Report from the CIS Regional Meeting London Meeting 2010
(Also published in the CIS Newsletter - December 2010).
Regional Meeting of CIS National and Collaborating Centres in European and Central Asian Countries held in London 22-24 November 2010
On Monday, 22 November 2010 a special "behind scenes" visit to the wonderful British Library was arranged by Sheila Pantry.
The visit to various Readings Room included a talk by Neil Infield, Manager Business & IP Centre and further information by Michael Stringer and Claire Packham. Our thanks to them for their time and explanations and also to Louise Doolan, British Library Reference Services Manager for all the arrangements. You can view the Presentation Slides.
The Visit by the ILO Health and Safety Information Centres' members went extremely well - all the visitors were very, very impressed by the range and wealth of services and of course the Library itself. They were bowled over by the fact that there is also the Boston Spa, Yorkshire part of the British Library (BL) and the impressive new store that has just opened. See some of the pictures in the presentation.
Our hosts outlined the work of BL and how staff could assist with our need to access, and a wide range of electronic services on offer. BL holds 14 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles including fire and fire related journals, 58 million patents, 3 million sound recordings, and being a copyright deposit library has so much more. Of interest to CIS Members is the range of OSH Journals that are available.
We were each handed a brochure containing details of how to make contact with BL. An initial 30 minute search is free of charge but there are charges for longer searches which are informed to the enquirer beforehand. There are photocopy charges of 21 pence per page.
You can use the BL databases!
Go to the Primo service http://searchbeta.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do and search for your favourite items! As an example just put the word asbestos in the search box - you have a ready-made bibliography of many hundreds of records!
See also BL web site www.bl.uk
You will see a page inviting you to search the BL holdings
Tick the Journals box for full details of journal holdings - last box on the right side of the screen and repeat the same search using the word asbestos.
Again this is one way you can keep up-to-date using the British Library from wherever you are in the world.
The Reading Rooms really impressed - by the size and computer equipment in them... so all in all, a much appreciated visit - thanks to the BL Staff Louise Doolan, Neil Infield, Claire Packham, Michael Stringer.
Agenda for the Regional Meeting of European and Central Asian CIS Centres, London, 23-24 November 2010
The Meeting was held in the Senate Room (9th floor) of the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, in the prestigious Bloomsbury area of London, close to the British Museum, Oxford Street and Covent Garden.
- Formalities
- Report on the Beijing meeting
- Report on CIS activities
- Report on CIS Centres network activities and on the result of the survey
- Demonstration of the new input system into CISDOC
- Discussion in view of concrete proposals for improving the maintenance of the CISDOC database (including contributions to the database by Centres)
- Presentation on OSH databases in general, by Sheila Pantry
- Discussion on changes in the CIS network, in view of the Recommendations of the 2008 London Meeting see full report on www.sheilapantry.com/cis/meeting2008/Meeting_2008.html
- Report on current Encyclopaedia activity
- Closure
Elly Goos from the Netherlands CIS Centre, Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment was elected Chairwoman.
The Meeting heard the following presentations:
Gabor Sandi gave a report on the Beijing meeting and CIS activities since 2009
This was followed by a report on the activities of the CIS Centres network by Annick Virot which was followed by a report by Begona Casanueva on the answers received to the CIS Questionnaire Survey sent out in 2009. Only 40 Centres out of 154 replied but nevertheless gave some useful comments.
This lead to a discussion as to what should be done to encourage those CIS Centres that appeared not to be active and participative in the CIS Network. It was agreed that such centres should be contacted by CIS Headquarters as a first major task, to ascertain if these centres were still interested in remaining in the Network, and if they so, what can be done to help them.
These discussions were further amplified in the "Future of CIS" discussions below.
Establishment of National Centres
During discussions on Day 2 Sheila Pantry agreed to update the Guidelines for the Establishment of National CIS Centres that she had previously compiled. Sheila has written many books on this subject area and linked topic areas see a list of her titles on www.sheilapantry.com/books
The updated edition will be ready early in 2011.
Concrete proposals for improving the maintenance of the CISDOC database including contributions to the database by Centres
A Demonstration of the new input system into CISDOC was presented by Gabor Sandi and was well received by the members. It is hoped that CIS Centres worldwide will find this new way of sending information to CIS HQ for inclusion in CISDOC to be more user friendly and less time taking. This should result in more information being sent for CISDOC which is an important OSH database.
This new way of working should be ready early 2011.
Presentation on worldwide OSH databases in general
This was given by Sheila Pantry OBE, who first asked a number of questions about the usage of information, the sources used and the quality and up-to-dateness of such sources. She gave numerous examples where OSH information services and centres no longer existed, e.g. Sweden, Ireland, Italy, Romania or had been drastically reduced in budgets, staff and services on offer. The quality and quantity of information sources of many OSH databases have been reduced to the lack of budgets to purchase reports, journals and other acquisitions etc and staff to index/catalogue the information. Examples included CISDOC and HSELINE.
She then went on to describe some quality sources - mostly available via the Internet. She described the increasing number of databases available in her own company's collection of OSH and Fire information in www.oshupdate.com and www.fireinf.com
She talked about the latest database to be added to OSH UPDATE which will collect information on worldwide major hazards accidents and incidents. This will be available early in 2011 and will bring the number of databases in OSH UPDATE to 20, this collection includes CISDOC. Currently there are over 815,000 records of full text and bibliographic sources in this collection - arguably the biggest collection of occupational safety, health and environment information in any one collection. This is a user friendly and price friendly collection. See this presentation on www.sheilapantry.com/cis/index.html see the report in the box on the right hand side of the screen.
The Discussions on future OSH information and CIS activities
This started on Tuesday and continued on Wednesday. This was based on the Recommendations of the 2008 London Meeting see full report on www.sheilapantry.com/cis/meeting2008/Meeting_2008.html
These were far reaching discussions and many conclusions/recommendations were made: briefly summarised below:
a) Logo
CIS should have a new logo - containing the following words
- ILO CIS
- OSH Information
b) CIS and the Future
Should have clearly identified aims and objectives
Eliminate the distinction between national and collaborating centre - which is confusing for all
Strongly recommended that the CIS Annual Meeting be disconnected from the ILO Congress
Regional Meetings should be encouraged
A Steering Committee should be established and a Plan of Work proposed, including communications, publicity and promotion. A Working Group (WG) was set up to formulate proposals on the details. This WG consists of Sheila Pantry, Elly Goos, Irja Laamanen, Gorvan Vranic, Jonathan Gorvin and Boryana Barbukova. The WG proposals will be available early 2011.
Twinning and Training of National Centres was discussed and Sheila Pantry agreed to update the Guidelines for the Establishment of National CIS Centres that she had previously compiled. Many examples of help to newly started and emerging centres were cited by Irja Laamanen and Sheila Pantry.
CIS Newsletter that has been published for 22 years was discussed and in answer to a simple question by the editor Sheila Pantry - "should the Newsletter continue" the answer seemed to be a resounding YES... so it will continue as long as it is needed. Members gave a number of examples of its usefulness...
- "cut and paste into own Newsletter"
- "send onto direct to a large number of OSH related organizations in my country"
- "add to own Centre's website to show that new information is published"
- "an example of what a CIS Centre offers"
- "checks and updates on new web sites, diary events, new e-services including training, new books and reports"
So please keep sending in your news.
Notification of training and e-training information
The Meeting discussed the importance of e-training opportunities and the fact that notification of these packages from around the world is very useful and suggest that perhaps CIS website could carry such a listing.
CIS website
Must be drastically altered so that the front page is a dynamic home page with constant changes being added. There should be a "what's new" heading.
The list of Centres to be clearly available from the home page and not hidden a PDF document as it is at present.
Encyclopaedia on Occupational health and Safety - really GOOD News
The really good news is that the Encyclopaedia editorship for the next edition is being undertaken by Dr Jeanne Mager Stellman, Special Lecturer and Professor Emerita of Clinical Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, USA.
Jeanne Stellman was Editor-in-Chief of the well esteemed 4th Edition of the Encyclopaedia.
The news was very warmly welcomed and the CIS Members send their grateful thanks to Jeanne Stellman for undertaking this exacting task, and that CIS Newsletter can be used as a way of contacting people to help and also promote the new edition on the website.
Jeanne has replied with the following message:
The online Encyclopaedia is very much going to need the support and contributions of CIS Members and I will most certainly take you up on your offer. I spent many hours this week working with the website programmer and I hope that by early January 2011 we will have a prototype up and running for comments and feedback. I would very much like to work with you and the CIS Members so that the site can be as user-friendly and informative as possible.
Full details will be announced shortly by CIS HQ.
Seiji Machida, Safework Director, gave a frank and full talk on the current challenges facing CIS, Safework and the ILO. He happily answered many, many questions posed by the delegates.
A Full report of the meeting will be issued shortly by the CIS HQ.