The 12th ELISAD annual meeting took place at Statni Zdravotni Ustav (SZÚ National Institute of Public Heath), Prague, November 9-11, 2000.
It was organised thanks to Mgr Josef Radimecky, National Drug Coordinator, Prof. Jaroslav Kriz, Director of the National Public Health Institute, and Mrs Hana Sovinova, Head of the Departmernt for the Prevention of Addictions.
30 participants from 11 European countries (France, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Hungary and Czech Republic) were present, next to representatives of SALIS (United States) and CCSA (Canada). The sun was also there, incredible at Prague in this period of the year, illuminating our very nice general session room.
Under the motto of "Linking together", documentation and information specialists had the occasion to discuss and work on possiblities of closer networking and ideas for shared activities in a very relaxed and warm atmosphere. Next to discussion and development of concrete projects, the meeting gave room to personal exchange between persons.
After an introduction into principles of current Czech National Drug policy, a report on development and activities of Phare, Hungary, reflections on ethics in drug information services and a presentation of the Virtual Clearinghouse on Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drugs (www.atod.org), 3 workshops were attended.
One workshop was concerned with the edition and development of the ELISAD Electronic Journal, and with basic knowledge on the construction of websites. It is of growing importance for documentation specialists and librarians to have knowledge about the feasability in the realization of contents they want to be edited in Html or other formats on the Internet. Concerning the EJ which has grown very big, it was decided on a reduction of long articles in order to get more the character of a newsletter to be edited in a joint effort.
In another workshop, the contents of an ethical charta to be agreed by all ELISAD members were discussed. This relates to tasks of librarians as gatekeepers of information. The preliminary draft build during the workshop includes items on the principle of freedom of the information independant from political ideology and censorship. That means that scientific objectivity has to include various approaches and perspectives. Another item emphasizes the confidentiality of information services. The first draft of the Ethical Charter has now be sent to each participant and to all the other Elisad members for corrections, amendments and adding. A final version will be submitted to all Elisad members for a formal agreement.
The third workshop focused on presentation and further development of the ELISAD Subject Gateway project on drugs issues. As a tool for information specialists, the gateway will give access to selected credible information on the Internet, enhance networking and avoid duplication of effort. A preliminary draft of the gateway was installed at the Archido website at: http://www.archido.de/ELISAD%20Gateway/gateway.htm (German Portal) and http://www.archido.de/ELISAD%20Gateway/frenchportaltoxi.htm (French Portal) and will be implemented into the Elisad website in the following months.
For practical purposes, a more comfortable server with the acquisition of a domain name, will be choosed and organized. The preparation work done by Toxibase, Archido and Gruppo Abele will now be complemented by joint efforts of Elisad members. In the next step, the remaining European countries will contribute to the Gateway by collecting metadata on 10 to 15 relevant drug related websites, and to create a portal for each European country. The according description form will be adapted and sent to all members by email.
Friday night, everybody enjoyed an invitation for a wonderful dinner in the luxurious Palace of the Czech Republic Ministries with the Czech National Drug Coordinator, Mr. Josef Radimecky
To conclude, one can say that, if we had less participants than in the last past years meetings, the energy and the level of participation of each members was far higher than previously. The evalutation forms collected at the end of the meeting have not yet been analysed, but many participants expressed their enthousiasm and aknowledge that the "workshop formula" was developing more exchanges of knowledge and a deeper networking than general lecture sessions.
After the meeting, on Saturday morning, Elisad members had their annual Business Meeting. Lucia Bianco, the actual Elisad Chair, stated that the Association has come a long way and that this year saw the developement of successful projects. The Elisad Electronic Journal has been established and his showing a growing interest among all the AOD librarians and other professionnals in the drug field. The gateway group is functioning, building a good basis for the development of an interesting professional tool. Our website has improved and will become greater as soon as we will get a new server and a new address.
Important decisions have been made: a new constitution has been agreed which will put Elisad under the French Law at the end of this year. The new Elisad head office address was also approved: c/o Toxibase, 14 av. Berthelot 69007, Lyon - France.
After the usual reports from the Chair, the Secretary and the Treasurer, financial questions were discussed. Costs for organization and materials make it necessary to think of possibilities to raise the Elisad incomes.
According to the difficulties of some documentation centres to pay the membership fees and expenses to participate in the meetings, it was not considered as a good idea to raise the financial amount for membership and participation of members in annual meetings. It was agreed to promote Elisad to potential new members, i.e. libraries and documentation centres in all European countries. For this task, a helpful tool would be an individual Elisad logo to be designed for representative and promoting issues of members activities, such as letters and web presence. Further possibilities to generate financial income could be to sell the Electronic Journal to non-members.
Some decisions on the board were made: The former treasurer Carla Rouge, ISPA laid down her tasks. This issues will be covered by Thomas Rouault, Toxibase (France) in the following period. It was agreed on the establishment of a new Elisad banking account located in France. Newly elected to the board were Hana Sovinova, SZÚ (Czech Republik) and Susanna Prepeliczay, Archido (Germany).
It was decided to establish a consistent journal working group to edit the EJ commonly, in which Alessandra ONeil and Mariella Orsi would participate, and open to any member to join them. As well as for the maintenance of the Elisad website, a working group is being established to engage in the web presence of Elisad.
It was decided also to establish a working group for planning new activities od Elisad in the field of training and found raising in wich Lucia Bianco, Federica Caselli and Silvia Bruni would participate.
The next meeting will take place end of October 2001, at CAN, in Stokholm.
In 2002, the project, not yet confirmed, is to meet in Köln, Germany, in the context of the 8th European Conference of Medical and Health libraries of the EAHIL (European Association for Health Information and Libraries).