The Board Meeting was arranged by Finland

Present:
Denmark: Hanne Christensen, Anne-Marie Jörgensen
Finland:    Pirjo Rajakiili, Liisa Salmi
Norway:    Elisabeth Akre, Elisabeth Husem
Sweden:   Eva Alopaeus

Invited and present from the Baltic countries:
Estonia:    Keiu Saarniit
Lithuania: Meile Kretaviciene

Absent:  
Members from Iceland
Marie Källberg from Sweden
Velta Poznaka from Latvia 

1. Election of chairperson
Liisa Salmi was elected Chairperson. 

2.Election of reporters
Pirjo Rajakiili was elected Secretary.
Pirjo Rajakiili and Liisa Salmi write the minutes together.

3.Presentation of the Baltic members and a new Swedish member
Representatives from the Baltic countries were invited to the Board meeting for the first time. They are not official members of the Board, because each country’s national health sciences library associations elect their respective representatives to the Board, and these countries do not have national associations yet.

The contact person in Estonia is Keiu Saarniit, Medical Information Centre, Tartu University Clinics, who also brought a guest, Tiina Haabpiht from the same library, to attend the meeting with the Board’s consent. Meile Kretaviciene, the Kaunas Medical University Library, attended the meeting as the Lithuanian representative. The Latvian representative, Velta Poznaka, Medical Research Library, Riga, could not participate in the meeting.

Eva Alopaeus informed that Sweden has elected another member to the   Board, Marie Källberg, Medicinska fackbiblioteket, Karolinska sjukhuset, who could not attend the meeting this time.

4.Approval of the report from the NAMHI Board Meeting in London 2000
The report from the Board Meeting in London  on 2nd June 2000 was approved. Reporters were Hanne Christensen and Conni Skubbeltrang

5.Scandinavian gateway for patient information
Eva Alopaus presented the present situation of the project Scandinavian Gateway for Patient Information. The project has been published in the journal Dagens Medicin on the 3rd of April, 2001.  Svensk Biblioteksförening has allocated Skr 50 000:- to the project, and Sweden and Norway promote the project for the time being, and also Denmark expressed their wish to participate although there is no material yet. Liisa Salmi mentioned the Finnish Medical Association Duodecim’s project on consumer information and will find out the situation. The National Library of Health Sciences in Finland (Terkko) has carried out minor activities on consumer information, also in Swedish, and Pirjo Rajakiili will notify Anna-Mari Koivula and Katri Larmo on the Nordic project and ask them to contact Eva Alopaeus. 

6. NAMHI’s website www.namhi.org
Eva Alopaus, who’s library maintains the NAMHI website, will update it and asked everybody to check the respective information and functionality of the links. Especially, the Board meeting minutes before 1999 are wanted and everyone should look in their PCs to find these. Elisabeth Akre expressed the wish to always change the date on the website when the contents are changed.   

7. Baltic collaboration
Elisabeth Husem informed the board that the Baltic-Nordic Cooperation home page is completed at www.ub.uio.no/umh/upsykiat/smh_balt. The home page includes a description of the programme Transfer of Knowledge, the aim of which was to intensify the cooperation between Lithuanian and Norwegian medical libraries. Also Danish librarians contributed to the courses within this programme, and the participants were from all three Baltic countries. The Nordic Council of Ministers was the main financier.

As part of the Transfer of Knowledge programme six Lithuanian librarians were invited to Oslo 6-13 May, 2001 to visit medical libraries and to meet Norwegian colleagues. The visit was financed by NORDINFO and SMH.

A good example of cooperation is the LITNOR-project. LITNOR is a service for ordering photocopies of articles within the framework of the cooperation between SMH and the medical libraries in Lithuania. The Nordic libraries participating in LITNOR deliver free article copies from their own stock to Kaunas Medical University Library and the National Library of Medicine,Vilnius.

Elisabeth Husem and Eva Alopaeus receive information of the activities of the MLA Sister Library Committee in the USA. It has appeared that the Americans send too old books to e.g. Riga, and a change is desirable. It was agreed that after the vacation, Liisa Salmi contacts Donna Flake and discreetly  informs that old literature is useless and better help would be e.g. to improve the usage of Internet.  

8.A possible new project involving NAMHI and EAHIL within the frame of the Task Force on Communicable Disease Control in the Baltic Sea Region
Elisabeth Husem introduced the activities of the Task Force   (http://www.baltichealth.org). The aim is now to inform the Task Force   members of the professional skills of medical librarians and their usability in   the project and let them know of the already existing Nordic-Baltic cooperation between the medical libraries, including the homepage.

9.Oslo 2003 – the Nordic-Baltic EAHIL Workshop
The preliminary programme of the Oslo 2003 ”Cross Boundaries – Join Forces” EAHIL Workshop  was handed out, and a mention of the existing homepage was made (http://namhi.org/oslo/oslo2003.htm).

The Chairperson of the Local Organizing Committee is Elisabeth Husem and the Chairperson of the Programme Committee is Eva Alopaeus. If the number of the participants is restricted to 150, they could all be lodged at the Radisson SAS Park Hotel, which is the venue of the Workshop.

10.Time and place of the next meeting
The next NAMHI Board Meeting will be held in Cologne in the connection of the EAHIL Conference 16-21 September 2002. Denmark will be responsible for arranging  the meeting.

The Board Meeting was arranged by Denmark

Present:
Denmark: Conni Skrubbeltrang, Hanne Christensen
Finland: Pirjo Rajakiili, Liisa Salmi
Norway: Elisabeth Akre, Elisabeth Husem
Sweden: Eva Alopaeus, Marie Källberg
Estonia: Keiu Saarniit
Iceland: Anna Sigridur Gudnadottir

1. Election of Chairperson
Conni Skrubbeltrang was elected Chairperson.

2. Election of Secretary
Hanne Christensen was elected Secretary.

3. Presentations of the Members and News from each Country
The members each gave a status account including actual areas of initiative in their respective countries. The work being undertaken was of a very similar nature, the shared areas of interest being: teaching, the creation of consortiums, database licences and electronic journals.

It appeared that there was still disparity between that being offered in the nordic countries. There followed a discussion of the many different licence arrangements being offered.

4. Approval of the Report from the NAMHI Board Meeting in Sardinia 2001
The report was approved without comment. The Secretaries were Liisa Salmi and Pirjo Rajakiili.

5. Transfer of Knowledge II and III
Elisabeth Husem reported on the course Transfer of Knowledge II which was held in Kaunas. The delegates were from the Baltic States and Sct. Petersborg.

Transfer of Knowledge III will be a workshop where delegates, amongst other things, will be able to come with actual examples of work situations from their libraries, and they will get the possibility to exchange experiences in a more interactive process.

It was discussed whether one should endeavor to arrange an english course. Other subjects could be Evidence-Based Medicine. Eva and Liisa will provide contributions on Evidence-Based Librarianship and Evidence-Based Nursing respectively. It was decided that Liisa would also write an article on the subject in the Newsletter and provide a contribution to the Oslo conference.

6. News about Baltic Medical Association
It was reported that there was now a Baltic Medical Association – BAML. The objective was to strengthen the working relationships both within the member states and abroad. Keiu examined the articles of association. These can be found at the following address: (Intention Protocol For Establishment of the Association of Baltic Medical Libraries and Baltic Association for Medical Libraries Meeting Minutes). One would encourage all libraries to join. There was only the possibility of an institutional membership. The group suggested that there should also be a personal membership option made available. This would, without doubt, increase the amount of interest shown in the association.

7. The NAMHI website / Keiu Saarniit
Keiu reported on the production of the website. She suggested the inclusion of information about what was happening in the different countries. It was also suggested to create a contents list of members published articles. If this and other information was already available on SMHs homepage, then a link should be provided to this source from NAHMI.

Material to be made public on the website should be sent to Keiu. There was appreciation shown for the work already undertaken on the website. It was both presentable and easy to navigate.

8. The Nordic Portal to Consumer Health Information
Eva reported on the project Portal to Scandinavian Information for Patients. She had, together with Anette Munthe from Norway, created a poster for the conference. An abstract is available at the following address: http://www.zbmed.de/eahil2002/abstracts/munthe.pdf

The project plan can be found at the following address: http://www.norskbibliotekforening.no/smh/

9. Oslo 2003 the Nordic Baltic EAHIL Workshop
The Nordic Baltic EAHIL Workshop: Cross Boundaries – Join Forces, takes place in Oslo from 25th – 28th June 2003.

The price for the conference has been set at 5000 nkr. This amount is to cover conference admission, hotel and meals. There is to be a minimum of 150 delegates. Information about the conference can be found at http://www.namhi.org/oslo2003.htm and in the Newsletter. There will be invited speakers only. As something new, “Walk and Talk Sessions” will be organised, with 6-8 persons in each group.

10. Time and Place for the next Meeting
The next meeting is to be held on thursday the 26th June 2003 at 8.30am in connection with the Nordic Baltic EAHIL Workshop in Oslo. Iceland will be arranging the meeting.

11. Other Business
No other business.

Participants:
Norway: Elisabeth Akre, Elisabeth Husem
Finland: Pirjo Rajakiili, Liisa Salmi
Denmark: Conni Skrubbeltrang
Estonia: Keiu Saarniit
Lithuania: Meile Kretaviciene
Sweden: Eva Alopaeus, Marie Källberg
Absent :
Denmark: Hanne Christensen,
Latvia: Velta Poznaka,
Island: Elín Eiríksdóttir, Anna Sigríður Guðnadóttir

Election of chairperson
Eva Alopaeus

Election of secretary/secretaries
Marie Källberg

Introduction and news from each country
Denmark: The topics of e-journals are still an important issue. The library association has four meetings each year for its members. It is difficult to get all types of libraries in the medical field to take part in the library association meetings. University library staff seldom participate, it is mostly staff from hospital, nursing and physical therapist libraries that come. Many librarians feel threatened with the change of the medical and educational system in the country.

Estonia: In Tartu the hospital is going to use electronic patient records, and they would like to connect it with the electronic medical recourses that the library has, together with other recourses as links etc. Tartu is first and other hospital in Estonia will follow. Librarians from different libraries cooperate in this project.

Finland: A national consortium, FinELib  buys electronic material and it has worked well. The Finnish university health sciences libraries have now the basic collections, which can be used also by the university hospitals. However, the consortia system needs to be changed soon, for example more flexible. The research libraries have changed the library system to Voyager and in the near future the nursing libraries will use the same system. The health system in Finland is a big problem at present. They try to find different ways to solve it.

The Finnish medical thesaurus FinMeSH will be completed, and the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs has a project on electronic patient records, which contains several subprojects, one of these being a common server for all medical and social coding systems, classifications and thesauri and FinMeSH will be developed to be the standard. In this work, the health sciences librarians and information specialists are needed.

Lithuania: The University has chosen Aleph for their library system. Lithuania is going to store all information about the research from all authors in the country in one place so you can find all research easily. You will be able to see the Impact factors etc. There is also a project for electronic publication and a lot will be available in full text, also theses. They are looking for money to build a new library at the hospital. They will have a meeting here in Oslo about a Baltic consortium for medical databases with all the Baltic States.

Sweden: We have also crises in the health care organisation. It is difficult to get the members involved in the library association. In Sweden all types of medical libraries are represented in the association. We are having problems finding a common consortium solution for the libraries in the health sector. There is one, Eira, but not all counties have chosen to participate and for the University Hospitals it does not offer enough journal titles. At the moment different approaches to solve the problem are considered.

Norway: The SMH Association is celebrating its 50-year birthday in November this year. They will do it with seminars and social events. Kirsten Larsen fra Dansk BiblioteksCenter is going to give a course on “IT-pedagogik for bibliotekarer”. SMH will cooperate with the Library of Medicine and Health Sciences. Norway is also celebrating 400 years of public health in 2003. Norway has the same difficulties as Sweden to find common consortium solutions for the health sector. Non academic institutions can still not join academic consortia. There is a new hospital structure in Norway with fewer and bigger hospitals. This is reflected in the hospital libraries who are also being merged.

Approval of the report from the NAMHI Board Meeting in Cologne 2002
The report was approved. Two things were mentioned. Spelling of St Petersburg was not correct and Liisa is not going to write an article about Evidence-Based Librarianship and Evidence-Based Nursing.

News about the Baltic Association
See the report from the countries

Formal Baltic representation on the NAMHI Board
How many representatives from each country? Perhaps two members should represent their association and not two from each country? The other countries have each a national library association, while the newly established Baltic medical library association is shared between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Would it be a good idea to have two regular representatives and two substitutes? Elisabeth Akre and Meile Kretaviciene from the Baltic association makes a draft on a new text for Article 4 of the NAMHI articles and send it to us via e-mail and we come to a formal decision on the NAMHI meeting in Santander.

We also discussed the representation from the different association. Shall we be chosen for a long time or change often? We discussed the matter of continuity. Island has different representatives each year and it can be difficult to feel part of NAMHI if they change so often. In Sweden one of the representatives come from the board of Specialgruppen för vårdbibliotek and the other can be nominated by the board.

The NAMHI website
The latest change on the website was made in December. Keiu would like to have more information from the different countries. Eva said that we should keep a low ambition level and not include so much information on the website, only about NAMHI. This to make it easier for somebody else to take over.

SMIL - the Nordic Portal to consumer health information
The Web site is available to the public, but it is not yet ready for an official  launching. This will most probably happen by the end of 2003. http://www.smil.uio.no. Norway, Sweden, Finland (only links in Swedish) are building the portal together. Denmark will hopefully be able to join at a later stage. In Denmark the patient information used to be a task for the patients libraries. Now the public libraries have it. SMIL has two two-day meetings each year.

St Petersburg
The Nordic/Baltic health libraries programme was initiated in 1994 and will next year celebrate 10 years of cooperation. Hopefully there will be a third and last Transfer of Knowledge course in Kaunas in 2004, and this time with activity from all participants. The library of the Medical Academy of Postgraduate Studies in St Petersburg (MAPS) is now integrated in the Nordic-Baltic cooperation project. SMH, Baltic Association for Medical Libraries (BAML), Library of Medicine and Health Sciences in Oslo (UMH) and NAMHI will work together with the project and give seminars and courses.

Just before the Workshop the three delegates from the MAPS’ library in St Petersburg were on a two days study visit at the Library of Medicine and Health Sciences in Oslo. They learned about interlibrary loans, medical databases and electronic journals, services to users, national and Nordic library cooperation, etc. The Russian librarians explained that there is little cooperation between libraries in St Petersburg. The physicians often chose to use the public library as the MAPS library is not open library.

Time and place for the next meeting
During the 9th European conference of medical and health libraries, Santander, Spain, 21-26 September 2004

Iceland is arranging the meeting and if they cannot participate Norway will arrange it.

Summarized by

Marie Källberg, Sweden

Participants:
Denmark: Hanne Christensen, Conni Skrubbeltrang, Finland: Pirjo Rajakiili, Liisa Salmi, Estonia: Keiu Saarniit, Iceland: Gudrun Kjartansdottir, Norway: Elisabeth Akre, Elisabeth Husem, Sweden: Eva Alopaeus, Marie Källberg
Absent: Latvia: Velta Poznaka Lithuania: Meile Kretaviciene Iceland: Elin Eiriksdottir

Norway was responsible for the meeting.
Chair: Elisabeth Husem,.  Secretary: Elisabeth Akre

Welcome to Gudrun Kjartansdottir from Iceland, new member of the Board

Minutes 2003. Correction: The sentence “In Sweden one of the representatatives come from the Board….” Under the paragraph “Formal Baltic representation….” is annulled, as Sweden has the same system as all the other countries.

Short reports from each country. Each country should present a written status report of on page (A4) as an enclosure to the minutes, to be sent to the secretary.

The name of the Association.
A new name was needed to include the Baltic Association. The Board agreed that the new name should not be an abbreviation, to make it easier for others to understand what the Association is about.The new name is: The Nordic-Baltic Association for Medical and Health Information. A short version could be “Nordic-Baltic Association” or “Nordic-Baltic Group”

Article 4 – Board representation
New text accepted by the Board:
“The Association is governed by a Board consisting of two members from
each of the Nordic Countries Associations and three members from the Baltic Countries Association (BAML), one from each of the Baltic countries.
It is the responsibility of the Board to ensure that the Association's objective is fulfilled, as illustrated in Article 2.
Members of the Board, as well as deputy members, are appointed by the
board of the respective National Associations and hold office for a
concecutive period of four years. Members can be reelected.
The Board consists of a Chairperson and a Secretary, both from the same
country, and the Board Members. Chairperson and Secretary positions
alternate between the countries in the following order: Norway, Sweden,
Finland, Denmark, Iceland and the Baltic Countries.
Each National Association has one vote. Issues are decided by a
majority of votes.
The Board may set up specialist groups and committees ad hoc.
The board is responsible for the following:
  -to ensure that representatives of the National Boards meet at
    least once a year, preferably in connection with EAHIL conferences and
    workshops.
  -to maintain electronic tools for communication between members
  -to decide how to use any surplus from events organized by the Association.”

Report from Transfer of Knowledge III - Workshop in Kaunas, April 2004.
Ten years of cooperation was celebrated with a workshop at Kaunas Medical University Library, with participants from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Baltic libraries did presentations on their experience with the cooperation so far. The presentations are published in SMH Newsletter 2/2004 http://www.norskbibliotekforening.no/smh/20042.pdf (text), and at the home page of the Nordic Sea Region Cooperation  (formerly Nordic Baltic Cooperation)  http://www.norskbibliotekforening.no/smh/smh_balt/index.html. (power point)

Cooperation with medical libraries in St. Petersburg
One week of courses for medical librarians were held in St.Petersburg in June 2004, with EBHC as the main topic. Free internet resources was also an essential topic. The Subito service was introduced to the St.Petersburg libraries during the courses.
This was truly a  Nordic-Baltic cooperation. Course holders came from Norway, Sweden and Finland. MAPS in St.Petersburg were the local hosts. Meile and Lina from Kaunas, Lithuania translated to Russian during the courses. Course participants came from several medical libraries in St. Petersburg and 3 participants came from Tartu, Estonia.
2 librarians from MAPS, Elena and Larissa, are participating at the conference in Santander, financed by the Transfer of Knowledge project. Larissa will give a paper on behalf of MAPS.

The cooperation program has been renamed to The Baltic Sea Region Cooperation and  from now on it is part of  the agenda of the Nordic-Baltic Association. Board members and their Associations are asked to look for possible funding sources for further projects, as well as good course holders. There are plans for study visits from St. Petersburg to Stockholm, Gothenburg and Oslo, and more courses in St. Petersburg.  Jean Shaw in GB has asked if librarians from Chechnya may participate in the next courses. In return, GB will provide a course holder from Bloomsbury Health Care Library, London.

SMIL – The Nordic Portal to  Consumer Health Information
The database is a great success. It is administered by Sweden and Norway. The working group of has members from Sweden, Norway and Finland. How about Denmark and possibly Iceland?  Can they also contribute with the work? SMIL is drifted by Library for Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Oslo. Even though the database only has contents in the Scandinavian languages, it is from now on part of the Nordic Baltic Association agenda. The language part is a main issue, as there are many similar resources in English, but none except SMIL in Scandinavian languages.

The Nordic Baltic Association home page
The Association’s home page has been maintained by Estonia for the last years, and Keiu is willing to continue also for the next year. All Board members are equally responsible for checking that the information is correct, and to supply with new contents.
http://www.namhi.org/.

A more visible Association?
Marie Källberg suggested that the Board meetings should be announced in the EAHIL Conferences and Workshop Programs to make the Association more visible. The Board members agreed that all should contribute to better visibility for the Association.

BAML – The Baltic Association of Medical Libraries – homepage:
http://www.kliinikum.ee/raamatukogu/BAML

Thanks to Liisa Salmi
Liisa will  retire in May 2005, so this was her last Board meeting. Liisa was one of the founders of NAMHI, and she  has been a valuable and active member of the Board since the start. Many thanks to Liisa for her contributions over the years.

Next Board meeting will be in at the EAHIL Workshop in Palermo, 23-25 June 2005.
Sweden will arrange the meeting.
The following meetings will be arranged in the order stated in the Articles:  Finland (2006), Denmark (2007), Iceland (2008). The Baltic countries (2009).

Appendix   -    Status reports 2004 from the countries

Denmark
License-policy
In Denmark the Danish Electronic Research Library (DEF) negotiates most licenses.
In principle all public Danish universities and research institutions can register for a DEF license. In certain cases county and/or public libraries and companies can register. Most hospital libraries participate in some of these licenses.
A DEF license is an agreement on access to electronic information resources, signed by DEF on behalf of a number of libraries. The fundamental characteristics of a DEF license are:
• Broad library interest
• Alternatively other political interest for DEF (e.g. co-operation on digitisation)
• Possibility of financial support from DEF
• DEF secretariat negotiates license agreement.
Further information: http://www.deflink.dk/eng/default.asp
It is possible to search the 9000 electronic journals in the DEFFNet-database.
http://www.tdnet.com/DEFNet
All citizens in Denmark have access to the Cochrane Library.

New organization of the Danish Regions.
From januar 2007 Denmark will be divided into 5 regions and approximately 100 local authorities.  Today it is divided into 14 regions and 275 local authorities.
The regions are responsible for all public hospital services in Denmark, and they also administer the National Health Insurance Service.  Hospital librarians are like other employees in the regions very concerned about the future.

FMI (Faggruppen for Medicinsk Information)
FMI has 79 members. Each year we have four meetings between 25 and 30 members attend the meetings. Themes have been:
 The Health Information Services at the National Board of Health. Systematic reviews etc.
 Searching nursing literature and research information.
 Health Statistics at the Internet
 Information about the Danish health portal www.sundhed.dk

KlinInfo
Only a few members contribute to the portal www.klininfo.dk ,at the moment the steering committee discuss the future of the portal.
                                                                                                       Conni Skrubbeltrang
                                                   
Estonia
Regarding the field of medical information , the situation has not changed much during the past year. As the financial resources for medicine have been inadequate, it is evident that the respective library aspect cannot change either. The Clinics of Tartu University have technically resolved the problem that all the Estonian medical community could use the information sources of the Clinics of Tartu University. As there is only one faculty of medicine in Estonia which is affiliated to the University of Tartu, Tartu is the center of Estonian medical science.
The Clinics of Tartu University serve as a medical, teaching and research base for the University. Although the residents of the Tartu University Faculty of Medicine may work also in some other hospitals, they use the databases of the Tartu University Medical Information Centre.
Since 2004, Tartu University Medical Information Centre has provided a new service, an electronic newsletter with hot topics, which is sent to the mailboxes of all the doctors.
At present, we are working on a list of all Estonian doctors from outside Tartu, who would like to join our Centre for using the information  sources.
                                                                                              Keiu Saarniit

Finland
All university libraries in Finland have started a project called "Tietokartta" (Knowledge map"), which means that we are trying to sort out, what are the collections - printed and electronic - in different libraries and what kind of gaps we have."
Great progress has taken place in Finland when FinMeSH, the Finnish translation of MeSH is now being checked and brought to public use. The National Health Project in Finland includes a subproject called Metavalta and as a result of this group's activities, recommendations for dealing with and harmonising all thesaurii, vocabularies, classifications etc. in use in
Finland were written. The Metavalta group had a good representation of information specialists and health sciences librarians, who now could see to that this kind of work is carried out professionally. The Finnish Medical Society Duodecim, who has done the practical work so far, has now clear guidelines how to proceed, and they also have public funds from the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (MHSA). So, after many years of hard work, there is public access to the server of MHSA, where all the health sciences vocabularies are and will be.
                                                                                         Liisa Salmi and  Pirjo Rajakiili

Iceland
At Landspitali University Hospital Medical Library and Information Centre people rely more and more on electronic resources. I started there in the year 2000. Then people came to the library to take photocopies from the journals and we had a lot of books on our bookshelves. Now times have changed, we don’t have so much material on our shelves, since people access most of what they need through their computers. Most books and journals the library buys are electronic. The printed journals we have available are mainly from the last 20 years. If the customer needs older articles, we order them from SUBITO or other libraries.

We try to teach and instruct people how to use our electronic material by offering courses and visiting the various departments of the hospital to introduce the material the library buys. People appreciate this, but both we and they often wish there was more time left for the hospital staff to attend our courses. At the library we try to let people know that we are at their service anytime, and we urge people to come or call us if they need instruction. It seems that more and more people have got familiar with the electronic form of journals, since we don’t receive as many article orders as before. Now the Landspitali University hospital main library is open on weekdays from 8-16 and we have two branches that are open two days a week. A year ago the main library was open from 8 until 19,  but as we had to reduce the costs for running the library and we have fewer visits in order to access its material, opening hours were cut.

Landspitali University Hospital Medical Library and Information Centre serves  students in medical and nursing sciences at the University in Iceland as well as Landspitali, the main hospital in the country. The library has now made a service contract with some other health institutions, such as The Icelandic Cancer Society, The Icelandic Heart Association, The Directorate of Health in Iceland, Reykjalundur Rehabilitation Centre and St. Josep’s hospital.

Reykjavik Health Care Services has its own library, where my Icelandic college Elin Eiriksdottir in the NAHMI board works. The Administration of Occupational Safety and Health in Iceland also has its own library. Me, Elin and Gerdur who is a librarian by the Administration of Occupational Safety and Health now make up the new board for the Icelandic Association of Libraries in the Health Care Sector.
                                                                                                 Gudrun Kjartansdottir

Norway
Two trends dominate the Norwegian picture in 2004.
1) In the academic sector (universities and colleges) a government reform leads to new learning models with more independent student activity. Keywords: Quality reform, flexible learning, life-long learning. One consequence is that library courses are becoming part of the student curriculum. Also, fewer people are coming to the library in person or ordering articles from the library because they use electronic resources. This means less staff for customer service, more staff for teaching activities.
2) A national public project has recently started. The aim is to provide a digital library of national licences for databases, journals, clinical guidelines etc, accessible for all health personnel in the country. This will change the situation for the hospital libraries, probably in the same direction as for the academic libraries: more staff resources for teaching and guiding, less for customer service and document delivery. Internet connection for health service staff is still poor in many institutions. This will be a crucial factor for how this will develop.
The hospital libraries, by way of SMH cooperate with the national project. The first version of the national digital library for health personnel “Helsebiblioteket” is meant to open on 01.01.2005.The funding will be partly central and partly from each hospital, but not directly from the libraries budgets. Funding is however still uncertain. 
                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                              Elisabeth Akre

Sweden
The Federation of Swedish County Councils (Landstingsförbundet) has finished a negotiation process for an agent to provide electronic information resources for publicly funded health care in Sweden’s 21 counties and regions. This is the second phase of the Eira project that started in 1999.
This time the content consists of five databases and 1000+ fulltext journals.
The agent chosen is swets. The role of the agent is to act as an intermediary between the customers (the counties) and the publishers.
The databases CiNAHL, AMED, PsycInfo and Medline will be on OVID’s platform and the Cochrane databases are original. The main publishers involved are Elsevier, Blackwell and LWW.
There is no central funding. The decision to join, and the cost, is the responsiblity of each county or region.
                                                                                                                Eva Alopaeus