01
Landmark
HINARI/AGORA/OARE Users’ Meeting held in Pretoria, South Africa
The
first ever meeting for HINAGOA users was held in Pretoria from 2-3 March 2008.
The meeting brought together 20 participants and users’ representatives were
drawn from 10 countries. This meeting was a culmination of the formation of the
HINAGOA Users Forum which aims to give a platform for users to share
experiences as well as give feedback for the future development of the
programmes.
The
two day deliberations focused on the following objectives:
· To
develop a common understanding of the HINAGOA programmes;
· To
brainstorm on the challenges and solutions of effective access and utilization
and of HINAGOA resources;
· To
facilitate the generation of appropriate strategies that will promote the use
of the HINAGOA resources on the African continent;
· Learn
from users experiences of the use of the HINAGOA programmes
· Best
practices in the use of the HINAGOA programmes
· Map
a way forward on the formation of the HINAGOA User Community in Africa
At
the end of the two day meeting participants were able to come-up with
challenges and resolutions which could be addressed at three levels:
Publishers/Programmes level, Institutional/ Policy Makers level and Users
level. Most of the issues discussed are those that have come-up on the users
forum. All registered users of the programmes can get the full report on the
proceedings by sending an email tochristine@itoca.org.
To
join the forum you can go to: Join
D-Group User Forum
First
HINARI training for Sierra Leone
WHO,
Cardiff University- Wales, Partnerships in Health Information (Phi), DIFID/
British Council DelPHE Project- Community Health Information for Poverty
Alleviation in Sierra Leone in collaboration with College of Medicine and
Allied Health Sciences- University of Sierra Leone funded the first special
HINARI workshop for Sierra Leone which was held at the British Council in
Freetown. The workshop was attended by 17 participants and facilitated by a
HINARI trainer from ITOCA.
The
DelPHE Project- Community Health Information for Poverty Alleviation, aims are
to develop locally appropriate health information materials to support health
care staff in the fight against extreme poverty and hunger, reducing child
mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other
diseases. Training programmes will also be developed for health
professionals in the retrieval and dissemination of research-based (‘evidence-based’) heath information. As stated during
the opening ceremony for the workshop “Working collaboratively with others is
essential in increasing the flow of timely, reliable and appropriate health
information. This training is a wonderful complement to the DelPHE project”.
Basing
on the success of the workshop the organizers of this workshop Dr Alison
Weightman (Cardiff University), Shane Godbolt (Partnerships in Health
Information) and Nance M’jamtu-Sie (University of Sierra Leone) are already
looking at the possibility of having another workshop next year and Barbara
Aronson (WHO) has agreed in principal to the co-funding of the workshop.
New
open-access teaching modules for plant disease epidemiology
A
set of teaching modules for using the R programming environment in ecology and
epidemiology has now been published through the open-access on-line
peer-reviewed journal The Plant Health Instructor (PHI). R is a free
software environment that has a large community of contributors.
Instructions for downloading R are included in the introduction module.
Entry
page
http://www.apsnet.org/education/AdvancedPlantPath/Topics/RModules/default.html
An
introduction to the R programming environment
http://www.apsnet.org/education/advancedplantpath/topics/Rmodules/doc0/
Ecology
and epidemiology in R: Disease progress over time
http://www.apsnet.org/education/advancedplantpath/topics/Rmodules/doc1/
Ecology
and epidemiology in R: Modeling dispersal gradients
http://www.apsnet.org/education/advancedplantpath/topics/Rmodules/doc2/
Ecology
and epidemiology in R: Spatial analysis
http://www.apsnet.org/education/advancedplantpath/topics/Rmodules/doc3/
Ecology
and epidemiology in R: Disease forecasting
http://www.apsnet.org/education/advancedplantpath/topics/Rmodules/doc4/
We
hope you will find these modules useful! PHI allows revision of
publications, so we welcome your feedback for improving these and future
modules.
Karen
A. Garrett
Associate Professor
Department of Plant Pathology
Kansas State University
Promotion
and developments at Institutions Promoting use of
e-resources: The Egerton University Experience by Nerisa Kamar (koriesn@yahoo.com)
Egerton
University (Kenya) has a mission to generate and disseminate significant
knowledge and offer exemplary education to contribute and innovately influence
national and global development. The government of Kenya set up the Rapid
Results Initiative (RRI) in a bid to achieve the above mission alongside those
for other universities. The (RRI) is a way of harnessing team strength and
client participation to fast track large scale delivery of services within a
period of 100 days. The period includes weekends and public holidays. The
initiative involved most ministries within the government of Kenya.
J.D
Rockefeller Research library which is one of the Egerton University Library
branches is mandated to facilitate access and use of electronic resources to
the clients. Towards promoting the resources, the J.D Rockefeller Research
library, updates and distributes e-brochures, and provides alerts and training
to clients. A 9-member team was identified to execute the RRI objectives. The
library RRI phase I involved provision of 2000 book titles within 100 days.
Phase II (November 2007-February 2008) goal was to increase user database
navigating skills and promote use of available e-resources for research and
teaching by 20%. The RRI team trained
60 members of academic staff identified from all the departments in the
University.
Within
the expected 100 days, the team did a needs
assessment/baseline survey, developed and evaluated a training manual with six
modules. The modules included Introduction to computers, Internet and searching
concepts, HINARI, AGORA, PERI, TEEAL and OARE.
The
popularity of the training led to more focused departmental trainings. So far
training has been carried out for Industrial & Energy Engineering
department (teaching staff and post graduate students). The use of e-resources
at the library access point has since increased by about 75%.
AIC
KIJABE HOSPITAL (Kenya) benefiting from HINARI by Beatrice Waithera (jackshanb2@yahoo.com)
Access
to HINARI has given our library a very big status as we access the most recent
information just like most well funded hospitals in a developed countries if
not better in terms of number of titles. There is no more lagging behind
with outdated information.
Access
to full text articles through this programme has come as a big relief to our
clients especially nursing students and doctors carrying out research. It has
enhanced research and educational development in our institution. The
popularity of HINARI has come as a result of the promotion to the library
users.
To
promote HINARI usage, we share the HINARI username and password with legitimate
members of our institution so that they can access the resources and make use
of the latest information. The password is posted for all to see. We also pass
information about HINARI by guiding users on how to use the portal. The
training of users is done to groups and individuals as the need arises. We also
have a repackaged training manual that can be used by anyone searching HINARI
which is placed in a strategic place for easy access by anyone who needs to use
it.
For
one to be better able to promote a product one needs to understand how the
product functions and l was lucky to be accorded a chance to attend a HINARI
course, which was very beneficial. Through this course l was able to acquire
many skills that l am also imparting to our clients. I have also completed a
HINARI email course, which I found to be a great course for librarians who need
to refresh their skills on getting the most out of HINARI and PubMed. The email
course gives one a chance to experience the searches first hand when you have
time which gives more time to experiment than in a workshop set-up. You do it
at your own convenient time and you gain a lot as it keeps your mind open and
makes you a better trainer. I definitely would recommend the email course to
anyone who has not taken it.
HINARI
quenches health information thirst of Zanzibar health care professionals says
Amour Kassim
Although
Zanzibar health care professionals were retrieving health information through
various gateways, databases and search engines for a long time it’s different
from how they are searching for information now. This came up as a result of
the four days HINARI training to 26 resource persons from various institutions
in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Zanzibar. The main objective of
the initial training was to train a small number of health care personnel who
are now trainers of others in their institutions. This training took place in
early September, 2007, Dr Lenny Rhine from Florida, being the principal
instructor.
At
the beginning, the training dwelled mostly on the baseline skills in order to
make sure that all course participants have the same level of understanding,
these were:
· Basic
Internet Concepts
· How
to do internet Searching
· How
to evaluate Health Information on the Internet
· How
to get Free Health Resources on the Internet
Later
on, the instructor continued with the core topics on how to use the HINARI
website, how to access to full journal’s articles and full free-texts after
registration, and how to utilize the resources of the publisher’s partners of
HINARI. Skills on how to use PubMed as a tool to identify full text articles on
health-related subjects via HINARI, their limits and the use of MyNCBI were
much emphasized.
It
is believed that proper utilization of the knowledge and skills acquired
through this training can educate and keep Zanzibar health workers updated on
health problems, emergencies, epidemics etc for better health care delivery.
Help Desk
TIP!
Your
browser history
Modern web browsers are very smart and are able to record every activity you
carry out in their history. By recording a history of the web sites you have
visited, the browsers are able to achieve tasks at great speeds as they go
through the browser history and their cache to quickly retrieve web pages which
you often visit.
While
this facility is very good one of its down sides is that it can take an old URL
from its cache which does not work anymore and will tell you that the site
cannot be found and this problem has been encountered a number of times in the
use of HINAGOA programmes.
To
avoid this problem one will need to clear their browser history or set the auto
clear to a short period. To clear the browser history in Internet Explorer
please follow these steps:
· Click
Tools > Options.
· To
delete cookies, go to General tab. Click the Delete Cookies button.
· To
clear your history, click the Clear History button. If you want to selectively
delete the web pages, then Click History button in the IE main menu window. A
side bar will appear with all the sites you have visited recently or in the
past. Use right Click > Delete.
· To
clear cache, click the delete files button. Check the “Delete all offline
content” check box and then click OK.
Please
note that depending on the version the layout may be different but the
procedure is the same to delete your history.