AGM Morning Session
Kirsty Coltart
The morning session of the 2004 SHINe AGM was based on the theme of "Writing for Publication". Three informative and entertaining speakers introduced many of us to the successes and pitfalls of getting published.
Writing Collaboratively and Managing Relationships - Andrew Booth
Andrew Booth (Director of Information Resources at SCHARR) kicked off the session by talking about "Writing Collaboratively and Managing Relationships". Although he jokingly referred to his talk as a "glorified ego trip", his talk did illustrate the valuable lessons he has learned during the course of his writing. Andrew talked about the benefits of collaborative writing; bringing together shared backgrounds, different experiences and creative energy to produce work for publication. A team should be stronger than its individual parts and offer each other the mutual encouragement and support than can be needed with deadlines looming. Roles need to be defined and communication as always needs to be paramount in order to avoid some of the problems that he highlighted. Non-acknowledgement of contributions can be a major pitfall as I am sure we are all aware. How often does your searching and presenting of the evidence for a piece of research get acknowledged by clinical authors? He finished his talk with some suggestions as to how the novice writer could get started. Recycling of written work was mentioned and he reminded us that a failed submission for one publisher could be recycled to suit another. Perhaps the fundamental starting point is thinking about what you can bring to the mix and what you want to get out of the writing process. Applicability to the wider community is key and Andrew reminded us all that any writing goals that we set for ourselves have to be realisable enough that we can enjoy our writing and still have a life!
The Novice Writer - Michelle Kirkwood
The next speaker was Michelle Kirkwood (Nursing & Midwifery Librarian, North Glasgow NHS Division) who spoke to us as Editor of Interim. Her talk was aimed at the novice writer and used Interim as a working example of how to get your first piece of writing published. Michelle described the newly formed Editorial Team and highlighted the support that they could offer to a novice writer. She talked about the future of Interim and explained that there will be special themed issues such as the December issue, which will be a historical look at Interim. She is also keen to encourage more research-based articles and the Editorial Team can offer support for those interested in commencing research. Michelle presented a "mind map" of possible subject areas that people may be interested in writing about. She broke them down into personal (eg training day report), local (eg service development) and national (eg. collaborative working). Her final thought for us was from Jack London who said that you can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club!
Health Information and Libraries Journal - Dr Graham Walton
Our final speaker was Dr Graham Walton (Faculty Librarian at University of Northumbria) who described his experiences as Editor of Health Information and Libraries Journal. He has been Editor since last year and discussed the process of getting an article published in HILJ. He first talked about the reasons people want to write such as good practice dissemination, building up a body of knowledge, CPD, career goals and most importantly fun! The Journal itself looks for original articles, literature reviews, brief communications and reports of service developments. Elements in writing style that the HILJ favour are subject interest and relevance to the wider health information community, effective background literature searching, strong structure and an opening paragraph to entice and serve as a tool for further reading. He emphasised that the level of support, which authors receive from the editorial team means that very few submissions are rejected. He finished by discussing the future for HILJ. The electronic version has seen major growth and in 2003 hits to the e-journal doubled from the last year. He would like the Journal to obtain an Impact Factor and have more International and multidisciplinary contributions.
Overall I found the morning session to be very informative and motivating. Building up the confidence to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) for the first time is very daunting to most people but hopefully some left Edinburgh feeling encouraged and keen to get started.
All the presentations are available on the SHINe website http://www.shinelib.org.uk/
Kirsty Coltart
Clinical Librarian (Cancer and Surgery)
Beatson Oncology Centre
Western Infirmary
North Glasgow University Hospitals Division
Tel: 0141 211 1917 Email: kirsty.coltart@northglasgow.scot.nhs.uk