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Librarians without Borders® National HINARI Train the Trainer Workshop Report: April 17-19, 2016

Dhaka, Bangladesh (April 17-19, 2016)

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This three day workshop was conducted at the Bangladesh Medical Research Council (BMRC), Dhaka. It was supported by the World Health Organization, South-East Asia Regional Office and Librarians Without Borders®/Medical Library Association (LWB). The instructors were Dr. Lenny Rhine, LWB and Dr. Md. Nazim Uddin, icddr,b.  

In 2015, Mr. Charles Raby, Technical Information Management & Dissemination, SEARO visited Dhaka and initiated the organization of the first Hinari Training of Trainer Workshop in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Without his initial work, this training would not have occurred.

Local arrangements were facilitated and coordinated by Dr. M. Mostafa Zaman and M. Aminul Haque of the WHO Country Office, Dr. Mahmood-zu-jahan, BMRC and Dr. Deepti Munjal, SEARO. Without their assistance, the successful logistics of this workshop would not have been achieved.  Of special note was the support from the BMRC staff. They were attentive to all our needs – IT support, last minute printing, tea breaks in the computer room, etc. Consequently, all the logistics of the workshop worked quite well at the BMRC venue. One final note is about the help of M. Al Mamun, icddr’b. Although he technically was a participant, Mamun supported the goals of the workshop in many useful ways.

Key library staff from twenty institutions in the Dhaka region attended the training. The participants were from medical universities and hospitals, governmental ministries, medical specialty organizations and research institutes – all key health-related entities within Bangladesh. Only one institution needed to register for Hinari and participants from another three needed to receive their institutions’ passwords. These tasks were initiated during the workshop and completed the next week with the assistance of the Hinari staff in Geneva.

In the three day workshop, the goals were to have the participants learn the critical skills of Hinari and related resources and be able to conduct training to the various target groups at their respective organizations. Institutions in Bangladesh have access to all Hinari publishers except three so that there is a wealth of information currently available to the users. While most of the presentations were in English, additional summaries were completed in Bengali.

The modules covered were searching skills and evaluation of health sites on the Internet, Hinari portal including ‘access problems and solutions’, Hinari/PubMed (website, filters, history and advanced search, MY NCBI accounts), the alternate Summon search tool for Hinari, evidence-based medicine, e-book and Internet resources for Bangladesh users, discussion of Hinari and Research4Life training material, a summary of the Zotero reference management software plus a review of authorship skills material (How to read and write a scientific paper, plagiarism, web-bibliography). 

We also focused on the Hinari marketing module and had all the participants complete the Marketing checklist (spreadsheet). This is a tool for developing a detailed marketing plan for each institution.   After six months, the participants will receive a survey that ‘evaluates’ their outcomes and particularly the use of the marketing plan.

At the end of the workshop, the participants completed a post-workshop survey. Almost all the participants ‘agreed’ that the workshop was well organized, had relevant material with useful ‘hands-on’ exercises, that the trainers were knowledgeable/organized, effective presenters and responsive to questions and that the workshop resulted in their obtaining useful knowledge and skills. According to the participants, major strengths of the workshop included Demos/Hands on, Information Gained and Networking. 

There were a significantly broader reply to the ‘length was appropriate for course content’ question. The responses were 60% replying ‘agree’ and the remaining 40% noting ‘somewhat agree’ or ‘somewhat disagree’ or one ‘disagree’. This disparity can be attributed to the differing levels of knowledge and skills of the participants. When checking the hands-on exercises, there was a large number of participants that we would say ‘OK, keep working; looks great’ while, with a smaller number, we had to sit and, step by step, go through the exercises. 

In conclusion, this was a successful workshop because of the dedication, interest and skills of the participants. Overall, a large number of librarians obtained the skills necessary to use and conduct training about the Hinari and Internet resources that were discussed. One example of this was the ‘group exercises’ activities (marketing and workshop scenarios) as this was the best group responses of any workshop.  Without the assistance of Nazim, WHO/Country Office staff members and support staff from the BMRC, this workshop would not have been as successful. 

An additional positive byproduct of the workshop was the participation by Ms. Natalia Rodriguez, Communications Coordinator for the Research4Life Programs. Her goals were to obtain video and interviews to develop material especially for social media - to promote the programs and the training resources. Besides communicating with the workshop participants, Ms. Rodriguez conducted several valuable interviews with staff at International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS), National Health Library & Documentation Centre (NHLDC) and the World Health Organization Country Office. She covered all aspects of the training program in terms of communication.

Staff Workshop Conducted at the WHO Country Office

On April 20, 2016, an additional workshop was conducted at the WHO Country Office. This was organized by M. Mostafa Zaman and Lenny Rhine was the instructor. Approximately 20 individuals attended this training. The material covered including literature searching using PubMed (portal features, filters, history option, MY NCBI), How to read and write a scientific paper, Plagiarism and Zotero/Reference Management Software. Due to the five-hour length of the workshop, the modules were condensed somewhat. Downloading the Zotero onto the WHO computers and completing the key functions exercises definitely was time consuming and we had a technical problem with the Word plugin option. The staff learned a set of information skills that can be applied to their research and policy development activities.

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