Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences was the venue for our second workshop for 2013. On Feb 24, Lakshmi and Vasumathi conducted a one day workshop on Searching PubMed and the Cochrane Library. There were thirty participants – Librarians, PG students, Registrars, and Faculty members. Kudos to the Chief Librarian, Ms Indira Nair for making all efforts to organize this event. What we enjoyed most was that the participants were so deeply involved that we actually managed to finish the workshop almost two hours before schedule. We then spent one hour showing them some more little tricks and also having discussions about the workshop.
Some participants were keen to know how the idea of QMed was born (and how Vasumathi thought of it). Sharing the story was great, and at the end of it six participants made a donation to the Foundation, to become a “Friend of QMed”.
In the feedback form, some expressed that the program was a tad heavy and it would be good to spread it across two days. We’d love to do it accordingly, but there are too many logistical hurdles for the organizers in such cases.
It was interesting to note that a PG student, in his feedback mentioned that some friends actually tried to dissuade him from attending the workshop, asking him what there was to “learn” to search the web. He then admitted that he came out of sheer curiosity and remarked “This was the best workshop I have ever attended in my life”!
We realize we still have a long way to go, to make all students and professionals understand that there IS a structured method to conduct a literature search.
