# Health Libraries Association of British Columbia

A theme of the year for the Health Libraries Association of British Columbia (HLABC) has been relationship building: building relationships with other groups with common goals and strengthening the relationships among our membership. To this end we have been working to increase and improve our communications with partner organizations and raise the profile of HLABC in the province.

## HLABC activities

In October we held an evening with Heather Morrison, local librarian and open access (OA) expert, at a local cafe. Heather gave a talk about OA to the membership and a lively discussion followed. This event was planned as a follow-up session after our OA conference session at the BC Library Conference in April 2009 left our members asking for more. At this meeting we tested our digital recording capacities, with an eye to podcasting future events.

In January, at our annual brunch, we were pleased to host a lecture by Dr. Helen Novak-Lauscher, who is the Assistant Director of Research at the UBC eHealth Strategy office, a group with many potential synergies with the BC health library community. She gave our members an exciting talk on technology-enabled knowledge translation. This talk was the first continuing education (CE) session we recorded with the intent of making the podcast available on the members-only side of our Web site.

In addition to our regularly scheduled membership meetings and CE events, this year we created an ad hoc communications committee, drafted a records management plan for our chapter records, and published an H1N1 information resources guide for BC librarians and library technicians.

## Upcoming events

At the BC Library Conference in April, which HLABC co-sponsors with BC Library Trustees Association and the BC Library Association, HLABC will as usual be offering a “health track” of sessions, this year consisting of two workshops on online health reference sources (one is more entry-level then the other, with a focus on resources available to public librarians). Additionally, HLABC members will be presenting on using Wimba software for distance learning.

At our annual CE day in June, we are planning to focus this year on health data. We will feature multiple speakers from the BC health data community during the event and electronic medical records.

Additionally, we are undergoing a strategic communications review right now, reviewing our various communications modes and attempting to pull them into a cohesive plan. In a related project, we are planning a chapter-wide webcasting/webconferencing pilot project for our 2010–2011 year to more effectively reach the large proportion of our members who live outside the lower mainland. We are grateful to the CHLA / ABSC Chapter Initiatives Fund for supporting this pilot project.

## Chapter challenges

A significant current challenge is budget cuts, which have impacted members' ability to attend and pay for CE opportunities.

### Devon Greyson

Information Specialist
UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research
201-2206 East Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3, Canada
E-mail: devon@chspr.ubc.ca