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SatelLife is an international not‐for‐profit organisation, which began as an initiative of the group known as International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, SatelLife aims to promote the use of micro‐satellite technology to serve the health communication and information needs of countries in the developing world SatelLife administers HealthNet, which uses a ‘store and forward’ satellite in a pole‐to‐pole orbit, HealthSat, in order to facilitate the transmission of messages and information between the ground stations over which it passes. The system is relatively cheap to install and is independent of the notoriously unreliable communications infrastructures of Third World countries, relying as it does on radio rather than telephone links between each ground station and the satellite. HealthNet is specifically designed to facilitate the exchange of information among health professionals in the developing world and to link them with their colleagues in First World countries. Essentially an e‐mail system, HealthNet has been installed in several northern African countries as well as Cuba, However, HealthNet is also used to facilitate the distribution of an electronic newsletter among African medical librarians. Although South Africa is technologically far more advanced than the rest of Africa, problems still arise in terms of the transmission of essential health statistics and data that is now required for demographic and healthcare planning in terms of the ANC's new health policy. Accordingly, a pilot study linking three of the more under‐developed regions in South Africa has recently been established under the coordination of a national manager. In South Africa, the system will be known as HealthLink, as HealthNet already exists as a trademark in this country. This paper aims to describe the background leading to the establishment of HealthLink, as well as its current status in the improvement of electronic healthcare information delivery in South Africa

Medical libraries have been involved with automated services for over a century, beginning with the association of John Shaw Billings, the Director of the Library of the Surgeon‐General's Office of the US Army and Herman Hollerith, founder of the Computing‐Tabulating‐Recording Company, which eventually changed its name to IBM. In the early 1960s, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) began development of MEDLARS, the first successful large‐scale online bibliographic information retrieval system. More recent developments include use of CDROM discs for searching databases, full‐text online and CDROM medical journals and experiments in document delivery such as ADONIS. Currently, the proliferation of medical end‐users, combined with the need for rapid publication of medical data, has led to the first attempt at electronic publishing in the form of the Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials. The Internet, a global computer network of networks, is now being used to transmit up‐to‐date medical information to practitioners worldwide, while satellite systems such as SatelLife provide the means to transmit health care information to rural areas in developing countries. This paper provides an overview of electronic health information systems currently available, and discusses their implications for the dissemination of information for medical practitioners within the context of the health care infrastructure in South Africa.

The Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand is to implement an electronic curriculum for a new Graduate Entry Medical Program at the beginning of 2003. The literature relating to the provision of electronic problem‐based learning curricula indicates that most libraries involved in the provision of resources for such programs have simply provided a quickly outdated bibliographic list of databases and e‐resources for further consultation. As part of a multidisciplinary teaching and design team, the Witwatersrand Health Sciences Library (WHSL) has set up a proactive intranet of Web‐based links to e‐resources and multimedia that are integrated into the actual e‐case studies. It appears that WHSL has designed a truly integrated and interactive Web‐based resource intranet, with direct links from the actual curriculum material to the information resources themselves.

Addresses the issues of charging for interlibrary loans with particular reference to the experience at the University of Wittwatersrand, South Africa. Considers definitions of the information poor and the information rich and the cost of equal access to information. Proposes a method of charging the ′rich′ in order to offer free services to the ′poor′.

This paper describes the challenges faced by the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in bringing First World technology to the Third World that still exists in rural and much of urban southern Africa. Although SunSITE technology is simply that of a World Wide Web server or FTP site, opportunities are now ripe for Wits to place some of its priceless academic resources within reach of the community at large. The story of the Taung skull discovery and subsequent important anthropological discoveries around the Sterkfontein caves is just one example of what has essentially been ‘hidden’ at Wits for years. Additional academic expertise in areas such as constitutional law or primary health care delivery can now also be shared, and will be of considerable benefit to those responsible for implementing Reconstruction and Development Programmes (RDP). As South Africa once more resumes its rightful place in the family of nations, SunSITE Africa will be able to provide Africa north of the Limpopo, as well as the rest of the world, with readily‐accessible information and research unique to this country but long hidden behind the barriers of sanctions and apartheid.

Although libraries provide quiet and well‐equipped places for students to seek and use information, the trend librarians are seeing is a decline in the number of people coming to the library. In contrast, they are seeing a dramatic increase in the use of remotely accessed research databases. From these two trends emerges the concept of disintermediation, where library users seek and retrieve information without the assistance of the librarian, and the realization that librarians are no longer present when users need help in developing successful search strategies and evaluating the information they find. Librarians are not present at that teachable moment. To overcome the effects of disintermediation, librarians need to evaluate their services and recreate their instructional strategies in innovative ways so that they are available to the users of information wherever those users are.

A Conference Report from the 5th International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists held for the first time on the African continent. To inform library colleagues about this specialty area of librarianship, the literature, concerns and work of animal science and veterinary librarians. The international scope of this meeting reinforced the importance.

Description of conference content and introduction of speakers and participants.

Information needs of animal health information specialists around the world appear to be the same but the digital divide is very significant with practitioners in Africa with issues concerning bandwidth, connectivity, local economies and other access related concerns continue to experience an information delivery gap.

Suggests the technological and access concerns of this special librarian population.

Awareness and networking for this relatively small group of librarians.

Learning about this group which meets irregularly is of great value.

Online & CDROM Review here offers abstracts of the papers presented at the Second Southern African Online Information Meeting, held in Pretoria on 2–4 June 1993. The full Proceedings are published in a special edition of our sister journal, The Electronic Library, August/October 1993, vol. 11, no. 4/5.

To report the highlights of the 2005 Online Information Conference.

Provides a brief review of the conference.

The conference offered a wide variety of timely presentations on online content and information management solutions

This paper is a useful summary of a conference of interest to library and information management professionals.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources, research, and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the eighteenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1991. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.