INFORM opens website to encourage better information-content training

INFORM (International Network for Online Resources and Materials) atUppsala University, delivers onsite information training in lower- andmiddle-income countries, teaching information end-users how to get intofree, high-quality resources.

INFORM workshops always focus on information resources within a specific discipline,usually medicine and health, but sometimes mathematics and physics or anothertopic. 

Martha Garrett at Uppsala University has primary responsibilityfor the medical information training and Anders Wändahl at KarolinskaInstitutet leads the training on math and physics information.

Since the programme began in 2004, it has run two regional workshopsin Africa and national workshops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, SouthAfrica, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Burkina Faso,Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, India, and China. This year’sschedule includes more training in several of these countries, as well as in Nicaragua and possibly Nigeria.

INFORM has also done information training for Sida-supported International Training Programmes on child survival and midwifery and has taught information skills to foreign research students in Sweden for International Science Programs.

Much of INFORM’s activity in Africa has been accomplished by support from SPIDER, with contribution from SASNET to the INFORM training in Asia. INASP has collaborated with INFORM on individual workshops and in a master-trainers programme underway in Vietnam.

INFORM training always includes two basic messages. The first is that the best free, high-quality information resources for academic and clinical work cannot be accessed directly via search engines, not even specialized ones such as Google Scholar and Google Books. The materials are hidden and sometime ‘locked’, so end-users must know where to find them and how to ‘open’ them.The second is that almost everyone overlooks available information resources. TheINFORM training materials make this point with true stories about researchersaround the world who were completely unaware that they had free access tomillions of articles from international refereed journals and to thousands ofscholarly e-books in their own fields.

Initially all INFORM trainers were based at Swedish universities, but the programme is gradually building up an international group of trainers and national contacts. The intention is that many of these personswill initiate their own workshops, using free, copyright-free sourcebooks andother training materials from INFORM.

To facilitate this process, INFORM has launched a website at http://www.inform-network.org, where thematerials can be accessed.  Anyone interestedin improving ‘information content’ within the ICT sector is most welcome tovisit the site, learn more about the programme, and download any of the INFORM sourcebooks. Several new versions will be added during the spring of 2010. 

- Article submitted by Martha Garrett, INFORM, Uppsala university, martha.garrett@kbh.uu.se