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SALUS: online co‐operation between South Australian health libraries
Author(s) -
Peterson Mary,
Harris Lindsay
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
health information and libraries journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.779
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1471-1842
pISSN - 1471-1834
DOI - 10.1046/j.1471-1842.2002.00371.x
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , business , process (computing) , plan (archaeology) , public relations , politics , medline , political science , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , law , history , operating system
The establishment of the South Australian Health Libraries Consortium led to the development of the SALUS project which enabled the online delivery of core health, clinical information and bibliographic databases with full‐text resources across South Australian government health services. This was the first venture of Australian health librarians to create an online consortium. This article discusses the policy and management issues surrounding the implementation of the SALUS project and its influence on the evolution of the health Libraries Consortium over several years. Lessons learned during this process included: the necessity to plan well ahead yet to remain flexible in implementing those plans, to avoid procedure becoming more important than improvization during planning, to be willing to take well judged risks on occasions, and to be fully aware of changing circumstances in the project’s funding and political environment. The importance of securing influential advocates outside of the participating libraries to support continued project funding is also considered.