ELISAD is the European Association of Libraries and Information Services on Alcohol and other Drugs. ELISAD, founded in 1988, is a non-profit making association whose primary purpose is to enable those working in the information field of alcohol and other drugs and facing common challenges to exchange ideas and experiences and, through networking and interaction with each other, to develop their professional knowledge, skills and work.

Over the past year ELISAD has been active in many ways.

Gateway Project

The European Commission agreed to finance the, 2005 –2007 phase of the Gateway Project. The Project Team comprises 18 participants and work has started on expanding the Gateway pan-European database of evaluated website resources in the field of substance abuse and addictions.

The Gateway Project Team were short-listed for an award at the International Information Industry Awards, November 2004
Communications

A new Yahoo Mailing list has been set up for Gateway Partners. The Elisad Journal continues to be a rich source of information about our meetings, information services and new publications and other material of relevance to us all.

Presentations

Online 2004: Christine Goodair, head of Information Services, DrugScope, gave a joint presentation with Jorunn Moen, Librarian Sirus Institute, Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research on Collaborative Working Across Europe, which drew on our experiences of working on the Gateway project. The paper is due to be published in the renowned journal Libri.

Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) 2005, Conference in Croatia, 30 May - 3 June 2005: Susanna Prepeliczay gave a presentation about the Gateway Project under the theme building a small digital library and digital library network.

International Links

ELISAD continues to enjoy a good working relationship with SALIS, (Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists), an international organisation based in North America. Christine Goodair is a member of the Salis Board, and this year 3 of us attended their Conference in Chicago. Over the past year we supported SALIS’ Save ETOH (Alcohol Database) Campaign. We are now working on having a joint conference in Boston 2006.

Other Activities

Our Annual Meeting each year, provides participants with an opportunity to network with colleagues and learn about addictions work from a variety of speakers.
The Multilingual Thesaurus Working Group is looking at developing guidance on thesaurus, taxonomy and index construction for AOD libraries.

Other Resources

Collaboration across Europe: Experience from practice by Christine Goodair, Jorunn Moen, Susanna Prepeliczay, Thomas Roualt (PDF)

EMCDDA Drug Situation Reports

Commissioned each year by the EMCCDA and produced by the National focal points of the Reitox network, the National reports draw an overall picture of the drug phenomenon at national level in each EU Member state. These data are key information to the EMCCDA and are an important resource, among others for the compilation of its 'Annual report'.

Elisad Journal

The Elisad journal contains news, book and web reviews, useful dates and lots more!

Link to Journal