... FROM FRANCE

Seminar for Medical Librarians from Francophone Countries, Tours

Between 27 February - 7 March 2000 the International Conference of the Deans of Medical Faculties of French Expression (Conférence Internationale des Doyens des Faculés de Médecine d´Expression Française - C.I.D.M.E.F.) organized a seminar for medical librarians from francophone countries in Tours, France. Such seminars are organized (and fully financed, including all participants' expenses) periodically by the CIDMEF at various levels targeting various audiences. This year the theme was New Technologies for Information and Communication and of the 16 participating librarians, 10 were represented by the respective number of medical libraries in Romania; the other 6 were from Lebanon, Morocco, Senegal, Togo and Cambodia. The Faculty of Medicine in Tours was chosen as the venue because it is the home of the organizers, Professor Etienne Lemarié (Pneumology) and Professor Christian Binet (Hematology). Both working and living conditions were excellent, plus there was the bonus of being in the Loire valley and region, famous for its exquisite chateaux and also its wine. Tours itself revealed its graceful beauty and noble atmosphere in the early spring sun. The seminar benefited from excellent lecturers, invited to present and discuss the topics included in the programme: Anne Parrical from the Faculty of Medicine Library in Lausanne, Switzerland - Information resources on the Internet; Search Engines, and Electronic vs. print- full text publications: Benoit Thirion, Librarian, University Hospital Centre in Rouen, France; Health Information in French on the Internet,CISMeF, Listservs: Jean-Francois Denef, Professor of Histology at the Leuven Catholic University; Digital images, multimedia: Gislaine Massard-Decleve from the Medical Library of the Leuven Catholic University; MeSH and Search strategies on PubMed: E. Lemarié; Evidence-based medicine: Corinne Touchelay from the Tours Medical Library and Eric Boissinot, Audiovisual Laboratory of the Tours Faculty of Medicine. Presentations were extremely professional and attractive and the interventions from participants and discussion lively. The benefits were manifold: new skills acquired through hands-on experience but especially the awareness of the richness of French resources. One site alone, the CISMeF (Catalogue and Index of the French Medical Sites, at http://www.chu-rouen.fr/cismef) manages to gather in an excellent structure, so many resources of such a wide range of topics that it is bound to reward any (re)searcher. The event, as these events usually are, was also a wonderful opportunity to establish new contacts and to forge new friendships, a new stimulus to keep the ball rolling.

Ioana Robu

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