The Fourth Congress was divided into three major
sub-topics: infrastructure for health services; new technology applied to health
information services; and cooperation through health information systems. Ninety-one
papers were given at Belgrade, and the vital involvement of Japanese librarians with
international cooperation and automation was demonstrated by a number of papers given by a
distinguished group of speakers, among them, Dr. Shunichi Yamamoto, and Messrs. Yoshio
Amano, Toshinobu Suga, and Masaaki Tonosaki. The work and organization of SEAMIC
(Southeast Asia Medical Information Centre) was outlined as were a number of automated
systems.
A major concern of the delegates in Belgrade was the
future planning of the congresses, as it had been a concern of each preceding congress.
The period between the third and fourth meetings had been too long. At the very first
congress, the attendees had hoped that the congresses would take place at five year
intervals, but that goal had not yet been achieved by 1980. A major development between
the third and fourth congresses had been the reorganization of IFLA and the founding of
its Section of Biological and Medical Sciences Libraries in 1977. This organization now
seemed to many delegates to offer the opportunity of having a permanent structure which
was affiliated with a recognized international library organization which could offer
support an continuity to the organization of the congress, a focus for international
activities among medical libraries, and a formal "home." It had been the hope of
the organizers of the First Congress that an international medical library association
would be organized as an outgrowth of the Congress, but after much discussion, it appeared
that more preparatory work was required before action could be taken. An interim meeting
was held in Brussels in September 1955 to discuss this issue.
One hundred delegates at that meeting, held in
conjunction with the International Congress of Libraries and Documentation Centres, agreed
to work for national groupings of medical librarians, urged closer collaboration with the
medical profession, called for more instruction for medical students in the use of
libraries and the medical literature, and advocated an increase in the exchange of
publications. With the establishment of the IFLA Section, it is hoped that libraries will
take the opportunity to join it and that it may become, in fact, the international focus
of medical librarianship.
The burgeoning development of the World Health
Organization's Health Literature Service Programme, which is coordinated by its Office of
Library and Health Literature Services in Geneva, was a second major factor on the
international scene and one that offered strong links between libraries throughout the
world. The WHO Library had been represented at all of the previous congresses with reports
of its activities, but at the Fourth Congress a special program was held for the
librarians in its various regional offices who were brought to Belgrade, and whose
participation greatly strengthened the meeting. The planning and organization of the Fifth
Congress was, therefore, entrusted by the delegates to the IFLA Section, and WHO was asked
to become, with IFLA, a permanent co-sponsor of the future congresses.
Many delegates at the Fourth Congress were concerned
about the use of the term "medical librarianship," which they felt was now too
narrow to encompass the broad range of topics which are within the scope of this branch of
the profession. The desire to change the name of the congress to reflect this by using the
term "health sciences librarianship" was heatedly discussed and finally voted
down, but it remains an issue of concern.
--excerpted from The
International Congresses on Medical Librarianship Thirty Years of Evolutionary Change
by Irwin Pizer.