Allied Health and the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH)
Seeking views of allied health professions and information providers.

(A similar message has been posted on: lis-nursing and lis-medical)

For NeLH details/definitions/layout etc. please see http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/
<http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/>  

At a recently held workshop, the NeLH team, together with representatives
from nursing and the professions allied to medicine, discussed the structure
of Virtual Branch Libraries (VBLs) within the NeLH.

The main issues that were raised for further discussion included:

1. Does nursing, midwifery, health visiting and allied health need an actual
separate "Virtual Branch Library"

Most of the VBLs are topic rather than profession specific (e.g. primary
care, mental health, diabetes), though in the recent edition of Evidence
Based Dentistry it looked like there would be a Dentists' one. It is also
believed that there have/are going to be discussions with other health
professional groups (like GPs) to see if they would wish to have a VBL.
Arguments against mainly seemed to focus on this being a marginalisation of
nursing and PAMs and this information should be integrated into the NeLH.
Arguments for concluded that nursing and PAMs need positive discrimination
to ensure that there is a nursing/PAMs presence within NeLH, and that
nurses/allied health professionals are more likely to use the service if
there is a specific nursing/PAMs interest/target.

We would like to hear from you (as future users of the NeLH) as to whether 
you would wish there to be a separate VBL for nursing/PAMs information /
guidelines etc. or if you would prefer this nursing and PAMs information to
be incorporated into the existing VBLs. If possible, please provide reasons
for your decision. Any comments/views on the above issue would be gratefully
received. Please send your replies and comments to Rebecca Davies
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>  by
Wednesday 30 August. These will be passed on to the NeLH team. The feedback
from NeLH, written from your comments, will be posted to the lists.

Also:
2. Which databases do you feel would be especially relevant for allied
health. Please rank the following (with 1 being the most important) and add
any other suggestions (nb. Cochrane has already been considered by the NeLH
as a whole):

CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature)
AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine)
ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts)
EMBASE
MEDLINE
Other (please name databases)

It would be fantastically useful to be able to say that X% of allied health
mailbase subscribers believe that there should OR should not be a
nursing/PAMs VBL, also ranking databases adds weight to the arguments for
particular products.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Original message edited and posted to allied health lists by Anna Sewerniak,
Senior Information Officer / Information Focus for Allied Health (InFAH)
Joint Chair, The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, 14 Bedford Row, London
WC1R 4ED. T: 020 7306 6604: F: 020 7306 6653; [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
on behalf of:
Rebecca Davies, Health Science Librarian, Library and Information Centre
University of Wales Swansea, Swansea SA2 8PP. (01792 295038).



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