DEPARTMENTS / DÉPARTEMENTS

**Editor's message**

We are celebrating a very special birthday with the publi-
cation of this issue, because the new electronic version of
the *Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association /*
*Journal de l'Association des bibliothèques de la santé du*
*Canada* (JCHLA / JABSC) is now 1 year old! I would like
to thank Karen Neves for her support and guidance over the
past year, as I “learned the ropes” in my transition from as-
sistant editor to editor of the journal. I would also like to
thank Andrea Hodgson, the Canadian Health Libraries Asso-
ciation / Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Can-
ada (CHLA / ABSC) Board, and Sandra Halliday, incoming
editor, for their unwavering support as I begin my term as
editor of JCHLA / JABSC.

This issue focuses on information literacy, since it con-
tains two wonderful articles entitled “Preparing entry-level
practitioners for evidence-based practice” and “Developing
information literacy skills in nursing and rehabilitation ther-
apy students”. You will also find a very informative report
from Hakim Bishawi in the United Arab Emirates, on “The
Fourth Regional Conference on EMR Health Sciences Virtual
Library: Role in e-Learning and Building the Information

Society”. I think it is very beneficial to all of us as informa-
tion professionals to continue this exchange and sharing of
our work with our counterparts in other areas of the globe.

Some of our readers may have noticed the small hiccup in
the transition to electronic format, in that the indexing of
JCHLA / JABSC is a little behind in the literature. I assure
you that this is being attended to, and the new electronic ver-
sion of the journal will be indexed in the near future.

Everyone is gearing up for the CHLA / ABSC conference in Toronto this year, “The World Around the Corner” (30 May – 3 June 2005), especially since the Special Libraries Association (SLA) conference, “Putting Knowledge to Work”, will also be in Toronto on 5–8 June 2005.

I encourage everyone to consider writing for the journal.
Please feel free to contact me with content ideas or thoughts.
There are many exciting trends in our field that would make
excellent topics for articles, such as open access, PDAs, dis-
tance learning, biomedical informatics, etc.

Cheers,
Rebecca Zakoor