Announcing the launch of SOURCE - an international information support centre
On 31 October 2001, three organisations in the UK are launching a new information support centre. The centre aims to support health and disability activities worldwide by strengthening the management, use and impact of related information. Its target audience is individuals and organisations working in these areas, including researchers and students, health workers, teaching institutions and disabled people's organisations.
SOURCE has been developed from a merger of two existing resource centres: that of an academic institution, the Centre for International Child Health (CICH), and that of a development organisation, Healthlink Worldwide. Other collaborating organisations include Handicap International, UK, and TALC (Teaching-aids at Low Cost). SOURCE can be found on the second floor of the Institute of Child Health within The Friends of the Children of Great Ormond Street Medical Library, Guilford Street, London, UK.
Physical collection SOURCE houses a unique physical collection of over 20,000 resources including books, journals, manuals, reports, posters, videos, and CD-ROMs. Many materials are produced in developing countries and the collection includes both published and unpublished literature that is not easily available elsewhere in the UK. Subject areas include, for example, adolescent and child health, disability, diseases and disease control, evaluation, HIV/AIDS, information management, primary health care reproductive and sexual health, and training. SOURCE also houses the TALC bookshop , which is open between 10.00 a.m. and 16.00 p.m., Monday to Friday.
Electronic resources
Full details of the materials held in the physical collection, including details of the price, publisher and distributor, are recorded on a bibliographic database. This can be searched:
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at SOURCE
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on the African Health Anthology CD-ROM (a collection of bibliographic databases containing over 490,000 references, available from National Inquiry Services Centre E-mail: info@nisc.co.za, Fax: +27 46 6229550)
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or from the SOURCE website at www.asksource.org
A contacts database allows users to search for organisations, including publishers, distributors, information providers and training organisations working in health and disability worldwide. This will be available from SOURCE and from the SOURCE website by December 2001. Links to key information sources on the SOURCE website will offer access to other websites and databases relating to international health and disability issues. And SOURCE is a starting point for new digital initiatives. For example, SOURCE plans to develop services to support distance education courses for CICH students.
The SOURCE collection is usually staffed daily from 9:00 a.m. to 17:00 p.m., Monday to Friday. If you would like to visit SOURCE, please contact Anna Mitman at:
SOURCE International Information Support Centre
Institute of Child Health
30 Guilford Street
London
WC1N 1EH
Tel: +44 (0)20 7242 8698
Fax: +44 (0)20 7404 2062
E-mail: source@ich.ucl.ac.uk
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