Editorial
The importance of OSH networks: getting to know each other
Sheila Pantry OBE
June 2008
At last year's special meeting at the 2007 A+A joint network session held in Germany, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work agreed to bring together on their website a single entry point (SEP) giving details of various occupational safety and health (OSH) network organisations and details of their strategies. This has now been completed - go to http://osha.europa.eu/organisations you can now find information and direct links. These give details
- to the key actors in OSH in Europe,
- to the current European, national and international strategies on OSH, and
- about what is going on in OSH outside Europe.
Under the subheading networks and professional organisations links to homepages have been included.
This new SEP will also be announced in the Agency's next edition of OSHmail that has now more than 37,000 subscribers - however, naturally the Agency aims for more!
To make the newsletter and the EU-OSHA products known to an as large as possible audience, the Agency would be grateful if you could pass on the below email to as many interested readers in your network you could think of...
"In OSHmail we can support you in announcing, promoting and making your national events, conferences and important developments known to a large audience - as a text item or included in the list of news and latest events at the right side of the newsletter - simply send us an email with the information and relevant links. We have also started on presenting OSH networks and professional organisation as a loose series in OSHmail. If you have not been included, yet, watch out for future editions.
Free subscription to Agency e-mail newsletter: https://osha.europa.eu/en/oshmail-newsletter
FIREINF and OSH UPDATE - are you using them? If not, why not?
More information on health and safety at work - not only from Europe but around the World, including advice and guidance, legislation and much more can be found by checking out the OSH UPDATE electronic collection of information sources. Seekers will find a wealth of authoritative and validated advice from around the world. There are over 800,000 records in 18 authoritative databases - with thousand of full text links. Best practices, case studies, journal articles, reports and knowledge of systems are in OSH UPDATE www.oshupdate.com.
Also you may find FIREINF www.fireinf.com that is the world's premier collection of validated, authoritative fire and fire related information and contains two major collections. For those individuals and organisations that do not subscribe to a range of journals/magazines this is one way of ensuring that the latest news, developments and trends are available.
The 5 Full Text Collection databases containing thousands of pages of full text information (about 12,000 pages added in 2007) and The Bibliographic Collection has 7 databases which contain over 267,000 records to journal articles, guidance and advice, circulars, reports, conference proceedings, research reports, statistics and codes of practice from worldwide sources, all of which may be easily accessed. One of the databases - from the British Standards Institution - contains references to over 4000 fire and fire related standards.
This long established collection started in 1997 as Fire Worldwide and then expanded into Fire, Emergency and Preparedness Worldwide. From 2007 the collection continues to expand with the new software and host platform as Fireinf and aims to help all those seeking information on all aspects of fire, emergency and preparedness management principles, fire risk assessment, good practices and research.
Fireinf is continuously enlarged as new information is published.
Why not try OSH UPDATE and FIREINF for yourself? Take a 15 day free trial to these collection!
Contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | Tel: +44 (0)1909 771024 | Fax: +44 (0)1909 772829 | email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html
OSHWORLD - your portal to some of the best OSH web sites in the world.
It is always good to review health, safety, chemical, fire and environment procedures on a regular basis. It is also important that the practices and systems in the workplace are constantly reviewed and if necessary, improved. This review may also indicate training requirements and updates and re-thinking how systems and services can be improved. This is where the free-of charge OSHWORLD can help you. Look at the latest additions to the Diary of Events and you will see plans have been made already worldwide up to the end of 2008 and beyond to have training courses, symposiums and conferences in many places in the world on a wide range of subjects.
Remember that even if you cannot attend these many events, speakers and organisers are often willing to share their knowledge. Look at the details - where possible, we add in the web sites of these events so you can request further information. And do let me know if you are organising any OSHE events so that I can add them to the Diary.
OSHWORLD's FOCUS this month looks at the World Day against Child Labour.
Try these Practical, Affordable Solutions for your health, safety, fire and environment information needs from Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd.
In addition to the above we hope that you find the information in OSHWORLD useful in your daily work. Globally there are continually new titles, news items, new products so remember to look at the News to find the latest information from a number of worldwide sources.
Use OSHWORLD as your portal to many hundreds of validated and authoritative web sites which you can find in the Country and Subject links we offer. New subject topics are constantly brought together on web sites, e.g. avian flu and the workplace.
Most information services have a reference shelf where you can quickly check the reference sources - so OSHWORLD brings you a collection of Reference sources and also teaches you how to Search the Internet.
Click onto the various Bookshops to order any new document as they are being published. Many of these Bookshops have a constant stream of new titles available.
Please send any suggestions or comments about OSHWORLD - your portal to validated and authoritative information. Remember also to look at our other really useful sites - www.sheilapantry.com and why not make a free entry about your company's products in www.shebuyersguide.com.
Don't work harder - work smarter! Be ahead of the game.
Well did you have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy year in 2007 in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying again in 2008!