SEDIC: health sciences working group, a team without borders

Introduction

The Asociación Española de Documentación e Información (SEDIC) is a nonprofit professional association founded in 1975 to promote training and exchange of experiences amongst librarians and information specialists in Spain. SEDIC also actively defends and represents the interests of this professional community in submissions to Government departments, the European Union and other international institutions.

Our association is organised into technical working groups, the oldest being the Health Sciences Working Group (HSWG), which was formed in 1997 to promote the activities of health sciences information specialists and also to support and give continuity to the Jornadas Bibliosalud, the biennial Spanish conference on information and documentation in the health sciences.

Since October 2006 new members have joined the HSWG and the members are working together to expand the group’s horizons and to better adapt to our changing social and professional context.

Objectives

In 2007 the HSWG defined its main purpose as the provision of support for the career development and progress of health sciences information specialists in their different work areas. Secondary objectives are the following:

• To facilitate cooperation, information sharing and exchange of experiences among members of the profession.
• To improve working skills and to adapt them to new technological environments.
• To standardize the different types of professional profiles and their work environments.
• To promote emerging work areas (Open Access, digitalization, etc.) in the health information field.
• To create channels and forums for communication and information dissemination.

Methodology

The HSWG conducts an annual review of the state of the information specialist’s profession, and develops a strategic plan with several action lines. Each of these action lines is led a group member, and these subgroups define the actions and activities to be carried out each year. At the end of the year the HSWG as a whole evaluates the actions taken, and makes recommendations for their further development and improvement as required, and also defines new goals for the next year. 

Results

The implementation of the HSWG annual strategic plans has resulted in the following action lines and their corresponding activities:

2007. Two action lines were enacted. The first set up a National Workshop to exchange technical information and share experiences among the members of our professional community, and the second was aimed at establishing standards for hospital health science libraries. The result was the celebration of the 1º Jornada técnica de Bibliotecas de ciencias de la salud en el siglo XXI: electrónicas, digitales, virtuales e híbridas (1st Workshop on Health Sciences Libraries in the XXI century: electronic, digital, virtual and hybrid).

2008. The first two action lines were continued and two more were added, one for the creation of free training workshops and other for the implentation of learning resources centres (Centros de Recursos para el Aprendizaje y la Investigación; CRAI). The result was the celebration of the 2º Jornada técnica de Bibliotecas de ciencias de la salud en el siglo XXI: electrónicas, digitales, virtuales e híbridas (2nd Workshop on Health Sciences Libraries in the XXI century: electronic, digital, virtual and hybrid) and workshops on “Integration of the Learning Resources Centre Model in Health Sciences Libraries”, “Intellectual Property Rights in the Health Sector”, and “Creative Commons in Health Sciences”.

2009: Established action lines were maintained, and a new one was started to update the information on the web of the HSWG and to write specific posts on the SEDIC blog. As a result workshops were held on “Web 2.0 Tools in Science Health Journals”, “Corporate Communication Web 2.0 Strategies in the Health Sector”, “Social Relationships in Health Sciences Libraries: Relations with Professionals and Users”, and a number of blogposts about activities in our field.

2010: All action lines were maintained except the learning resources centres (CRAIs) study, which was replaced by a new action line studying information literacy in health sciences. Active action lines this year led to the following workshops: three editions of the workshop “How to Publish in Scientific Information and Documentation Journals”, two editions of the course “Emotional Intelligence for Professionals in the Health Sciences”, one edition of the course “Netvibe Development for the Integration of Information in the Health Sciences: the Medical Information Library and Knowledge (MILK) Project” and one edition of the workshop “Information Literacy in the Health Sciences”.

2011: Established action lines were maintained, and a Twitter account was opened to facilitate and dynamize communication between professionals in our field. Related to this, three courses were organized: “Internal and External Impact of the Implementation of Quality Control Processes in Libraries and Information Centres”, “Web 2.0 Managers: Management of Personal References in the Web 2.0 Environment” and “Holding Effective Meetings with Multidisciplinary Groups in the Health Sciences”.

The results are shown in the poster using Ishikawa Diagrams that reflect the cause-effect relationship of each research area and the related activities.

Conclusions

The results of the HSWG’s activities show that the creation of a strategic plan with annual action lines provides a working mechanism for helping workers in our field meet current needs and adapt to changing professional and technological environments.

Through the continued search for topics of interest and the creation of opportunities for knowledge exchange, our Health Sciences Working Group has become an important resource for health information specialists in Spain. Furthermore, our group has established itself as the major working group within the SEDIC, allowing information professionals in the health sciences to maintain a high profile in our professional community.