VHL News Network

Forum of Scientific Editors in Public Health shows remarkable advances

Promoted by ABRASCO, FSP/USP and BIREME/PAHO/WHO, the Forum of Scientific Editors in Public Health synthesized the remarkable advance that has taken place in scientific communication in public health in Latin America. One of the events organized before the 8th Brazilian Congress on Collective Health and the 11th World Congress on Public Health, the Forum was held on August 20, 2006, in Rio de Janeiro, and celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Revista de Saúde Pública da USP. The event gathered 70 participants and aimed to analyze the state of the art in regional and international scientific publishing and communication, to exchange experiences among editors and the scientific community, to improve and strengthen the scientific journals in the field of public health and, particularly, the evaluation systems for scientific production
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SciELO Public Health expands coverage of the collection

On August 21st, 2006, the Advisory Committee of the SciELO Public Health collection met in Rio de Janeiro. It is composed of 8 journals specialized in public health, which are available online in open access providing the full text of articles. The meeting was one of the events held before the 8th Brazilian Congress on Collective Health and the 11th World Congress on Public Health. In the meeting it was decided that the public health journals included in a certified national collection may be integrated to the SciELO Public Health collection. Moreover, opening the collection for journals of other regions all over the world was approved. The open access nature of the SciELO was reaffirmed
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United States-Mexico Border Virtual Health Library is launched

In a two-nation pioneer initiative and complying with the mission of the VHL, the United States - Mexico Border Virtual Health Library was launched on August 15, 2006, in the city of El Paso (Texas-US). The launching was held during the Meeting of the US-Mexico Border Hispanic Centers of Excellence Consortium, and the main theme was "Collaborations to eliminate disparities: model programs that work". The Border VHL is supported by the PAHO through its Representative in El Paso and BIREME/PAHO/WHO. Its main objective is to improve health conditions of communities on the Mexico-United States border, by sharing information and scientific and technical knowledge generated by academic institutions, service providers and researchers on the border
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20 years of RENICS: Argentina organizes commemoration

RENICS commemorates 20 years. It brings together libraries and documentation centers in health which operate the VHL in Argentina. As a part of the commemoration activities, in October 2006, PAHO, by means of its Representative Office and of the BIREME/PAHO/WHO, strengthens with the institutions of RENICS, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and with CAYCIT, actions of technical cooperation, having as reference and framework the development of the networks of FIs of the VHL, SciELO and ScienTI. Updates of the VHL Argentina and of the LILACS bibliographic control LILACS using the bibliographic description and indexing via Web, the implementation of the legislation full text system TC-Legis, the certification of the SciELO Argentina collection and the strengthening of the information and scientific knowledge management system in the Ministry of Health are programmed
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DeCS - a conceptual map for browsing at the VHL

The structured and trilingual vocabulary DeCS organizes the domain of knowledge on Health Sciences in a universal manner. Moreover, it is a conceptual map to describe the contents that support bibliographic searches by themes in the VHL Network sources of information. It is also characterized as a support for innovation in search systems by proximity, such as Collexis and Trigrama. The DeCS is essential to manage scientific and technical information and knowledge on health. In the updated edition of 2006, the DeCS comprises 172,963 terms related to health in portuguese, spanish and english. It presents an average growth of 5.1% of new concepts and a monthly average of over 79 thousand searches. It also has the special categories Public Health, Health Surveillance, Homeopathy, Science and Health.
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Conservation of Rare Works: an initiative in the context of Leprosy VHL

The course "Conservation of Rare Works" was held at the Instituto Lauro de Souza Lima (ILSL), in the city of Bauru (SP), on August 15-18, 2006. Given by the conservator and restorer Edna Kátia Girandoni, collaborator of BIREME/PAHO/WHO at the SCI management, the course was directed to employees of the Binding Sector of the Library of the Instituto, the Secretariat of Culture and the Universidade do Sagrado Coração (USC) of Bauru. The ILSL Director, Marcos Virmond, emphasized the importance of the training session regarding updating of employees and the opportunity to access information and new knowledge in this field. This activity is in the context of the Leprosy VHL, an initiative under development in cooperation with the BIREME/PAHO/WHO and the ILSL, a world reference center in the treatment of leprosy
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