1. EAHIL 2012 25th anniversary Conference
Health information without frontiers
4 - 6 July, 2012, UCL, Brussels, Belgium
Public Health Information Special Interest Group PHIG Business Meeting
Tuesday 3 July, 13 - 14.30
"Administration B" meeting room, first floor of the "Centre faculté" building
Minutes
Co-Chairs: Tomas Allen (WHO, Switzerland), Sue Thomas (Wales, UK)
Secretary: Katri Larmo (Finland)
1. Welcome and introductions
Co-Chairs of Public Health Information Special Interest Group Tomas Allen and Sue Thomas opened the meeting
and welcomed all the colleagues attending the business meeting.
2. Apologies for absence
Apologies were received from Gaby Caro (WHO Switzerland), Ana-Belen Escriva (ECDC Sweden), Rosalia Ferrara
(Italy), Mala Mann (UK), Barbara Nied wiedzka (Poland), Päivi Pekkarinen (Finland), Ilse Schodt (Denmark),
Patricia Sondergaard (WHO Denmark) and Ivana Truccolo (Italy).
3. Adoption of the agenda
The agenda as proposed was adopted by the meeting.
4. Report of the Business meeting in Istanbul July 2011
(http://www.eahil.net/PHIG-meetings.html)
The report of the business meeting held at the Koç University in July 2011 was accepted as an accurate record.
5. Review of what was agreed in Istanbul
Possible EAHIL 2015 Workshop in Geneva - current situation (Tomas Allen)
Tomas summarized the current situation regarding the possibility of Switzerland to host EAHIL 2015 Workshop:
there is a positive attitude towards it, but due to organizational changes and economically difficult times there is
no institution that has the possibility to take the lead and main responsibility in organizing. So it remains to see if
the Workshop will be arranged in Switzerland or in some other country.
Update on current issues at WHO (Tomas Allen)
a) Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS)
WHO Library is launching the WHO Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) as its digital library. IRIS
provides free access to the WHO's publications, technical documents and more. Its interface and contents are

2. available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Users may set up RSS feeds to receive alerts of
new content.
Access to IRIS: http://www.who.int/iris (quick tutorial will be available soon).
WHOLIS will continue as the catalogue of the WHO Headquarters Library print collections. WHO eManual on
IRIS: http://emanual.who.int/p08/s05/Pages/VIII51Archivingoffilesofinformationproducts.aspx
b) WHO/EURO
1. WHO EURO has suffered from two floods. The floods caused serious damages in library collections hard copies
and stimulated even further the transition towards digital literature. The library web site is the main source of
information and library activity.
2. There is a new colleague Klaus Boisen working in the WHO EURO library. He has taken some of the tasks of the
retired librarian, but 50% position for the librarian is still not filled in.
3. Financial constraints has caused some limitations to librarian support.
4. New Library/information centre, where one can check and browse through medical journals and latest
publications, has been created. The centre has been a success with visitors. The centre provides short briefings
at meetings, which stimulate people to become members of WHO programmes. It also informs by email about
for example about HINARI, newly published books and also familiarize customers with the web info potential.
The centre provides also support to staff.
5. Next year WHO/EUROE is moving to new premises - the UN building in Copenhagen, putting together all the
UN agencies working there - UNOPS, UNICEF etc.
c) HINARI
Achievements from last year for HINARI:
-Enormous expansion of books (6000 Elsevier books added)
-Gathered and prepared user stories to demonstrate how we are making a difference (booklet available online)
-HINARI 10th anniversary celebrated and partnership praised by WHO Director General
-Eligibility criteria adjusted so that more countries are in the free access category
-Only one payment required for access to first three Research4Life programmes (HINARI, AGORA, OARE)
-HINARI is working more closely with INASP and eIFL to improve the user experience for institutions participating
in more than one iniative
HINARI Programme hopes that EAHIL librarians can help with raising awareness and conducting information
literacy training in the developing world to ensure maximum use and usefulness of the available content.
The 2012 list of EURO countries are:
1. Albania
2. Armenia
3. Azerbaijan

3. 4. Boznia and Herzegovina
5. Georgia
6. Kosovo
7. Kyrgyzstan
8. Republic of Moldova
9. Tajikistan
10. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
11. Turkmenistan
12. Ukraine
13. Uzbekistan
6. Consumer health information (Chiara Cipolat Mis)
Chiara Cipolat Mis reported about the successful activities in Scientific and Patient library sited in a National
Cancer Institute, Italy. The work is geared mainly towards users who are patient, so it differs from giving health
information to public users. Patients’ library has two aspects: cancer point of information and popular and
leisure activity. The borders between types of libraries are obsolete and it is important to create networks with
public libraries. The aim of the patient education given by the library is to empower the patient and to make
patient real actor of her/his care process.
Also Narrative Based Medicine is an important part of the library’s activities. The idea is to strengthen the ability
of patients and ex-patients to express their emotions, to write from the disease, though not necessarily on the
disease.
CIGNOweb - of a database of cancer and other patient information in Italian language - will be online from
September and the beta version will be presented to IFLA - Health and Biosciences Libraries Section Satellite
Meeting on 10th August in Helsinki. CIGNOweb is a project initiated by Scientific and Patient Library, National
Cancer Institute, Italy.
In context to Chiara’s report the meeting discussed differences in librarian’s roles in giving patient education in
different countries and institutions. In some cases the librarian’s role is restricted, as in many cases libraries are
expected to take a big responsibility in patient and consumer health education.
Narrative based medicine has gained popularity in many countries and for example in the UK there is a website
for it: http://www.healthtalkonline.org/
7. Any other business
- Vesna Cafuta gave a report on the results of the successful Slovenian pilot project “Public Libraries for Public
Health”. The project was finished with establishment of “health corners” in two public libraries in Slovenia.
“Health Corners” in public libraries offers a new and more systematic approach to providing better health
information service to the users. Their needs are met successfully by a collection of trustful consumer health
resources and occasional help from librarians or health professionals trained in information searching and
information delivery. The meeting was delighted to hear about this innovative approach. The report of the
project is attached to the meeting minutes.
- The meeting discussed how public health could be more visible and present in the future EAHIL conference
programme and Chiara Cipolat Mis, Isobel Hoskins, Eduard Jacobs and Carol Lefebvre volunteered to coordinate
these efforts. This year the conference organizers gave the Public Health Information Group a possibility to
present Group’s activities on a poster stand. Maybe this could be a permanent arrangement also in the future
conferences.
- One of the future activities for PHIG could be reviewing and complementing MeSH’s public health related
terminology. This work could be done in cooperation with MLA. In this way the suggestions would have more

4. possibilities to be approved by NLM. What comes to translations of MeSH - an example mentioned in this
meeting was Serbian - there could be possibilities for fruitful cooperation with EAHIL's MeSH SIG.
8. Close
Sue thanked all those present for their contribution and closed the meeting at 14.30.