The Public Health Group of EAHIL held their annual meeting, with the following key discussions: 1. Tomas Allen and Sue Thomas welcomed attendees and provided updates from the previous year's meeting. Tomas agreed to provide another training on WHO databases. 2. Developments at WHO included staffing changes and new project hirings. 3. Members discussed public health information projects in their countries, challenges finding patient information in other languages, and opportunities to contribute to JEAHIL and future EAHIL conferences.

1. EAHIL Edinburgh Workshop 2015
Public Health Group Meeting
Thu 11 June 2015, at 13.30-14.30
Seminar Room Main Library 1.07
Minutes
Co-Chairs: Tomas Allen (WHO, Switzerland), Sue Thomas (Wales, UK)
Secretary: Katri Larmo (Finland)
Present: Alison Bethel (UK), Helen Buckley Woods (UK), Lorna Burns (UK), Vesna Cafuta (Slovenia),
Ana-Belen Escriva (ECDC, Sweden), Steve Glover (UK), Isobel Hoskins (UK), Samuel Johnson
(Netherlands, Dutch Carribean), Tatyana Kaigorodova (Russia), Minna Liikala (Finland), Wendy Marsh
(UK), Maria Musoke (Uganda), Mari Mäkinen (Finland), Vlamdimira Prochazkova (Czech Republic),
Claire Standsfield (UK), Anh Tran (UK)
1. Welcome and introductions
Co-Chairs of the Public Health Information Special Interest Group Tomas Allen and Sue Thomas
opened the meeting and welcomed everyone.
2. Apologies for absence
Apologies were received from Klaus Boisen, Helena Bouzkova, Gaby Caro, Mala Mann, Elly O’Brien
and Patricia Rey.
3. A round of introductions
Tomas led a round of introductions. We were happy to have such a wide participation.
4. A review of the things discussed last year
· Last year in Rome Tomas promised to give a WebEx training about WHO Digital Library IRIS /
Global IRIS. The course was carried out successfully and Tomas agreed to give a re-run of the
training session. The new course date will be announced in the PHIG mailing list.
· Tomas also clarified us the differences between the WHO services:
o WHO Digital Library IRIS is an institutional repository for information sharing. It
contain's all WHO's electronic publications. Older materials are currently being
digitized for IRIS.
o Global IRIS means that all WHO's Regional Offices' materials are searchable through
the IRIS interface. So basically IRIS = Global IRIS. It is also possible to search just one
specific regional office's collection.
o The WHO Global Health Library completes PubMed with materials drawn from
LILACS (Latin American and the Caribbean scientific literature), WHO Afro Library and

2. many other information sources under one search. It gives searches a more global
coverage.
5. Current developments in WHO
· Our group member Klaus Boisen from the Regional Office for Europe is leaving WHO. The
meeting thanked him for his contribution and wished him success in his new job.
· WHO has introduced plans for re-organization and job rotation. WHO staff will be moving
from one regional office to another in every few years.
· WHO is hiring people to many interesting projects, for example cataloging documents in
Arabic. The hiring will be on “performance of work” basis, i.e. lasting the project time.
6. Current developments in each participants' countries, free discussion
· Vesna gave us greetings and an update from Anamarija Rozic, on the Health Corners in public
libraries in Slovenia. The project has widened further: Health Corners with trained staff will be
established in some other public libraries after the training in health information seeking for
librarians. Also a Health for everyone website is developed further. The group was happy to hear
the successful work continues.
· We discussed on the difficulties of finding high quality patient information in patients own
language. Most of the materials are in English, but for example Medline Plus is also in Spain,
and Ebsco has a database with patient information in different languages. Ivana Truccolo’s
team has been doing good work in patient information & education in Italian. On Tomas’
suggestion Samuel agreed to do some investigation on patient information in different
languages. Also the group’s Delicious account can be used to share high quality patient
information.
· All PHIG members are encouraged to write Public Health related articles to JEAHIL.
· The group’s ambition is to get a public health dedicated session in future EAHIL events, for
example in EAHIL 2017 in Dublin and/or EAHIL 2018 in Cardiff, which Sue is organizing. A
public health related pre-conference would be one option.
7. Close
Co—Chairs Sue and Tomas thanked everyone for their contribution and closed the meeting at 14.30.