and to promote Science 2.0 y using Library 2.0. But How to promote new websites or blogs? aking a widget of an interesting website is the more attractive way to spread it than just adding a link. Besides that it has simple possibilities for easy download.

Slideshare

Many scientific lectures are presented as a slideshow and posted at SLIDESHARE http://www.slideshare.net/ . Institute for Oncology and Radiology also posted on slideshare presentations from Annual Meeting of Oncology- KN2007 as a means of distributing electronic media.

Websites

Medical websites which treat contents with medical issues, medical trials, prevention, ethics…etc. offer useful information to medical professionals scientists and modern medical librarians – librarian 2.0.

Blogs

Discovering blogs as a new source of the recent medical information and many new topics, creating a blog for the NCRC library brought me the new possibilities- to distribute new information quickly from librarian to users. With a good feeling of an independent publisher, and sweet obligation to update, NCRCbiblioteka blog http://NCRCbiblioteka.blogspot.com start to exist. News and events, conferences, bookfairs, new databases, but also search box, electronic services, Highlights in Oncology, Guidelines and many other data found their place.

More and more presentations appear as a podcast.

How to make information visible to users?

At MICC2007 in Zagreb, I met Mr. Guus van den Brekel, and as we still don’t have web site of library, his idea to make a librarytoolbar, resolved my biggest problem. We made http://NCRCbiblioteka.toolbar.com together, with all important links, search box, top oncology journals and electronic services.

The toolbar is available for download by every clinician that needs information at work and at home. Long time seeking links on internet was replaced by only one click on toolbar’s icon. With subscribing on RSS feeds, it update every time the publisher has a new content in journals.

"RSS feeds" are special web addresses that alert you when chosen webpage, or e-journals have been updated, without you having to visit the website itself.

Netvibes

Making a start page Netvibes with search box for searching literature providing literature makes easer, pics posted on flickr are also good evidence of different kind of events.

Youtube

Audiovisual lectures or just a part of them, we can post on youtube.com as many other amusing evidence. I posted an interesting piece of classical music work of Grieg. but also we can see many jokes or journal reports...as well as medical news!

Let’s play with web!

What does it mean to be solo librarian i.e. one woman library?

That position brings problems called isolation. Without replacement you are not able to participate in conferences nor to attend courses. Only with participating in Annual Meetings and conferences, sharing experience and following new trends in Continuing Medical Education and new technologies as Web 2.0 and Library 2.0, being an information specialist can be a creative and the most amusing profession.

The use of web2.0 and her sophisticated possibilities to distribute and share information among the users of the modern libraries makes it possible let the one woman library exist and keep customers informed about new information in an easy and accessible way.