Australian Health Librarianship

Abstract

John Holgate, Director of St. George Hospital Library in Sydney, looks back on health librarianship in Australia over the past twenty-five years. He surveys innovative changes in technology, cooperative networking, and the contribution made by hospital librarians to these developments. Starting with the Australian Medline Network, he discusses the emergence of union catalogues (HEMLOC), interlibrary loan networks (GRATIS), and specific Australian health databases and web-based portals such as HealthROM, Health<spt>Insite, and CIAP.

He then examines three more recent innovative initiatives in Australian Hospital libraries-the Winston Library Project, Web Updates, and the Online Journal Club.

Finally, he considers three critical issues facing Australian health libraries in the future-point-of-care information management, knowledge facilitation, and the networking of e-collections.

Key Words:

• Australia
• health sciences libraries
• computer communication networks
• World Wide Web applications
• Internet
• computerized literature searching