Speaking for India - while a good number of hospitals have medical libraries and qualified librarians, they are by and large in charge of
managing the collections and "sticking to rules". Practically no one is trained in or required to do anything like providing information services / literature searches / teaching - all that is so much needed today.
The libraries attached to medical colleges of course have libraries and librarians but again, the services offered are - with a few exceptions -
just what I mentioned above
Vasumathi Sriganesh
QMed Knowledge Foundation
A-3, Shubham Center, Cardinal Gracious Road
Chakala, Andheri East, Mumbai 400099, India
Tel: 91-22-40054474 Mob: +919867292230
Email: vasu@qmed.ngo Web:www.qmed.ngo
MMC Speaker Code - MMC/MASS/00030/2016
Member: Academy of Health Professions Education
QMed's ELearning Course <http://www.qmed.ngo/e-learning>
HIFA profile: Vasumathi Sriganesh was a medical librarian in the 1990s. In the year 2007 she set up a Not-for-profit Trust, which she has named QMed Knowledge Foundation. Along with her colleagues in QMed she regularly conducts workshops in literature searching and reference management, as these skills have never been prioritized in medical education in India. She is also a regular faculty on these topics, in Research Methodology workshops all over the country. She hopes that the Foundation's activity will help the current generation of students value the need for correct and systematic literature searching as a component of the practice of Evidence Based Medicine. She also works with INFORMER (a student body) and the South Asian Cochrane Centre, whenever there are opportunities to help. The Union (IUATLD), and MECOR (of the American Thoracic Society) have incorporated QMed's literature searching workshops as part of their research training initiatives in India. Most recently the Campbell Collaboration has also invited QMed to incorporate their workshops in their training initiatives. vasu AT qmed.ngo
