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HINARI Training Activities: Workshop Reports

To top of page Vietnam (March 5-15, 2007)

Date: March 5-15, 2007
HINARI Training Activities - Hanoi, Vietnam
Lenny Rhine 03/18/2007

Schedule:
06-09 March
HINARI Training Workshop: sponsored by WHO Regional Office for Western Pacific Region; local sponsor/coordinator - Center for Scientific and Medical Information (CISMI); co-facilitators - Julius Dizon, WPRO, Nguyen Hai Ha and Dang Phuong Lien; 3.5 day course for 28 participants - medical/hospital librarians, physicians, researchers

12 March
Hanoi College of Pharmacy: overview of pharmacy-related Internet resources including HINARI; discussions with library staff included in-service training for pharmacists and development of National Drug Information Center

HINARI Training Mini-Workshop - Bach Mai Hospital: 2.5 hour course for 13 physicians

13 March
Thai Nguyen University: visit to an almost complete Learning Resource Center; discussed HOA with senior library staff (one had attended previous week's workshop); also presented a brief overview of HOA to junior staff

14 March
Library and Information Science Department, Hanoi College of Culture: 'Marketing for Libraries' and 'Managing Change' presentations to 100+ 3rd year students and 8-10 faculty members

Hanoi College of Public Health: 'Evaluating Internet-based Health Information' presentation to 15-18 faculty members and library staff

15 March
HINARI Training Mini-Workshop - Hanoi College of Pharmacy: 4 hour course for 12 faculty members and library staff

Hardware/Internet Access Overview: At the various sites, the hardware/bandwidth ranged from acceptable (CISMI, Hanoi College of Pharmacy) to excellent (Hanoi College of Public Health, Thai Nguyen University).

Skills of Participants: Almost all participants had sufficient baseline computer and searching skills. Some had a reasonable knowledge of HINARI while others were introduced to the program during the workshops.

English language skills varied; during the initial workshop, the Vietnamese co-facilitators summarized/translated significant parts of the presented material. There was no or minimal translation during the two mini-workshops and the presentation at the College of Public Health and complete translation at the Library and Information Science Department.

During the 'hands on' activities, almost all the participants were able to successfully complete the exercises with periodic input from the facilitators. For each module, we reviewed the answers for the whole group and this process was useful.

Use of HINARI/Institutional Level:

Each HINARI workshop included discussions of the "DOs and DON'T's" and how to market the resources. Both of these discussions review the parameters for the distribution of the institutional ID and password. The consensus was that, after a review of the DOs and DON'Ts with potential users, the ID and password should be distributed.

Participants were encouraged to train others at their institutions. At the initial workshop, this included small group discussions where participants identified potential user groups and discussed strategies for training. At the Hanoi College of Pharmacy mini-course, there was a discussion of incorporating HINARI into the curriculum.

Other Comments:

At the principal workshop, the assistance of the two Vietnamese facilitators was invaluable. They were able to translate key material and, during the hands-on exercises, work with individuals with less English language skills.

After the workshops, the participants have a better understanding of the HINARI resources and this should result in increased use of the material. For example, one participant at the initial workshop is from a new applied genetics research institute where there is a high need for current research articles. Also, several educational institutions are in the process of registering for more than one of the HOA gateways since their curriculums include multiple disciplines.

Due to the 2nd week's flexible schedule, I was able to add activities including the trip to Thai Nguyen University and the Mini-Workshop at the Hanoi College of Pharmacy.

As a group, the faculty and library staff of the Hanoi College of Pharmacy had the best language/searching skills and understanding of the potential use of the full-text material. Because of these skills and the smaller size of the group, we were able to accomplish a considerable amount during the limited workshop time.

Per Hanoi, the food was great but the traffic is another story. There are literally millions of motor bikes and the best way to describe the traffic pattern is 'organized chaos'.

I enjoyed working with the participants as they showed a real interest in the learning and utilizing the HINARI resources.

Vietnam photos

To top of page Nigeria (June 26-30, July 2-5, 2007)

Dates: June 26-30, 2007
Title: AGORA/HINARI/OARE Workshops
Sponsors: Information and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA)
Librarians Without Borders SM E-Training Initiative/Elsevier
Facilitators: Gracian Chimwaza, Vimbai Hungwe (ITOCA), Justin Chesenga (FAO), Lenny Rhine, Marcus Banks (LWB)
Local Organizer: Professor Dele Fawole
Host: University of Ibadan Library

This was a four-day, full blown workshop about the three related programs with 31 participants. Besides an overview of Internet/computer use, searching skills and Internet resources, the course included in depth and hands on analysis of HINARI, AGORA and OARE and how to utilize the respective gateways, publishers' websites and databases (PubMed & CABI). Also included were material on marketing, repackaging information, developing workshops and publishing skills -a web-bibliography and FAQs.

The workshop was successful series of relevant presentations but the course had its unique circumstances. The venue and logistics were fine with more than adequate Internet access but the power supply was intermittent and often we had to rely on generators or didn't have electricity. While we were able to almost have sufficient time for 'hands on activities', we had to focus on these activities when there was electricity and be somewhat creative when there wasn't - use of white boards and notes, developing reviews and quizzes on the fly.

The students were focus and appreciative (including of how we worked around this obstacle) but, since this is their daily existence, they also were stoically frustrated by this situation.

Other observations:
1. The 'Do's and Don'ts' continue to be a topic for lengthy discussion. Many institutions still are too restrictive with the institutional ID and password despite the low use of HINARI/AGORA in Nigeria; we've tried to expand their 'comfort zone' to be broader and think we've been successful. Many liked the idea of a one page sheet that new users would read and sign off on.
2. We 'piloted' the Publishing Skills Web-Bibliography and FAQ sheet. The former was well received and the latter prompted an engaging discussion with many people participating. Ironically, we finished the discussion without electricity.
3. Several individuals found the 'Short Course' PowerPoint and Word exercises to be useful and plan use the material at their institutions.

Note: These comments also apply to the second workshop at the Medical Library that is reviewed below.

Dates: July 2-5, 2007
Title: Health Libraries/Information Management Skills Workshop
Sponsor: Librarians Without Borders SM E-Training Grant/Elsevier
Facilitators: Lenny Rhine, Marcus Banks
Local Organizer: Helen Komolafe, Director
Host: E. Latunde Adeku Medical Library, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan

In the second workshop, we incorporated other topics at the request of the Library Director. This course included the HINARI Short Course and the search strategies, marketing and managing change modules. Other material included Role of Health Information Worker in the Electronic Age, Information Literacy, Overview of Internet Based Health Information, Evaluation of WWW Resources, Evidence Based Medicine, Open Access plus Web design, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint basic skills.

The course was an in-service course for the professionals and paraprofessionals of this Library. Other participants included the director from the University of Lagos Medical Library and the director and staff member from the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Lagos (NIMR).

Similarly to the other workshop, the participants were focused and appreciative and… there were problems with the power supply. For many of the paraprofessionals, this training introduced them to resources and concepts that are not part of their daily routines. Consequently, there were many positive byproducts for the Library and its staff and the Director plan to build on this momentum.

Once again, there was a lengthy discussion of the 'do's and don'ts' and the idea of each institution developing their own 'comfort zone'. For the UI Medical Library, the staff will expand the distribution of the IDs and passwords to the residents and upper division medical students and conduct training workshops for these groups. Also, the director of the NIMR is planning to conduct a Short Course for the Institute's researchers.

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, July 13, 2007

Nigeria photos

To top of page Nepal (August 27-30, 2007)

Dates: August 27-30, 2007

The Nepal National Training/Workshop on HINARI and Other Internet Resources was conducted from 27-30 August at the Orchid Hotel, Kathmandu. This course was a joint endeavour of the National Health Education, Information and Communication Center, Nepal, WHO/Searo and the Librarians Without Borders SM E-Library Training Initiative/Elsevier. The workshop consisted of a series of brief presentations coupled with extensive hands on/computer based exercises. This teaching methodology was chosen to optimize the skill level of the participants.

Day 1: included a review the basic Internet usage and searching skills, an extensive overview of Internet- based health information resources and a review of the HINARI gateway and participating publishers' websites.

Days 2-3: devoted to a comprehensive study of PubMed as a tool for identify full-text article in HINARI - Overview, Limits, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), Index, History and My NCBI.

Day 4: emphasized 'Advocacy for HINARI' that included a series of presentations and exercises related to the marketing/promoting, repackaging of HINARI and related Internet material plus an overview of how to conduct a workshop and Internet based tools for publishing. The presentation of this material included a group discussions by the participants with an extensive review of HINARI 'Do's and Don'ts' and development of marketing strategies.

At the completion of each general topic, the key concepts were reviewed and, each morning, the participants answered a series of questions - to reinforce the learning from the previous day.

The instructor was ably assisted by two facilitators, Mr. Uttam M. Shelya and Ms. Gita Thapa with both individuals demonstrating extensive knowledge of the HINARI material and enthusiasm for teaching. The facilities, meals and breaks at the Hotel were quite nice and the hardware/Internet access adequate.

Submitted by, Lenny Rhine

Nepal photos

To top of page Zanzibar (September 4-7, 2007)

Dates: September 4-7, 2007
Re: HINARI training workshop conducted in Zanzibar
Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator
Librarians Without Borders SM, Medical Library Association, MLA
The 'Electronic Health Information Retrieval and Dissemination' Workshop was conducted at the Karume Technical College, Zanzibar from 04-07 September 2007. This course was a joint endeavour of the Ministry of Health, Zanzibar and the Librarians Without Borders SM E-Library Training Initiative/Elsevier. DANIDA funded to local arrangements - rental of the computer lab at a local technical college, printing, meals/breaks, and per-diem for the participants.

The mix of the twenty-six participants was diverse including district medical officers, regional health officers and IT support staff. There also were a number of tutors and librarians. The skill level of the students varied but, after the first day, almost all the participants were able to keep up with the tasks.

The course material paralleled the four-day HINARI training workshop. Approximately 15% differed and this included material on information literacy and repackaging of Internet based material. On the first day, the Internet access was insufficient. Consequently, this resulted in considerable lecturing on that day followed by significant hands-on activities for the other three days. Indeed, the Internet access level was acceptable and reliable for this period.

Special thanks is given to Amour Kassim, Ministry of Health Zanzibar, for his commitment to this workshop from the beginning. He initially submitted the grant to Danida and obtained the funding for the local arrangements. During the week, Amour was instrumental in insuring that all the details - large and small - were completed. Also Ashura Shaib Mussa contribution as the only facilitator was essential for the success of the workshop.

Although this workshop began slowly (due to the inadequate Internet access), we were able to accomplish all of the objectives. The participants have gained the necessary skills for the use of the HINARI resources and other health material on the Internet and also an understanding of how to disseminate this information at their institutions. Indeed, they have become their organizations' trainers.

Zanzibar photos

To top of page Tanzania (September 10-13, 2007)

Dates: September 10-13, 2007
Re: Overview of COSTECH Workshop, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The workshop was a collaborative workshop of Librarians Without Borders SM/MLA, ITOCA (Iinformation, Training and Outreach Centre for Africa) and COSTECH (Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology). The venue was the facility of COSTECH that also served as the Internet Service Provider.

This workshop covered all the e-journal access programs - HINARI, AGORA (Agriculture) and OARE (Environmental Sciences). The 32 participants were 60/40 between AGORA/OARE and HINARI users with several in institutions having cross-discipline activities. Over the 3.5 day workshop, 50% of the time was spent jointly and 50% separately concentrating on HINARI or the other gateways. Similar to the other workshops, 'hands-on', computer-based exercises were emphasized. At the completion of each module, the key concepts were reviewed and the participants completed brief quizzes.

With four instructors, the teaching was even divided and there were multiple sets of eyes for the hands-on activities. The facility was acceptable with slow but reliable Internet access and no interruption of the power supply. Once again, I found it a pleasure to collaborate with the ITOCA staff.

What made this workshop unique was the make-up of the participants. At least 60% were researchers varying from medical sciences to traditional medicine, animal husbandry, plant science and forestry. As a group, they were inquisitive and asked insightful questions throughout the workshop. The publishing skills FAQs session prompted a lively and astute discussion.

Tanzania photos

To top of page Cambodia (October 2-5, 2007)

Re: Overview of HINARI Workshop, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Dates: October 2-5, 2007
Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator

The workshop was a collaborative workshop of World Health Organization/ Western Pacific Region, the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH), Cambodia and Librarians Without Borders/MLA. The venue was the training laboratory of the NIPH.

This workshop covered all aspects of HINARI (HINARI and participating publishers' websites, PubMed - website, searching by limits, Medical Subject Headings, Index and History features and My NCBI email options) plus Marketing for HINARI, Repackaging of HINARI Material, How to Conduct a Workshop, Publishing Skills web bibliography and a lengthy discussion of the HINARI DO's and DON'TS - including a discussion of the need to share User Names and Password on the institutional level. Also reviewed were other Internet-based health resources that are relevant in the developing country environment.

The 30 participants were predominantly library personnel from academic institutions, hospitals, research, Ministry of Health based organizations and several locally based NGOs. Approximately 7 of the participants were physicians involved in clinical practice, academic training and/or research.

Staff of the NICH were responsible the local arrangements and did an excellent job - the copies of the modules were color and numerically coded and the coffee breaks and lunches were on time with tasty food. Special thanks Ms. Nouth Sarida who coordinated these activities. With two instructors, the teaching was divided. Mr. Ratana Ouch, the NIPH IT support staff, also served as a facilitator and assisted with the hands-on activities.

The facility was excellent with 20 up-to-date PCs and furniture in a well lit room. This laboratory was developed with DED German Development Service funding and the Internet access supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The Internet access was acceptable - periodically slow but reliable with no interruption of the power supply. This venue could be available for subsequent training sessions and we encouraged NIPH management and the participants to consider this option when conducting institution based workshops.

Each workshop has its unique dynamics. What made this workshop unique was the facility - clearly the best of the year. Also, we did not have a translator which, initially, appeared to be a drawback. What ensued was those that had better English language skills assisted those with more limited capability.

Cambodia photos

To top of page The Gambia (March 10–14, 2008)

Dates: 10–14 March 2008
Re: Overview of HINARI/Information Resources Workshop, Banjul, The Gambia
Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator

The workshop was a collaborative workshop of the World Health Organization, Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital (RVTH), University of The Gambia, and the E-Learning Training Initiative of Librarians Without Borders/MLA. It was held in conjunction with a University of Florida Center for Arts in Healthcare trip as this group made the initial contact and learned of the need for a HINARI training workshop. The venue was the computer laboratory of the University of The Gambia.

The twenty-five participants were from RVTH and other state hospitals, Medical Research Council (MRC), and the University of The Gambia. Participants included physicians from RVTH and the National AIDS Secretariat, nurses from several hospitals and librarians, and medical records and computer staff from various institutions.

This workshop covered all aspects of HINARI (website options and participating publishers’ portals), PubMed (website, searching by limits and Medical Subject Headings, index and history features, and My NCBI email options), plus marketing for HINARI, repackaging of HINARI material, how to conduct a workshop, and a discussion of the HINARI dos and don’ts—particularly the distribution of user name and password within each institution. Also covered were searching skills and other Internet-based health resources that are relevant in the low-income country environment.

Two-thirds of the final day was devoted to the new authorship skills material that was well received by the twelve participants who completed these modules. The activities included review of the “Authorship Web-Bibliography” and “How to Publish a Scientific Paper” modules including completion of the structured abstracts and keywords exercises plus a lively discussion of frequently asked questions.

Huja Jah of RVTH was responsible the local arrangements and did an excellent job, especially with the limited planning time she was given. Also special thanks Dr. Ahmet Secka of the National AIDS Secretariat who supplied key equipment (LCD projector, power strip) when needed during the workshop.

The facility was very good with fifteen up-to-date PCs and furniture in a nicely sized room. The Internet access was adequate except for the firewall problem. This “temporary” patch by the IT Department of the University of Gambia blocked the HINARI authentication process. We were able to bypass this with the wireless access on my laptop and, during the four days, ensure that all the institutions’ user names and passwords were functional.

Each workshop has its unique dynamics. What made this workshop unique was the firewall problem, disappearance of specific equipment during the workshop (although solved with Dr. Secka’s help), and, more importantly, the participants. Approximately one-half of the participants had never used HINARI previously. They were hard working and enthusiastic and we established an excellent learning environment with considerable give and take.

On the day following the workshop, I was able to meet with Huja Jah, the RVTH development officer, and David Parker, director of the Computer Center of the MRC.

Huja and I discussed the possibility of RVTM developing a grant proposal to enhance the hardware and bandwidth level—basically to become an ISP—and link the other state hospitals and the College of Medicine. This would parallel what was accomplished by several health institutions in Malawi. While this discussion is in initial stages, we plan to continue it via email.

At the MRC, David and I discussed the possibility of a series of short workshops (HINARI for new researchers, HINARI update, and authorship skills) plus continued work with the library staff. He introduced me to key staff at the MRC and, hopefully, funds will become available for this training. As an African-based research center, the MRC is in a position to make a major research contribution and, consequently, is a strong HINARI user.

The Gambia photos

To top of page Burundi (March 10–14, 2008)

Dates: 10–14 March 2008
Re: Overview of the workshop titled “Formation des formateurs a l’ usage des systems de recherché en linge a travers le monde sur l’agriculture, la sante y l’environment” in Bujumbura, Burundi
Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator

The workshop was a collaborative effort of the World Health Organization (WHO), Information, Training, and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), Association of Health Information and Libraries in Africa–Burundi (AHILA), L'Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Burundi (ISABU) and the E-Learning Training Initiative of the MLA/Librarians without Borders SM. The venue was the computer laboratory of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie.

The twenty-nine participants were from educational institutions, government ministries, and research institutes based in Burundi. Participants included physicians, researchers, academics, and library personnel.

The initial day of the workshop covered an overview of the Internet/technical requirements and HINARI (health), AGORA (agriculture), and OARE (environmental sciences) programs, which are coordinated by WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) respectively. On the second and third days, the participants were divided by area of interest. For the health-related participants, we conducted a slightly abbreviated course on all aspects of HINARI (website options and participating publishers’ portals) and PubMed (website, searching by limits and Medical Subject Headings, index and history features and My NCBI email options).

On the fourth day, the groups reconvened and covered the marketing, how to conduct a workshop and dos and don’ts modules plus reviewed the training tools that were on the workshop CD-ROM. Also discussed were the authorship skills modules, although there was not sufficient time to do the hands-on activities.

After completion of the four-day workshop, we conducted two ‘short courses’ with 20+ individuals attending the agriculture and health programs.

Each workshop has its unique dynamics. What made this workshop unique was that there were no major problems—the main computer and breakout labs were fine with decent computers and reliable Internet access, the backup generator worked well the once or twice it was needed, the breaks were on time, and the luncheons were very nice.

All the participants worked diligently despite different levels of English skills and the fact that only some of the presentations were translated. The trainers felt that this was one of the best-organized workshops in Africa with a group of dedicated students. All this is a reflection of the conscientious work of the local arrangements committee (Claudine Nahayo, Janvier Nkunzebose, and Benedicte Dundaguza).

Prior to the workshop, I visited the medical library at the University of Burundi. The facility, as expected, contains little current print information. While the university has a VSAT connection for Internet access, the library does not have any computers. After a brief discussion, we agreed to meet the following Friday morning to confer about the possibility of solving this problem.

The outcome of this meeting is that a seven-person committee from the University is developing a two to three page proposal to submit to various potential funding agencies. The committee includes the assistant dean of the college, director of a research institute, and the deputy university librarian, and the two HINARI instructors are serving as advisers. We are hopeful that this “key but missing” component for use of Internet-based information will be resolved.

Working with ITOCA staff, particularly Vimbai Hungwe, the coinstructor for HINARI, was quite enjoyable. We were able to share the instructional responsibilities but, more importantly, work with small groups of participants during the hands-on activities. We also shared training ideas and material and this is especially useful for the continued updating of the training modules.

Burundi photos

To top of page Fiji (August 2008)

Dates: August 19–22, 2008

Titled “National HINARI Training Course for Medical Librarians and Researchers,” the workshop was held at the Fiji School of Medicine (FSM), Suva, Fiji, August 19– 22, 2008.

Total of twenty-four participants consisting of academic staff from Fiji schools of medicine and dentistry, University of South Pacific, the Ministry of Health (MOH) including the school of nursing, and WHO Regional Office of the Pacific Region.

With the high number of academic staff, participants periodically left to lecture or conduct labs. In most cases, the trainers worked with these individuals in order to complete the skipped modules.

Due to the composition of the participants, a lengthier time was devoted to authorship skills, and some of the hands-on material was used for the first time.

Byproducts of National Training Workshop:

Better contacts developed by FSM librarian with academic staff and also with MOH and school of nursing (FSM library staff will assist with training at the school of nursing that is under the MOH)

Pacific Open Learning Health Net (POLHN) will take a leadership role in promoting HINARI in the region. They will incorporate HINARI material into their POLHN Country Coordinators training plus encourage instructors to include HINARI in their courses. Also, there will be a hotlink from POLHN and WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific (WPRO) sites to HINARI and they will develop a flyer on HINARI courses and distribute that via email.

Note: three POLHN staff and one other WPRO staff person attended the course and now can serve as trainers (besides their important role in converting the email course to an online one on the POLHN Moodle server).

Casual attire was the norm; participants matched my “Hawaiian” shirts with their Fiji/Bula attire.

Uniqueness of the training workshop:

Best facilities for a training course that I have been involved in. Held at a new FSM campus built in 2006 by the European Union. Viable library with print material and banks of Internet-linked computers plus two IT training facilities. Internet was reasonably fast and reliable (except for the day rats ate through the PVC pipe and splintered the coaxial cable). Facility also had a group of knowledgeable IT staff who maintain the infrastructure. Note: Thanks to Australian aid, the library has subscriptions to ProQuest, UpToDate, and the Cochrane Library.

Due to speed of Internet and baseline skills of most of the participants, the course went quickly. We were able to devote the last day to the new authorship skills material, have extensive time to discuss marketing, and also review all the training material. Since the participants were primarily lecturers and/or researchers, they were very interested in setting up the My NCBI accounts and receiving the email updates.

Per the authorship skills modules, a byproduct of this session is that several lecturers/researchers are encouraged to submit their articles to higher level/peer-reviewed journals. There was a lengthy discussion on when to submit articles to regional publications or the broader, internationally based ones.

Was held in the capitol of Fiji, which is a mid-sized city on the side of the island that is significantly more cloudy and rainy. This was okay since I couldn’t view the ocean/coastline and be tempted to cancel the workshop and go to the beach.

Since this is a Band 2 country, there were discussions about why some material is not available. There are no easy answers, but I did explain how this is voluntary for the participating publishers.

Date: August 26, 2008
Re: In-service training conducted at the Fiji School of Medicine Library

Ten staff members participated in this day-long workshop.

Topics covered included an overview of HINARI (tabs, link out option, limits, and My NCBI), participating publishers/Band 2 country limits, training materials for HINARI including dos and don’ts of HINARI, searching strategies, evaluation of health information on the Internet, and marketing skills.

Approximately 50 percent was hands-on activities; workshop emphasized skills that will be used when working with users, particularly regarding HINARI.

The library director was particularly interested in the marketing module as this topic will be a project for the academic year. With the library’s excellent infrastructure plus e-resources, the discussion paralleled what I remember hearing at the UF Health Library—how to get instructors to integrate training into the curriculum and need for “gradable” assignments, and so on.

It was a pleasure working with the library staff as we spoke the same language and, as we discussed practical solutions, I’d receive understanding nods and comments about how this info was quite useful.

Fiji photos

 

To top of page Zambia and AHILA (Mozambique) (September 24–October 10, 2008)

Dates: September 24–October 10, 2008
University of Zambia (UNZA), Lusaka, Zambia, and the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA) Conference
Submitted by Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator

From September 24 to October 10, I conducted various workshops and other HINARI-related activities at the University of Zambia (September 24–October 3) and the 11th AHILA Conference in Maputo, Mozambique (October 6–10). At AHILA, I was acting as the MLA representative.

These training activities primarily were "short courses" that ranged from working individually with library staff to conducting workshops for more than fifty individuals. While the material covered in these "short courses" was a synopsis of content of the lengthier workshops, each training session was unique and different.

During the first week, I conducted two formal short courses at the University of Zambia. This included one at the University of Zambia Main Library for library staff members (Wednesday, October 1). Ten individuals participated with these being split between the Main Library and Medical and Veterinary Science Libraries—one staff. This short course was geared toward individuals with some expertise who regularly deal with users of HINARI and the agriculture and environmental research e-journal programs: AGORA and OARE. We emphasized practical skills (searching Google vs. Google Scholar searches, Boolean search operators, "Dos and Don’ts" of HINARI, plus access problems and solutions) and recent updates and enhancements to the HINARI and My NCBI web pages. Note: I also worked on a one-to-one basis with several staff members of these libraries.

What made this workshop valuable is that it was a "teachable moment." Recently, UNZA became its own ISP with a VSAT link to the satellites that deliver the Internet in sub-Saharan Africa. This has increased the reliability and speed of Internet access substantially and will have a positive impact on the use of the three e-journal access projects. Also, the University of Alabama at Birmingham is planning to fund a computer laboratory for the medical library and university teaching hospital and this will be invaluable for access and training.

The content of the second "short course" evolved after the initial announcement. Advertised as an authorship skills workshop, we initially thought this would be for postgraduate students. Instead, the course attracted forty-three fourth- to sixth-year veterinary and agriculture students, all of whom had to complete research projects before graduating. The material taught included an overview of Google vs. Google Scholar searches; Boolean search operators; tools to evaluate Internet sites; overview of HINARI, AGORA, and OARE; a detailed review of structured abstracts and how this applies to research projects; plus several "hands-on" group activities emphasizing how to develop structured abstracts for research projects. The number of students was a bit overwhelming but this just prepared me for the workshops at the AHILA conference.

Also while in Lusaka, I attended several planning meetings with the Afri-Connect staff. This group is installing a wireless network in Zambia and also has projects with the Ministry of Health including the development of several health-related portals. Due to changes and added functionality in the HINARI website plus the revision of My NCBI, I also spent time updating training material so that the workshop participants in Zambia and at AHILA received up-to-date modules on the distributed CDs.

While attending the AHILA conference, I (along with Vimbai Hungwe, Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa; and Grace Ajuwon, former Cunningham and NLM fellow) conducted three short courses. These were an overview of HINARI, authorship skills and an introduction to HTML. In all three cases, we were limited to two-plus hours with the number of individuals attending ranging from thirty-six to more than fifty. We also had a group equally divided between English, French, and Portuguese speakers, and this resulted in a need for ongoing translation.

Consequently, this situation increased the amount of time spent lecturing and minimized the "hands-on" activities. Fortunately, every participant received a CD and can continue to complete the training material after returning home. For the next AHILA, I would suggest courses of a minimum of four hours and possibly repeating them so that the class size will be more manageable.

Despite these limits, all the trainers felt that we were able to disseminate important information to very interested and motivated participants. After the formal workshops, we followed up with numerous individual conversations and, in some cases, one-to-one instruction. Also, Vimbai and I presented a HINARI update to the whole conference and this reinforced some of the material discussed at the workshop.

Ian Roberts of WHO/HQ Library and Marie Paule Kabore of WHO/AFRO Library, along with key staff members, also attended AHILA. Vimbai, Ian, and I noted that HINARI and related issues often were brought up and we were called on to answer questions or clarify points. Ian also presented an overview of various WHO Library–related projects and how HINARI fit into the overall activities of the WHO Library and also the WHO/AFRO Library.

In conclusion, all the training activities were different than the lengthier workshops. Despite this, I (along with the other trainers at AHILA) was able to facilitate the use of HINARI and, in Zambia, the other e-journal access projects to a wide range of users: students, researchers, and particularly information specialists.

Zambia photos

AHILA photos

To top of page Honaria, Solomon Islands (March 24–27 2009)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator

Particulars of Workshop:

  1. Titled 'National HINARI Training Course', the workshop was held at the Pacific Open Learning Health Net Center, Honiara, Solomon Islands March 24th - 27th, 2009. The Center is located on one of the campuses of the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education (SICHE)
  2. Conducted with Julius Dizon, Administrative Officer of the WHO/WPRO Library.
  3. Total of 19 participants consisting of academic and library staff from SICHE, the University of South Pacific/Honiara Campus and the National Library, clinical staff from the National Referral Hospital and Kiluufi Hospital and staff from the Ministry of Health particularly the Public Health and Tuberculosis divisions. All except two had institutional User Names and Passwords.
  4. On March 30th, a 'short course' was conducted at the same site for 12 individuals who were not able to attend the 3 ½ day workshop.

Workshop Dynamics

  1. While the hardware was decent, the link to the Internet was problematic; at times, it was too slow for accessing the HINARI and PubMed websites. There also were two 15-30 minute time periods where the land line to the ISP was not functioning.
  2. Despite these limitations, we were able to complete the full HINARI course by re-arranging the schedule and switching to the 'off-line' material when the Internet was either too slow or not accessible. For several modules, we did have to limit the number of 'online' exercises but this did not impact significantly on the participants skill levels.
  3. One consequence of the above was that we only were able to conduct a brief overview of the additional 'Authorship Skill' material during the final morning.
  4. The participants were attentive, enthusiastic and flexible when we had to adapt to the Internet access limitations. As a group, these individuals were quite adventuresome when it came to changing the keyword searches to reflect their professional interests. Despite the number of doctors with their clinic responsibilities, almost all the participants attended the full workshop.
  5. Several of the library professionals noted how they could use the training material when returning to their work settings. One of the instructors noted how they could incorporate HINARI into their coursework - in a Research Methods course. Two of the physicians found the training to be invaluable for identifying specific research information that apply to their specialties.
  6. Several participants noted their institutional Internet access problems. Apparently, the ISP is a monopolistic organization - a government telecommunications corporation - and also the link to the Internet is via Satellite, not undersea cable.
  7. The Internet access problem was more significant for the 'Short Course'. After losing the link to the Internet, the participants were asked to complete the remaining exercises after returning to their offices.
  8. The workshop was held in the Honiara, the capitol of the Solomon Islands during the rainy season. The rain only was a problem a few times when we had to go to the next building for breaks and lunch and also during the weekend when I traveled to a nearby island with an active volcano.

Solomon Islands photos

To top of page Republic of Moldova (June 2009)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator

This report contains summaries of two mini-courses conducted by Donna Flake in the Republic of Moldova. At the May 2009 MLA meeting, Donna attended the "HINARI, Train the Trainers' CE Course. This course was geared towards individuals whose institutions have linkages with HINARI eligible organizations.

This past June, Donna traveled to Moldova and was able to utlize her new expertise about HINARI. She conducted these workshops using material distributed at the CE Course.

HINARI Training in Moldova, #1
When: Monday, June 22, 2009
Where: The Library of the Free International University of Moldova.

Zina Sochira is the library director. The training took place in the university’s 10-story building in a new computer lab that belongs to a department other than the library. After the librarians arrived for the class, it took the university IT department a full 30 minutes to hook up the projector, steady the screen, and see which computer was best for projecting the images.

The course consisted of twenty librarians, but no health professionals attended the training. The librarians were very patient as the equipment was being set up. I took this time to get each librarian to introduce herself and tell about her job. I used an excellent translator who translated my English into Romanian.

At the beginning of the class. I provided an overview of what HINARI includes, and said that health professionals in Moldova can use HINARI free of charge. I provided the HINARI list of Do’s and Do Nots, and Zina said she would get this document translated for her librarians. Zina had given me her university’s HINARI username and password before the class.

First I demonstrated the A-Z journals list. It took a long time for anything to load on my computer, and the other computers in the class. I was patient, and the participants were patient. Also, because every comment or question had to be translated, this took up some of the waiting time. Finally, I was able to get to a journal title to open. I explained how the librarians should click on the word “HINARI” in yellow letters on the right side of the screen. We tried to open four journal articles. I quickly discovered that these computers lacked Adobe Acrobat Reader. (This was in spite of me previously asking if this software was all on the computers for the HINARI class). Once I knew we did not have Adobe Acrobat Reader, I did not open PDF files, just HTML files. Of the four journal articles which should have easily opened in HTML format since the word “HINARI” in large yellow letters was under the titles, only two of the four articles opened. I told the librarians not to worry, that my work today was to teach them “how” to use HINARI for future use, and they were learning “how” to use it.

Since these librarians were not medical librarians, they did not know about PubMed, and had no knowledge of how to search it. Therefore, most of the class was spent going into PubMed to look for articles on certain topics. I also demonstrated how to limit and how to look for authors in PubMed.

My translator and I decided it was better for me to stand near the screen so I could point out some things on the screen. My translator was at the computer projecting the images onto the screen. My translator was very computer-literate, and she not only translated, but also continued to walk up and down the rows of participants to help them if they got lost. There was time for her to do this since everything loaded so slowly. It was extremely helpful that she was so computer-literate because I could have also gone up and down the aisles, but if I made a comment to a participant, the translator would have had to be beside me translating.

The University's librarians were all very computer-literate. They caught on to the techniques I was teaching very quickly. They neither required instruction on Boolean operators, nor how to print or save information. All the participants said they enjoyed the HINARI class so much and they would use it in the future.

HINARI Training in Moldova, #2
When: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Where: The Scientific Medical Library of the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University of Moldova

Liubovi Karnaeva is the library director, but her deputy library director, Silvia Ciubrei, arranged for the HINARI training and proposed HINARI certificates for each person who attended. Silvia advertised the class, and got good sampling of health professionals and medical librarians from her university to attend. She also arranged for health professionals from the Moldovan Ministry of Health to attend. In total 23 people attended.

The class took place in a large computer lab (45 computers) of one of the medical library’s branches in the Pharmacy building. The class was scheduled to begin at 2 and all the participants were there at 2; however, it took 10 more minutes for the library’s IT staff to finish connecting the computer projector. The participants waited patiently. Silvia told me that she already had Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on these computers, and I was delighted to see that PDFs worked perfectly in the class today.

I began the class asking for a show of hands on several things. I asked how many use PubMed and about 15 people raised their hands. I asked how many used OVID MEDLINE, and about 5 raised their hands. I asked who has ever used HINARI, and only three medical librarians raised their hands. I told them if they searched PubMed by going into HINARI first, then they could pull up full-text journal articles in 6,200 medical journals. Several expressed regret that they did not know this before now. I told them that in the future they should always go into HINARI first, and then go into PubMed through HINARI.

As I taught the class, I could easily tell the participants were very computer-literate and intuitive about using HINARI and PubMed. Many were longtime PubMed users who knew much more about PubMed than I do. I could tell these people did not need much instruction, and they just needed to be pointed in the proper path. I used my excellent, computer-literate translator who translated from English to Romanian.

First, I demonstrated the A-Z Journal listing, opening 2 journal articles with the HINARI yellow lettering quickly and successfully. Next, I demonstrated the subject listing of journals, and asked each participant to pick a journal article in a subject of their interest and open a journal article. As people had questions, Silvia and my translator walked around the room to provide help.

Next, I went into PubMed, demonstrated how to look for subjects, how to limit, and how to search by author. The class progressed quickly. From teaching database classes for many years, I could easily sense when my participants thoroughly understood a concept, and did not need further examples.

At the end of the class, Silvia gave out the certificates of HINARI completion for each participant. Each certificate included the names of the participant. We then had a group photo and the class ended.

Afterwards, I talked to Silvia and Liubovi about the training and they said they were very pleased with the training. (Since this Moldovan medical library is the Sister Library of all the North Carolina Medical Libraries, I had already been in Moldova ten days prior to this day of HINARI training. I provided other classes to the medical librarians, physicians, and medical residents. I provided training on evaluating medical Websites, marketing the library, STAT!Ref, Anatomy TV, MD Consult, and other topics.)

I would suggest that future HINARI training at this location involve “Evaluating Medical Websites,” “Becoming an Author,” and repeating the overview I did on HINARI for University Health Professionals who were not able to come to my training. (I think this is also what is needed at the Free University of Moldova, since their librarians are also so computer-literate.)

One outcome of this HINARI training and training on the other databases, is that Dr. Ababii, President of the Medical University and former Minister of Health for Moldova, has mandated the librarians to integrate HINARI and database training into the medical school’s curriculum.

Moldova photos

To top of page Queensland, Australia (August-September 2009)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator, MLA

ICML Course – ‘Authorship Skills'

Particulars of Workshop:

  • The 6-hour course was held in conjunction with the 2009 International Congress of Medical Librarianship, 31 August 2009 .
  • 10 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • Multiple choice, true false and open ended questions for 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 (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 useful and that time should be devoted to this material during the 4 day HINARI workshops or as a one day additional course.
Note: 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.

ICML Course – 'HINARI Training the Trainers'

Particulars of Workshop:

  • The 6-hour course was held in conjunction with the 2009 International Congress of Medical Librarianship, 01 September 2009
  • 8 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 organizations and consequently...
  • 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
    • become facilitators for HINARI distance learning courses
  • For those from HINARI eligible countries, the objectives were to
    • increase their baseline skills – as users and trainers for HINARI
    • introduce new tools that would be of use – MY NCBI, MY Collections, EndNoteWeb, Limits, etc.
  • The course material emphasized:
    • HINARI overview – general environment, background, eligibility/registration process, do's and don'ts
    • HINARI: the basics using the 'Short Course' – searching skills, HINARI website, Partner Publishers' websites, HINARI/PubMed, MY NCBI
    • Training materials overview
    • Funding options
    • 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)
  • 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 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 ; 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.

Queensland, Australia photos

To top of page Mongolia (October 3-10, 2009)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator, MLA

Particulars of Workshop:

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

  • 3 hour ‘short course’ (October 5 th) 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 WHO/WPRO Library.

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.

  • 4 day comprehensive HINARI workshop (October 6 th - 9 th) 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 were 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.

  • A 2 ½ hour 'short course' was conducted (October 10 th) 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.

Mongolia photos

To top of page Jamaica (February 22-25, 2010)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator, MLA

Particulars of Workshop:

From February 22nd to February 25th 2010, a ‘National Health Information/HINARI’ workshop was conducted at the University of West Indies/Mona Hopwood Computer Laboratory as part of the Medical Library Association’s Librarians Without Borders ® program:

  • 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.
  • The workshop was a collaborative effort of HINARI, University of West Indies/Mona, MLA Librarians Without Borders ® and PAHO.

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. For example, Mrs. Bandera taught PubMed from the perspective of health professionals based in Jamaica.
  • 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.
  • Many of the participants were pleased to learn how to complete ‘screen captures’ and this is not the first workshop where this has occurred.
  • One of the byproducts of the workshop was considerable networking by the participants. Several academic departments became aware of the UWI DSpace project 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.
  • For this workshop, I had to learn a considerable amount about Band 2 options as they apply to Jamaica and had to tweak some of the training material. We developed two new modules (Information Literacy and WHO Resources) and taught another for the 1 st time (Evidence-based Practice). The feedback on these modules was quite useful. Fortunately, English is the primary language and there were not translation issues.
  • 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.

Jamaica photos

To top of page Florida, USA (May 22, 2010)

Location: University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
Hinari Short Course
Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, e-library training coordinator

The course was conducted for the University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Certificate Program and included 43 participants with 27 from HINARI eligible countries. Basically, I taught a variation of the HINARI ‘Short Course’ including hands-on exercises. The course was tweaked somewhat to include options for the individuals from the non-eligible countries. Additional material covered included an overview of Open Access Journals including Internet links to these resources, plus ‘free full text’ options in PubMed and MY NCBI. Also noted was the ‘free full text[sb] AND keywords’ option when searching in PubMed.

This was the most diverse group I’ve taught including individuals from Northern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia. Thanks to the UF Marston Science Library for the use of their Teaching Lab.

The course is an example of the type of training that can be conducted at Universities based in industrialized countries that have links to individuals from HINARI eligible countries. In other words, I went less than 1 ½ miles from my house to teach HINARI! Participants would be either from courses taught at the University (such as this certificate course) or short term visitors or graduate students from eligible countries prior to their return to their home institutions.

Florida photos

To top of page Papua New Guinea (June 1-4, 2010)

Location: University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, PNG
Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, e-library training coordinator

We conducted a National HINARI Training Course for Health Personnel, Medical Librarians and Researchers at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG), Taurama Campus. Julius Dizon, Administrative Officer of the WHO/Western Pacific Regional Office Library, was the co-instructor and Dillie George, Medical Librarian, UPNG School of Medicine and Health Sciences, was the facilitator.

The 22 participants were a mix of physicians and registrars (residents), lecturers (medicine and nursing) and health information workers. The majority were from the UPNG School of Medicine and Health Sciences and Port Moresby General Hospital while others were from Department of Health, regional hospitals and universities, National Research Council and National AIDS Council Secretariat. Participants included the College’s Dean of Education and several senior lecturers.

These individuals had good Internet skills, with several bringing their own laptops. The venue was quite nice - new computers, spacious with window. The Internet access definitely was adequate for 85% of the time – some slow patches but nothing to alter the program (the University has a plan to increase the bandwidth within a month). Also, this is the first institution I have trained at with multiple wireless connections throughout the campus.

Besides the detailed overview of HINARI and HINARI/Pubmed, we spent additional time discussing ‘health information on the Internet’ and also taught the ‘Evidence-based Practice Resources for HINARI Users’, ‘Information Literacy’ and ‘WHO Resources’ modules (all were a success) plus the one day ‘Authorship Skills’ workshop. We worked with the local contacts to develop the curriculum.

Note – we also discussed the material in HINARI’s Reference Sources drop down menu. The clinicians, lecturers and registrars were very pleased to hear about the availability of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, Cochrane Library and other EBM resources, American Psychiatric Press textbooks and also EndNoteWeb! Periodically, participants would return to these resources to locate specific clinical information.

Initially, 1/3 of the participants did not know their institutional user name and password and many thought they had to register their institutions. All participants did come from registered institutions and this demonstrated the gap when an individual departs from a HINARI eligible institution without distributing this information.

The workshop had several by-products. These include the usual networking particularly by librarians but, equally importantly, support for small Internet lab in the hospital. This lack of hardware/Internet access was noted by the hospital physicians during the ‘marketing’ discussion. A key Department of Health administrator was taking the course and will be working toward resolving this situation.

Also, several UPNG main campus librarians, including the University Librarian, attended the ‘Information Literacy’ module. Afterward, we discussed how HINARI resources would be useful in the basic sciences and sometimes social sciences plus how OARE would be relevant for environmental sciences (as UPNG needs to register for this R4L resource).

June 07 Activities

This was followed up with a visit to the University Library on the following Monday where I presented an overview of use of e-journals as it applies to this library including Open Access journals. This included a discussion with key staff about how to access and organize e-journals. Finally, the University Librarian and I met with Chancellor who is trying to expand/enhance the University network and level of bandwidth. Note – we need to encourage University Medical Librarians to facilitate the use of HINARI on main campuses.

June 08 Activities

The last training activity was a repeat of Authorship Skills course on Tuesday with a brief HINARI overview. There were 27 participants with 2/3 being postgraduate students and 1/3 lecturers. Due to this makeup, I tailored some of material to the postgraduate group that have research projects to complete. These included an overview HINARI, the google generation searching strategies, how to evaluate websites and ‘read’ web addresses. One by-product was a discussion of MIT’s dspace project. One of the senior lecturers asked about developing an institutional repository and I was able to suggest this option. (A brief overview of this will be added to Module 1.2)

Due to the infrastructure and skills and enthusiasm of the participants plus the fact that English is the ‘language of education’, these workshops were as successful as any training I have conducted – not only for the UPNG participants but for those from other institutions.

The ‘word of mouth’ interest about HINARI reinforced this point. At the end of the final day of teaching, the UPNG Medical Librarian already had scheduled two short courses for the following week – for the Public Health faculty and the post-graduate students that had attended the Authorship Skills workshop. With the infrastructure and training skills of the Medical Librarian, the number of users at the UPNG will continue to grow. Also, several clinicians from the Port Moresby General Hospital had requested their user name and password and three participants from the comprehensive workshop have written about what they intend to do at their institutions.

New Guinea Photos

To top of page Nepal (September 28-30, 2010 and October 4-6, 2010)

Locations: National Health Education, Information and Communication Centre (NHEICC), Kathmandu; and Lumbini Eye Institute, Bhairahawa
Submitted by Lenny Rhine, e-library training coordinator

National Health Education, Information and Communication Centre (NHEICC) Workshop

The HINARI programme and related training workshops are linked to the 2015 Millennium Development Goals particularly:

GOAL 8: DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT/ Target F: in cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications.

These workshops are a combined effort of the NHEICC, WHO/Country Office, SEARO and the Medical Library Association (USA)/Librarians Without Borders® that is funded by a grant from the Elsevier Foundation.

The first two days of the NHEICC workshop was an ‘Advanced HINARI’ course – to reinforce and build on the skills of the participants who attended the August 2007 HINARI ‘Train the Trainers’ Workshop. 22 individuals attended these two days including 2 individuals serving as facilitators (Mr. Uttam Ratna Shakya & Ms. Gita Thapa).

Approximately two thirds of the participants had attended the initial workshop. The course work included an update of HINARI/PubMed (website changes, Limits, Advanced Searching) and a detailed overview of new HINARI training material. These new modules include ‘Evidence-based Practice Resources for HINARI Users, ‘E-book Resources for HINARI Users’ and ‘Information Literacy.’ The goal was to have the participants become knowledgeable of many of HINARI underutilized resources particularly those listed in the various drop down menus and also hone their skills. The two facilitators noted how they were not that aware of these additional resources and how the training benefitted them.

One third of the individuals were attending HINARI training for the first time. All of these librarians came from registered institutions and wanted to learn how to better use and promote HINARI. Since this was billed as an ‘Advanced HINARI’ course, they were at a disadvantage. While some basics were discussed and further training modules were suggested, the training experience was not the same as attending a regular workshop with all the hands-on activities.

In the evaluation, approximately one third of the participants from the workshop ‘somewhat agreed’ that the length of the course was appropriate and I suspect many of the first-time trainers noted this (as opposed to two thirds ‘agreeing’). In retrospect, we should have taught the HINARI Short Course the initial day and followed up with the ‘Advanced Training’. This would have enabled the new students to have the necessary skills to better understand the new materials.

One very useful byproduct of having a second workshop was the interaction between the various HINARI users and trainers within Kathmandu. During this workshop, there was an ongoing dialog as individuals discussed the general issues for effectively utilizing HINARI in their institutions. There is an agreement to develop a HINARI-Nepal Users Group and a Google Group is being created.

One invaluable idea noted by Macha Bhai Shakya/Patan Hospital was the use of the Opera web-browser to access HINARI. By using this browser, the password is not displayed but the user is able to access all components of HINARI. This eliminates the need to distribute the password information to the numerous users. At the Hospital, Macha has loaded this on all the public access computers, numerous departmental computers and individual laptops.

The third day of the NHEICC workshop highlighted the ‘Authorship Skills’ training material; again, there were 22 participants. These individuals were a combination of clinicians and researchers interested in publishing and librarians from the initial workshop. This course covered modules titles ‘How to Write a Scientific Paper’, Intellectual Property – Copyright and Plagiarism’, ‘Authorship Skills Web-bibliography’ and a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ discussion. Hands on skills included the writing of a structured abstract, assigning of keywords to that abstract and, after reading an abstract, identifying/justifying of a journal for submission of that article.

As in the two-day course, there were a significant number of individuals that had not received HINARI training previously. After completing the Authorship Skills training material, we conducted a one-hour overview of HINARI that also noted how to locate/use the numerous training modules. While this was useful, the depth is limited compared to completing a formal course.

For the instructor, one gratifying byproduct was being able to hear about the developments/increased usage of HINARI at some of the institutions. These developments were mentioned during the ‘general issues’ discussions. In the three year period since the previous workshop, the Patan Hospital had gone from Internet access via a modem to a dedicated line from the ISP and over 40 workstations in the library and a separate learning resource center. Chandra Bhusan Yadav, the librarian from the National Health Research Council noted significant usage increases at that institute.

Lumbini Eye Institute Workshop

A second workshop was conducted at Lumbini Eye Institute, Bhairahawa. Ms. Sudha Risal Sharma was the instrumental local contact who coordinated the initial communication and agreement with the Institute. This was the first HINARI training conducted outside of Kathmandu and was well appreciated by the participants and the Institute.

This three day course primarily was a ‘Train the Trainers’ workshop. It extensively covered all the key components of HINARI (website, HINARI PubMed, Do’s and Don’ts, training materials) so that the participants would be able to conduct training upon returning to their institutions. Also, the key modules from the Advanced Training were incorporated including ‘Evidence-based Practice Resources for HINARI Users, ‘E-book Resources for HINARI Users’ and ‘Information Literacy. During the afternoon of the final day, there was brief overview of the ‘Authorship Skills’ training material as this was quite relevant for some of the participants.

The 23 participants basically were split between librarians from the regional hospitals and medical colleges plus the surgical ophthalmology residents from the LEI. What was unique is that all the residents brought their laptops and used the LEI wifi link to access the Internet. While individuals had attended workshops with laptops before, this is the first time 50% of the participants had this option.

The librarians have the ‘trainer’ or ‘resource person’ perspective while the residents obviously were ‘users’ (especially since many are conducting research projects). During the course of the various presentations, specific points were made toward the information or learning needs of each group. Having the two distinct groups attend the workshop worked out quite well.

At this workshop, there were three facilitators plus the instructor. We were able to insure that the students completed the hands on activities properly.

It is a pleasure working with Uttam and Gita as we have established an excellent rapport that assists in the participants learning the material successfully. They know exactly when to summarize a concept or two in Nepali -to insure that everyone understands the material. The staff of the LEI did an excellent job with all the local arrangements (breaks, breakfasts and lunches, Internet access including the wifi option)

The NHEICC support also was invaluable for all three workshops– in obtaining the ‘local costs’ funding from the WHO/Country Office and insuring that all the background work/details were completed in an efficient and timely manner.

Note: On 07 October 2010, an additional ‘HINARI Overview for Registered Institutions’ presentation was conducted at the Patan Hospital - for the approximately 40 teaching faculty and first year medical students. This presentation also included information on the HINARI E-books and other sources of textbooks on the Internet. This was quite relevant for this group as the hospital’s Medical College program is in its initial year.

Nepal Photos

To top of page Brussels, Belgium (October 18-22, 2010)

A 3-1/2 day workshop was conducted in conjunction with the Stimulate International Training Program. This program is sponsored by the Vrjie Universiteit Brussel. Fifteen librarians from low-income countries are participating this year with ten being from HINARI eligible institutions. The program covered the accommodations and internal travel costs for the instructor.

In the 3-1/2 days of instruction, the following material was covered:

  • Internet resources and searching including Boolean logic, health information on the Internet, evaluation of web resources, DSpace and open access journals
  • Information literacy and marketing
  • Research for Life Programs overview
  • HINARI Website, partner publishers resources, review of HINARI and PubMed training material
  • PubMed website, limits, history and accessing full-text resources, MY NCBI
  • Authorship skills--how to write a scientific page, copyright and plagiarism, keys for effective writing, web-bibliography, frequently asked questions discussion
  • Managing change

As a group, the participants were hardworking, knowledgeable and inquisitive. This led to many useful discussions including tangents that were relevant for the participants. In terms of HINARI, those that are eligible learned how to be trainers and can use these skills when returning to their institutions. Although this group had a different makeup than usual HINARI training workshops, the evaluations were as positive (if not more) than other workshops. The only negative comments were from the participants from ineligible countries (India and Philippines) as they wished their countries were eligible.

Perhaps the two most intriguing participants were two librarians from Cuba (Cristina Ledon Tedros and Yelina Piedra Salomon). For individuals who had not traveled outside of the island, their English was excellent plus they were very knowledgeable and were some of the principal contributors to the discussions (along with a Hieu Theiu – a librarian from the Thai Nguyen University in Vietnam). One of the Cuban librarians works in a fisheries research institute. After contacting the AGORA staff, we were very pleased to find out that this band 2 institute in Cuba would have access to 62 of the 65 titles listed under the ‘fisheries/aquatic sciences’ subject category. The cost would be $1000 per year.

Note – Band 2 means that the annual per capita gross national income of the country is between $1601 and $4600 and that each institution pays $1000 per year for access to each of the R4L programs. In some cases, the publishers have chosen to opt out of specific countries and this is why 13 of the fisheries journals would not be accessible.

Other activities with positive outcomes

While in Brussels, I also traveled to the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine on 21 October - to make an overview presentation to 40 MPH or P.HD students plus 10 faculty members. This is an institute dedicated to training individuals (predominantly MPH degrees) from low-income countries and conducting numerous research projects in these countries.

Approximately 90% of the students are from HINARI eligible countries. For 2010-11, the teaching is in French so the students are predominantly from Francophone sub-Saharan African countries plus Haiti. This overview was very well received as the students understood that, after graduation, they would continue to have access to many relevant e-journals and other resources. Several of the students noted how they already had used HINARI when at their institutions.

Other positive outcomes were the faculty realizing that their students’ access to current information will not end when they graduate. For example, the veterinary medicine faculty plans to send information about HINARI to their graduates so that these individuals can access the numerous ‘animal culture’ e-journals available in HINARI.

Also, Dirk Shoonbaert, the ITM Librarian, plans to conduct ‘Short Courses’ with the students as they near graduation and return to their respective institutions. This training is exactly what was envisioned when the ‘Train the Trainers’ Course for individuals whose institutions have linkages with HINARI eligible organizations was developed. This type of training could be ongoing with each new group of students at the ITM.

After completing this trip and the training in Brussels, I traveled to Amsterdam for a Saturday morning meeting with Tilly Minee, Ingelbart Nagel of Royal Tropical Institute/Netherlands (KIT) and Ylann Schemm from the Elsevier Foundation. KIT may have even more programs in developing countries than the ITM. For example, the organization has an ongoing training program for a 150+ network of librarians in low-income countries

The 90 minute meeting was quite fruitful and emphasized the different strategies for training the students at KIT plus how to promote HINARI to their numerous contacts from various research and information programs. Currently, Ingelbart is completing the distance learning ‘Short Course’ and will begin training students near the time of their completion of the degree program plus she plans develop means to promote HINARI and the other R4L programs to the institute’s contacts.

This meeting occurred on the morning of the 29 th day of travel and the 2 nd part of this document was written while flying from Amsterdam to Orlando. It is time to return to Florida and leave the cool and wet weather of Northern Europe.

Brussels Photos

To top of page Guyana (February 8-11, 2011)

Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, Daniel Dollar; 15 February 2011

A four-day National HINARI Training Course was conducted for Health Personnel, Medical Librarians and Researchers at the University of Guyana (UG), Turkeyen Campus. Lenny Rhine, Coordinator, E-Library Training Initiative, Librarians Without Borders ®/MLA and Daniel Dollar, Collection Development Librarian, Cushing Medical Library, Yale University were the co-instructors. Mrs. Gwyneth George, University Librarian, UG and Ms. Carol Parris, Coordinator of the Virtual Health Library, UG were the local contacts and key for the very successful development of this workshop. The assistance of Mr. Ryan Cummings, UG computer technician, was invaluable. This course was sponsored by the Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization, the Librarians Without Borders ®/Medical Library Association (USA) and the Elsevier Foundation.

The main objective of this workshop was to extensively train key institutional representatives so that these individuals would have the knowledge to promote HINARI and educate the users at their respective organizations. Secondary objectives were to instruct the participants about health information on the Internet, searching strategies and underutilized HINARI resources (e.g. evidence-based practice tools and e-books).

The 30 participants were a mix of physicians, lecturers (medicine and nursing) and information professionals from the three counties in Guyana – Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice. In several cases, line staff attended from smaller institutions. The majority was from the UG particularly the professional library staff, Ministry of Health and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation with others from regional hospitals and universities, the National Library and the National AIDS Programme Secretariat. Participants included the Dean and Assistant Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences and several senior lecturers.

Compared to other workshops, the participation by the various units of the Ministry of Health was significantly higher. Plus, the attendance of the Dean and Assistant Dean for almost all modules demonstrated their support for the use and inclusion of this material in the curriculums. Since this is a small country, almost all health-related institutions were represented at the course.

Most participants had good computer skills with approximately 40% bringing their own laptops. The venue was quite adequate – a little tight with all the participants. For the Authorship Skills day, the instruction was moved to a larger lecture room to accommodate a bigger audience. The move was rewarded with 53 participants. A brief overview of HINARI was given for those who had not attended the 1 st 3 days of the workshop. The Internet access definitely was adequate for 95% of the time – with a few slow patches but nothing to alter the program - plus there was WI-FI access for those with laptops. For those in the back of the training room, the screen was difficult to view although, once they received the CDs, these individuals were able to view the PowerPoint presentations on the screen.

Initially, 1/3 of the participants did not know their institutional user name and password and several thought they had to register their institutions. All except 3 participants came from registered institutions and the process for these organizations has been completed.

Besides the detailed overview of HINARI and HINARI/PubMed, we conducted training on ‘Health Information on the Internet’, ‘Searching Skills’ and ‘Evaluation of Internet Resources’, ‘Marketing HINARI Resources’ and also taught the ‘Evidence-based Practice Resources for HINARI Users’, ‘E-book Resources for HINARI Users’ and ‘Information Literacy’ modules (all were well received) plus devoted one day to the ‘Authorship Skills’ modules. We also completed an extensive overview of the training material and how it can be used in instructional settings. When developing the course, we worked with the local contacts to develop the specific curriculum.

Note – we also highlighted the material in HINARI’s Reference Sources drop down menu and new access point for the growing list of e-books. The College of Medicine lecturers were quite pleased to hear about the availability of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine, the additional e-books being added, Cochrane Library and other EBM resources and also EndNoteWeb. We defined this material as ‘orphaned resources’ – as most of the participants primarily think of HINARI as a program for access to health-related e-journals.

We also had a valuable discussion of the three ‘interface’ prototypes that are being developed by HINARI. This was an opportunity to get invaluable feedback from a users’ group. Key points were: develop a new interface that would be from top to bottom—header, search box and browseable lists by content type (including e-books), include a feedback box, add a home link and insure that the interface includes links to PubMed and the training material. The participants mentioned that they would like to see a draft of the revised interface and comment on this version.

The workshop had several by-products, including the usual networking particularly by librarians from various disciplines (e.g. nursing education programs). On the global level, we are planning to set up a User Group network (Guyana HINARI Users) for dissemination of information and discussion between the participants. Another possible network may develop between the University of Guyana Libraries and Yale University Libraries as a result of the workshop.

Other key points discussed included how HINARI resources would be useful in the basic sciences and possibly social sciences plus how OARE would be relevant for environmental sciences (as UG will register for this R4L resource).

At the end of the workshop, there also was a brief discussion about one of the survey questions - ‘length was appropriate for course content’ where, in this survey and most others, approximately 40 % of the participants reply ‘somewhat agree.’ These responses appear to be related to the broad range of skills of the participants. Some need more time to absorb the presentations and complete the assignments while others are able to move at a faster pace. Balancing the needs of all the participants is complicated although a slower pace of the lectures would be useful and easy to adopt.

Guyana photos

To top of page Kingdoms of Swaziland (March 22-25, 2011)

Research4Life Training
Location: University of Swaziland, Mbabane (Agriculture) Campus
Submitted by Lenny Rhine, April 13, 2011

We conducted a National HINARI Training Course for Agriculture and Health Staff from the Kingdoms of Swaziland (18 participants) and Lesotho (6 participants). The participants primarily were from two Universities and evenly split between lecturers and librarians. Two physicians from the Royal Memorial Hospital and three lecturers from Colleges of Nursing also attended.

This workshop was a collaborative effort between the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA) and Librarians Without Borders ®/Medical Library Association (USA). Funding for the workshop primarily was from a Gates Foundation grant to ITOCA (for agriculture resources training) and was supplemented by the WHO/AFRO office and the Elsevier Foundation (for LWB segment).

Michael Chimalizeni of ITOCA was the co-instructor. All the participants were present for 50% of the modules and, for the other 50%, were split into groups by discipline. The split was 12 per discipline. The training material was a combination of modules used by ITOCA for R4L workshops and HINARI courses.

The workshop itself was successful but a bit complicated. While the facilities were quite acceptable, the access to the Internet was problematic. For approximately 1/3 of the time, it was too slow while, for the remainder, it was acceptable. Being aware of this potential problem, we reorganized the schedule to have the hands-on modules during the ‘low-use’ Internet periods. What actually occurred is that we’d have the participants complete the online assignments when the Internet was acceptable and then we’d lecture when the Internet was too slow. This broke up the flow of teaching.

The other complication is the nature of a R4L workshop as we have constituencies with different information needs. For 2 days, the participants are broken into topic related groups. There is more HINARI material to teach so this gets to be somewhat rushed and this was exacerbated by the Internet situation.

All the material was covered although there not time for the online exercises for the ‘e-book resources for HINARI users’ module. We did have sufficient time to cover extensively the ‘Health information on the Internet’ module plus searching skills and Google vs. Google Scholar. The participants are particularly interested in these concepts as it enables them to efficiently identify and utilize relevant material that is on the Internet. For example, an Environmental Health lecturer located an Environmental Health textbook from Hesperian Press that will be invaluable to his teaching.

Overall, the students were enthusiastic, knowledgeable and a ‘fun’ group to work with. We were able to establish a good rapport. Also, the two instructors enjoyed working with each other. In the course evaluation, the only average evaluation was the ‘Length was appropriate for the course content’ where ½ the participants said ‘agree’ and ½ noted ‘somewhat agree.’ This was consistent with other evaluations as it is difficult to pace the course for participants with different needs. In the future, I plan to send the PDF of the HINARI Short Course prior to the course as this should be useful for those with less background.

Per usual, there were several byproducts from the workshop. The most dynamic was the interaction between the lecturers and library professionals from the University of Swaziland particularly those from the agriculture discipline. After several discussions, there is a better understanding of the training that the library staff can do and how this training needs to be incorporated into the course curriculums.

Swaziland Kingdoms photos

To top of page South Africa (March 28-31, 2011)

Development of Online Courses for the ITOCA Moodle Server
Location: ITOCA Office, Centurion, South Africa
Submitted by Lenny Rhine, April 13, 2011

The goals for this week’s activities were to load 3 distance learning courses on the ITOCA Moodle Server, cross train several staff members on how to create, update and manage these online courses plus develop a marketing strategy for these courses. By making these baseline skills courses available to their sub-Saharan Africa constituency, ITOCA will be able to train end users of the 3 programs. Often, ITOCA has more requests for participation in workshops that they can accommodate. This would be a training option for these individuals.

ITOCA staff involved in these activities were Blessing Chataira, Chipo Msengezi and Michael Chimalizeni. The specific courses included the already developed HINARI Short Course, the jointly developed AGORA Short Course (agriculture research) and the TEEAL Short Course (hard drive essential electronic agricultural library).

Within the allotted 4 days, we were able to accomplish all the tasks- see moodle.itoca.org Besides constructing the courses and transferring the specific files, this included learning how to create new modules, develop a grading scale and master the nuances of managing these courses online. The process was a learning experience for all the participants including the supposed instructor.

Since ITOCA has an extensive network of users in sub-Saharan Africa, they will be able to communicate with numerous potential participants. The initial plan is to conduct a series of online course – 1 week to register and 4 weeks to complete the course. Future plans include developing a Short Course for the OARE program (environmental research).

Centurion, South Africa photos

To top of page Ethiopia (October 3-4, 2011)

Location: Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

Sponsors: Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC), Librarians Without Borders ® /Medical Library Association (LWB), Addis Ababa University (AAU), Elsevier Foundation and
the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)

Trainers: Carla Hagstrom (University of Toronto Gerstein Library), Jeanna Hough (Halton Health Care Services Health Sciences Library), Sandra Kendall (Mt. Sinai Hospital Health Sciences Library) and Lenny Rhine (LWB).

Submitted by: Lenny Rhine, November 2, 2011

A series of six workshops were conducted at the Addis Ababa University and Black Lion Hospital. This training was a collaborative effort between TAAAC and LWB. The TAAAC Library Program was initiated in 2008 as part of the broader collaboration between the organization and the Black Lion Hospital and its educational components. Via the E-Library Training Initiative, the LWB has been conducting HINARI related training since 2007.

The overall goals for these workshops were to provide training in information retrieval skills, HINARI and other health resources on the Internet, evidence based medicine and web design for medical librarians and medical professionals. These training priorities were developed in conjunction with Alemayehu Bisrat, Chief medical librarian of the Black Lion Hospital Library and Sandra Kendall, Director of the Mount Sinai Hospital Sidney Liswood Health Sciences Library. Besides focusing on the various HINARI e-resources, the training also stressed the concepts and application of evidence-based medicine and the resources available from the Ptolemy Project, the University of Toronto's electronic health resources. These resources are available to Black Lion Hospital physicians and key library staff. Most of the workshops included hands-on activities.

The training activities included two 3-day workshops (for Health Library Workers and Professional Librarians – including medical librarians from Makele and Jimma Universities), a 2-day workshop (Web Design) and 1-day workshop (Nursing) and several Short Courses (Authorship Skills and Resources for Residents/Doctors). The participants received CD-ROMs that contained all the training material plus access via www.taaac.com - under Programs, select Library Science Program for access to most of the training materials and agenda.

A majority of the workshops were conducted in the ICT Laboratory of the Addis Ababa University Kennedy Library. This facility has 20 desktop computers and reliable Internet with sufficient bandwidth to access the various online resources and download full-text documents .

To deal with the numerous constituencies and voluminous amount of training material, the trainers had to focus on the needs of each workshop’s participants. For example, the participants of the 1-day Nursing workshop were numerous faculty members and 2nd year students. Since the students are starting their thesis projects, the workshop stressed the use of HINARI and various strategies for literature searches and the organization of research papers.

In total, the workshops trained 110 individuals. An additional informal training session was held at the AAU Technology Library and focused on access to e-books and the use of HINARI as a resource for the science disciplines at AAU. In all the workshops, the participants were attentive and interested in learning the material. The trainers and participants felt that some of the courses were insufficient in length. This is a recurring issue from previous HINARI workshops and needs to be addressed in the future. Some of the problem is caused by having participants with different skill levels.

Special thanks to Alemayehu Bisrat and Sandra Kendall for their considerable assistance with developing the courses, grouping the participants for various workshops and organizing the day to day activities. Also thanks for coordinating the breaks and lunches and other logistical issues.

This training is only one aspect of the ongoing TAAAC Library Program for the Black Lion Hospital Medical Library. For example, the program has shipped over 2,000 current textbooks to the Medical Library. Due to this ongoing partnership, the support for the Medical Library will continue and build on the recent training and other activities.

Ethiopia photos

To top of page Belize (January 23-26, 2012)

Location: George Price Convention Center, Belmopan
Submitted by Lenny Rhine, February 8, 2012

A 3 day National HINARI Training Course for Health Personnel and Medical Librarians was conducted at the George Price Conference Center, Belmopan from January 23 to January 25. Lenny Rhine, Coordinator, E-Library Training Initiative, MLA Librarians Without Borders®, was the instructor. Local arrangements were ably coordinated by Emir Castaneda, PAHO Country Office and Joel Rancharan, University of Belize (UB) Library.   

The 23 participants were a mix of information professionals predominantly from the UB (three campuses), Ministry of Health and the Belize National Library Service and Information System (BNLSIS) plus several UB faculty members, librarians from the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, PAHO/WHO Country Office and Belmopan Public Library and a physician from the regional hospital.

In the 3-day workshop, the principal modules covered included searching skills, evaluation of health information on the Internet, health resources on the Internet, HINARI website, HINARI/PubMed (website, limits, history, and advanced search) and MY NCBI accounts. Also discussed were the Dos and Don’ts of HINARI, HINARI training material and tools, and how to market/publicize HINARI and Internet resources.

Since Belize is a Group B country and some of the individuals came from institutions that had not paid the annual fee (although this could be rectified within the next few months), some of the material was modified. This was to give the participants sufficient knowledge of resources that are freely available via the Internet.  Particularly noted were consumer health/patient education materials (e.g. Medline Plus), sources of e-books and evidence-based medicine resources. 

The most unique aspect of this workshop was the excellent skills of the participants. After each PowerPoint presentation, the individuals were able to properly complete all the assignments within the allotted time frame. This was noted in the evaluations where all except one of the participants agreed that the length of time for course content was inappropriate (which is not the case in many other workshops).  During the discussion of the marketing exercises, the participants developed tangible plans for promoting HINARI particularly at the University of Belize. This further demonstrated how these individuals understood the value of HINARI and related Internet resources and the importance of using the material at their respective institutions. It also was a lively group that included many participants who asked critical questions and contributed to the numerous discussions. One key point that was stressed was that networking with their units, departments and other agencies is of paramount importance to improve communication and information sharing.  

A subsequent Authorship Skills session was conducted in Belize City on January 27. A smaller group was selected from the participants of the initial workshop.  The goal was to train individuals who are in the position to teach others in their respective institutions. The small group also facilitated open discussion on institutional memory loss and improvement as per the national institutions’ work plans for 2012. The material was well received and the hands-on exercises ably completed by the 7 participants.  Of particular interest was the material on copyright and plagiarism. 

We also discussed the possible development of a national digital archive using the DSpace software. It included an invaluable discussion between the director of the BNLSIS and individuals from the University of Belize. These two institutions plan to better collaborate so that the BNLSIS obtains the required documents and ultimately builds an accessible digital library of material published by Belizean authors.

Belize photos

To top of page Windhoek, Namibia (March 12–15, 2012)

Location: University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia
Submitted by Lenny Rhine, April 11, 2012

A three-and-a-half-day National Research4Life Training Course for Librarians was conducted at the University of Namibia (UNAM) from March 12 to 15. Lenny Rhine, MLA Librarians Without Borders® and Michael Chimalizeni, Information and Outreach Training Centre for Africa (ITOCA) were the instructors. The workshop was sponsored by these two organizations and UNAM with support from the WHO/AFRO Health Sciences Library and Documentation Centre. Local arrangements were ably coordinated by Chenjerai Mabhiza, Jacobina Mwiiyale and Bravismore Mumanyi, University of Namibia Library. The facilities were very professional with reliable Internet access and the daily logistics were well managed.

The 28 participants were all information professionals, predominantly from the UNAM library system (three campuses) with several individuals from the Ministry of Education, National Library and Archives Services, which includes a Community Libraries division. Regarding health information, one of the participants is the librarian at the health campus. Two individuals from the National Library and Archives Services also focused on health as their 63 rural libraries serve as the health information focal points for community clinics and regional hospitals. For the numerous academic reference librarians, it was critical to cross train them in accessing information from the various Research4Life3 (R4L) programs. This group was equally divided between the two tracks: health and agriculture. Fifty percent of the training was completed jointly with the other instruction being devoted to the specific disciplines. Joint sessions included basic hardware and Internet access (bandwidth) issues, searching skills, evaluation of Internet information, Google vs. Google Scholar, the Do’s and Don’ts of the R4L programs, training material, information literacy, and how to market/publicize R4L and electronic resources. Also included was an overview presentation of the R4L programs, noting the similarities (website design and access options) and differences (database searching), and a summary of Mendeley.

Specific HINARI topics included health resources on the Internet, with an emphasis on consumer health resources, the HINARI website, HINARI/PubMed (website, limits, history, and advanced search), MY NCBI accounts, and e-book resources. We also noted that HINARI is an excellent resource for basic sciences e-journals via the "Find journals by subject" list. For AGORA, the key topics included the AGORA website, searching in CAB Abstracts and Scopus, and an overview of TEEAL (the hard drive–based journal-access program for agriculture institutions).

Namibia has just migrated from being a Group B country to Group A country, a positive outcome, since this eliminates the $1000 per year fee for each institution. Some of the publishers have retained their exclusions, so it was critical to note these limitations.

The most unique aspects of this workshop were the excellent skills of the participants, the adherence to the schedule including in the opening a.m. session, and the lack of lengthy opening and closing sessions. Per the skills, the individuals were able to properly complete all the assignments within the allotted timeframe. This was noted in the HINARI participants’ evaluations, where 70 percent of the participants agreed that the length of time for course content was appropriate (which is not the case in many other workshops).  

During the discussion of marketing exercises, the participants developed tangible plans for promoting the R4L material and also the commercial electronic resources at UNAM.  This further demonstrated how these individuals understood the value of the programs’ material and related Internet resources and the importance of using these at their respective institutions.

A subsequent HINARI Short Course was conducted at the Namibian Ministry of Health and Social Services. It focused on the information needs of the principal researchers of a unit that conducts research for the effective use of health services and resources within the public sector of Namibia. Consequently, all the presentations and hands on activities were geared toward finding e-journals and HINARI/PubMed searches on the broad topic of "health services research." This specialized training was quite useful for the three participants, and they are planning to train individuals in their respective departments. We were unable to schedule a training session for the public hospital. Several individuals trained in the initial workshop are planning to conduct such training in the future.

Namibia photos

To top of page Nepal (September 28-October 13, 2012)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, October 18, 2012

From September 28 to October 13, Lenny Rhine participated in numerous HINARI and Research4Life training activities in Nepal. These activities were supported by funding from the WHO Country Office for Nepal and the Elsevier Foundation grant to the Librarians Without Borders ®/Medical Library Association. Logistical support was ably supplied by staff from the National Health Education, Information and Communication Center, Ministry of Health and Population, Nepal.

On September 28, a Research4Life Master Trainer workshop was conducted at the WHO Country Office for Nepal. The goal of this workshop was to cross- train individuals so that they would be able to conduct workshops for HINARI, AGORA, OARE or a combination of the programs. The similarities (website interface) and differences (keyword searching tools) of the programs were detailed. Via hands on exercises, different training scenarios were examined.

Six individuals attended this workshop and now are capable of conducting such training within Nepal and also the SEARO region. We also discussed how to further develop the Nepal R4L users group – to be noted later.

On September 30, an hour long presentation was conducted at the KIST Medical College Nepal. 25 lecturers and students attended the presentation which highlighted keys to searching in HINARI/PubMed and also health information on the Internet. We also completed some live demonstrations at the end of the session.

From October 5-7, a regional ‘train the trainers’ workshop was conducted in Pokhara. Mr. Uttam Shakya was the co-instructor. While most of the 15 participants were from the local region, some individuals came from Bhairahawa and Chitwan - 200 KM in distance. The focus of the workshop was to strengthen/enhance the skills of these health information professionals from active HINARI institutions – keyword searching and evaluation of Internet based health information, Google vs. Google Scholar, searching in HINARI/PubMed and MY NCBI, E-book Resources and particularly other health information resources on the Internet. Also included was an overview of the similarities and differences of the HINARI, AGORA and OARE websites. One individual from the Institute of Forestry/Pokhara attended and completed similar activities in the AGORA database. Most of the participants had good baseline skills (computer and HINARI related) and were able to proceed at a steady pace through the numerous hands-on activities. The workshop concluded with a review of the HINARI training material, the Do’s and Don’ts of HINARI and a discussion of marketing/promotion activities for HINARI and related health information on the Internet.

One minor glitch was the lack of access to HINARI for two morning sessions – as the login system was not functioning and we were 3 hours ahead of the staff in Geneva. Fortunately, this was not during the initial day where the focus is on accessing the HINARI website and HINARI/PubMed.

From October 10-12, a second regional ‘train the trainers’ workshop was conducted in Biratnagar with Mr. Shakya again being the co-instructor. 16 individuals attended this workshop. Most were health information professionals from colleges or hospitals from the region plus several individuals from the District Public Health Office and an instructor from a nursing campus. What was unique about this group was that 80% had never used HINARI nor were from registered institutions. By the end of the workshop, all of the institutions had registered for HINARI.

Due to the skill level of this group, a different teaching strategy was employed by the instructions. First, the participants completed numerous hands on activities including a set of review exercises on the final day. Second, most of the presentations were translated/summarized in Nepali. This methodology was used to insure that the participants would obtain the baseline skills necessary for HINARI. The key modules included searching skills, the HINARI website, HINARI/PubMed (searching and links to full-text articles, filters and history options), Health information on the Internet, E-book resources from HINARI and the Internet. Also discussed were the HINARI training material, the Do’s and Don’ts and (briefly) the marketing and promotion activities.

These participants were hardworking and focused on learning the new skills. By the third day, the trainers noted how, in completing the E-book resources exercises, the skill level of the participants had increased significantly. In the surveys, all except two of the participants checked agree for the ‘length was appropriate for the course content’. This is an indication that the right level of training was conducted with sufficient time for the participants to learn the skills.

On October 13, an AGORA presentation was conducted at the Himalaya College of Agriculture Science and Technology. This was to a small group including the Director, Librarian and 5 post-graduate students. The institution already had registered for AGORA and HINARI but these individuals did not have the current usernames and passwords (now supplied). The reception to the AGORA presentation was very positive (as the students understood the value having access to research material). Mr. Shakya has been invited back to make a presentation to the full faculty.

Special note has to be made of the Nepal R4l Users Group discussion at the Master Trainer workshop (and also followed up at a luncheon meeting). Numerous potential activities were discussed (including developing a hybrid English/Nepali distance learning course, marketing/promoting of HINARI and the other Research4Life programs). Possible options for funding also were discussed. There is potential for this group to be the model for national Users groups in other countries.

Nepal photos

To top of page Vietman (October 26-November 1, 2012)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, November 14, 2012

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the National Office of Intellectual Property of Viet Nam collaborated with the Librarians Without Borders ®/Medical Library Association (LWB) to conduct three workshops in Hanoi, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City, October 26 to November 1, 2012.

Titled the National TISC Workshops on Access to and Use of Patent and Non-Patent Data, the training was conducted by Alex Riechel (Consultant, Innovation and Technology Support Section, WIPO) and Lenny Rhine (Coordinator, E-Library Training Initiative, LWB). The focus of these one-day workshops was a discussion of the Research4Life resources (HINARI, AGORA, OARE and ARDI) and related search tools and the use of WIPO’s patent databases (specifically Patentscope). The objectives were to disseminate information about the various resources and give the participants sufficient skills to utilize them.

The first phase of the workshop was an overview of the Research4Life programs discussing their similarities and differences plus the use of non-patent databases (HINARI/PubMed, AGORA/CAB Abstracts, OARE/Environmental Index, Summon Search). The 2 nd phase of the workshop was the use of patent databases for searching with a focus on the Freedom to Operate Search in WIPO’s Patentscope Database (a free tool for searching international and national patent collections).

In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, over 60 individuals with another 35 in Da Nang attended the day-long workshops. The National Office of Intellectual Property of Viet Nam did an excellent job with the logistics as each venue was quite nice and included a first-rate public address system and qualified translators.

The structure of the programs was somewhat different than the regular Research4Life workshops. Instead of presentations followed by online activities by the participants, these workshops were a series of lectures followed by demonstrations that were displayed on a large screen. What was critical for the success of the demonstrations was obtaining relevant searches for the various databases.

Regarding the Research4Life programs, several participants were from institutions that were registered. A number lacked the username and password of their institutions or their organizations was not registered. Via emails to the help desks of the various programs, these issues have been sorted out. In other cases, the individuals were given the instructions on how to register their institutions.

As previously noted, the format was different than the norm for the non-patent databases material. This made the initial workshop somewhat daunting. We lacked knowledge about the information needs of the participants and also how much material could be covered in the one-day workshop.

What was essential was finding a way to interact with the participants including those who were using the translation services. In all three venues and particularly Ho Chi Minh City, we were able to identify the information needs of several participants and used this information in the various keyword search demonstrations. After the completing the initial workshop, the following ones flowed more smoothly as the trainers had a better feel for the group and the flow of the material. (Special thanks to Alex for his assistance in completing the non-patent database searches that were displayed on the screen).

The objectives of these one-day workshops were to expose a large group to the non-patent and patent databases and resources and teach the participants the necessary baseline skills. Additional training time would result in a more detailed understanding of these resources. While probably not feasible with a large group and the lecture/demonstration format, the participants would have benefited from having hands-on experiences with the various databases. Overall, the three workshops were quite successful in meeting the primary objectives.

Vietnam photos

To top of page Ethiopa (February 12-14, 2013)

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, February 20, 2013

A three day National HINARI ‘Train the Trainers’ Course for Information Professionals was conducted at Addis Ababa University, John F. Kennedy Memorial Library from February 12-14, 2013.  The workshop was supported by the WHO Regional Office for Africa and Librarians Without Borders®/Medical Library Association and hosted by the Addis Ababa University. Lenny Rhine, Coordinator, E-Library Training Initiative/LWB, was the instructor assisted by Alemayehu Bisrat, Director of Medic al Library, Black Lion Hospital.  Local arrangements were ably coordinated and facilitated by Mr. Mesfin Gezahegn (Director of the University Library), Mr. Alemayehu Bisrat and Mr. Bahailu Jemaneh of the University and technical supports was provided from the ICT center.   

The 25 participants were a mix of information professionals predominantly from the Addis Ababa University campuses – Main, Health, Nursing, Technology and Veterinary Medicine, other health related Universities in Addis Ababa and key librarians from Jimma, Gondar and Dire Dawa Universities. Also attending were 3 Pharmacists from the School of Graduate Studies and a librarian from the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology as that institution has programs relating to numerous health-related disciplines.

In the 3 day workshop, the principal modules covered were searching skills, evaluation of health information on the Internet, health resources on the Internet, HINARI website, HINARI/PubMed (website, limits, history, and advanced search), MY NCBI accounts, e-books resources for HINARI users and evidence-based practice resources for HINARI users.  Also discussed were the Do’s and Don’ts of HINARI, HINARI training material and tools, how to market/publicize HINARI and Internet resources and information literacy.

Since Ethiopia is a Group A country with few Publisher exclusions, almost all the program’s resources are available to the registered universities. Only one institution needed to register for HINARI although some will be registering for the sister programs.

What was unique about this group of participants was the positive perspective on learning and everyone’s ability to complete the exercises during the allotted time frame.   We were able to finish all the training material during the three day workshop.

One specific positive outcome was the training of three pharmacy post-graduate students. They noted that the workshop was invaluable for their current research projects (including the Zotero short course) and how others in their program should receive similar training in the basics of HINARI and Zotero. This training could be incorporated into the curriculum as part of a research methods course.

Also, the three librarians from Jimma, Gondar and Dire Dawa University found the training to be quite useful so that these R4L resources can be better utilized at their institutions. We are discussing the development of a distance learning course to train library staff at these universities.

A series of mini-workshops also were held during this week. On February 11, a HINARI short course was conducted for eight students and faculty of the new Family Medicine residency program at Black Lion Hospital. The workshop focused on the e-journal and evidence-based medicine resources available from HINARI. Also discussed were the e-resources available from the University of Toronto through Ptolemy project. The timing was excellent as the faculty learned what resources are available and their use will be incorporated into the program’s curriculum.

On February 15th, a reference/citation management software called Zotero was presented for 15 professional librarians of the University who engaged in doing research. During the afternoon of the same day, 35 graduate students of the department of health informatics participated in a course in search strategies and the basics of HINARI and PubMed searching .

Ethiopia photos

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