The Department of Scientific Information (SVI) of the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) is one of the specialised library and information workplaces registered under Act No. 257/2001 Coll. It provides informational support to the Institute’s scientific and professional staff and offers public library and information services to external users.
The collection of the SVI library currently consists of almost 60 000 library volumes. The Verbis library system and the OPAC catalogue (supported by the VISK3 project of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic) are used for their registration, search and subsequent lending. The library offers access to a wide range of electronic resources as well as printed documents. Standard activities include lending and interlibrary services, as well as provision of bibliographic and research data. SVI also provides documentation and translation services. The department continuously records all publications by NIPH employees in the Personnel Bibliography database which, amongst other applications, is used to prepare and transfer data on the results of NIPH research activities to the Register of Information (RIV) used by the Science, Research, Development and Innovation Information System.
SVI editorial activity is highly extensive, supporting scientific publication and research in the health sector by publishing the international journals Central European Journal of Public Health and Hygiena. The journal Acta hygienica, epidemiologica et microbiologica is published for the needs of the Public Health Service. The department also contributes to the publication of the NIPH journal: Bulletin of the Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology.
SVI cooperates with library and information centres throughout the Czech Republic and with institutions abroad (interlibrary loan service – MVS, MMVS, publishing activities), providing data for national registers, catalogues and databases.