A new task for the information literacy training by the university libraries: electronic media and computer...

Education and training of traditional information literacy, for librarians as well as for teachers and students, is no more adequate for current demands, even if well established and not over-sophisticated. The present electronic era in the information media and technology has not been fully adopted by all its users, although all of them acknowledge its high efficiency for learning, teaching, and research. Since the year 1993/94 the members of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) qualified in librarianship and medicine, prepared a course for pregraduate medical students (group A) and another one for postgraduates in biomedicine (group B). Since the year 1995/96 a course has been established for bachelor studies (C). Special courses or demonstrations corresponding to the demands of those users have been organized for teachers (group D) and for members of the ISI (group E). Group A (30 students/yr, a 4 hours course in "Medical Informatics") received theoretical and practical training in principles of bibliography oriented to searching in basic biomedical databases. Group B (60-80 st/yr, 24-28 hrs/yr in "The Craft of Science") was trained in principles of scientific communication and research data presentation incl. intensive workshops with databases. Group C (50 st/yr, 30 hrs/yr in "Scientific Information") received similar training as group B but with a more practical accentation. Group D (4 persons/yr, 20 hrs/yr) and E (15 p/yr, 30 hrs/yr) proposed their topics themselves. Besides, all the groups received intense training in Internet access. The lasting feed-back contact with the majority of participants of the above courses, mainly with researchers and postgraduate students, have confirmed the advantageousness of these ISI activities.