ICML 9

9º World Congress on Health Information and Libraries

Salvador, Bahia - Brazil, September, 20 to 23 - 2005

BVS4

4th Regional Coordination Meeting of the VHL

September, 19 to 20 - 2005

P50 - News Agency: a new source of networked information at VHL - Virtual Health Library, model of information and health scientific-technical knowledge management by BIREME/ PAHO/ WHO

VHL, Virtual Health Library, consolidates itself as a network that is an integral part of the information flow in the Latin American and Caribbean countries, advancing its expansion and enhancement to promote an equitable and universal access to sources of information that are relevant to health development in the region.
Considering the implementation strategy and the source of information architecture in thematic or regional VHL, there is an evident need to prepare a News Agency implementation project.
The main goal is to effectively contribute for the communication information source operation (F15) in the Virtual Health Library. This source of information will be accessed by different media and through diverse interfaces, thus increasing news exposure and, consequently, references to VHL and BIREME.
Objective:
Reporting on the News Agency project development, describing its many technological, conceptual and methodological aspects as VHL-Virtual Health Library source of info rmation, representing an innovation in the conceptual model.
Conclusion:
The advent of the Internet and continuous shrinking of staff in communication media has made journalists and opinion makers ever more dependent on accurate, organized information that can be accessed as quickly and as widely as possible.
Internet has become the major source of information for the press to prepare guidelines that become news. However, journalists, opinion makers and the public as a whole, look for quality and reliability in the news they collect on the net. For this reason, these professionals prefer data published by news agencies fed by organizations of proven reliability.
Considering these factors, BIREME, an acknowledged reference of health scientific-technical information, is a potential supplier of information to news agencies. This project intends to prepare an information channel for the press, collaborators, partners, potential partners and users of the Virtual Health Library and of BI REME, acting as an interface for the retrieval of news and, simultaneously, for feeding other information interfaces.
Thus, opinion makers will have the possibility of retrieving the same news through different paths, which increases substantially the exposure of each piece of information and, consequently, VHL and BIREME’s exposure as well.
It is estimated that 378 million people access the Internet all over the world. The net has become a powerful marketing and media tool. Data from the Interactive Media Association show that this medium reached a revenue of R$ 250 million in Brazil in 2002, considering return on exposure for companies in the Internet only.
The News Agency will be both a source of information of the Virtual Health Library, operating in a networked, equitable, decentralized manner, providing free access, and a tool for the enhancement of VHL image, promoting its consolidation as a scientific-technical information and knowledge management model.