Hurricane Ike, South Central Region Medical Libraries, Hurricane Web Links, and a New Listserv.

As many of you are aware, the South Central RML is currently closed, and will remain closed until Thursday, September 18^th, due to affects of Hurricane Ike. In accordance with the NN/LM National Emergency Preparedness & Response plan, South Central’s buddy RML, the Middle Atlantic Region (MAR), is backing up the office by taking calls and redirecting DOCLINE, when necessary. A special thanks to MAR staff for temporarily taking on this important responsibility.

For information on emergency preparedness planning for libraries as well as some post-disaster updates, see the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Toolkit at http://nnlm.gov/ep/. I am pleased to report that the toolkit received a lot of traffic the day before Hurricane Ike struck the Gulf Coast, which shows that libraries are using the toolkit as a preparedness resource. To see additional updates (or provide a status report), check the SCR blog, Blogadillo, at http://nnlm.gov/scr/blog/

Also of note, the National Library of Medicine home page has added a news item on hurricane resources, “Online Resources for Hurricanes, Floods, and Disaster Preparedness and Recovery” at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/disaster_resources_online.html

Finally, a new listserv, DISASTR-OUTREACH-LIB, is now available as a discussion forum for librarians, information specialists and others interested in disaster information outreach to their communities and responding to information needs for all-hazards preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. It is also the primary source for information announcing the activities of the National Library of Medicine’s Disaster Information Specialist Pilot Project. List members may post comments and resources of interest to those involved in disaster information outreach as well as relevant announcements of meetings, training, conferences, job openings, etc.

The listserv is provided by the National Library of Medicine’s Disaster Information Management Research Center. You can sign up for the list and view the archives at https://list.nih.gov/archives/disastr-outreach-lib.html

Please contact Cindy Love, lovec@mail.nlm.nih.gov, if you have any questions or comments about the listserv.

July 24, 2008
MBLWHOI Library Develops Taxonomy Toy
By Joseph Caputo
Cathy Norton may be on to something: Bioinformatics toys for scientists. Sure, they won’t be as popular as Super Soakers or Frisbees, but hers is a niche audience. Currently on the market is Taxatoy, a computer interface that lets users create customizable graphs to depict the number and variety of species discovered since 1750, when the Latin classification system developed by Carl Linnaeus began. (Using the program, one can learn that out of the nearly 2.3 million listed species, 31 are lobsters). The tool was developed by the Marine Biolgical Laboratory Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MBLWHOI) Library in 2007 and is now freely accessible online. http://www.mbl.edu/news/features/taxatoy.html [scb]

This month’s Breezing Along with the RML will feature three of our liaisons. Betsy Kelly, Assessment and Evaluation Liaison, and John Bramble, Utah/Network Membership Liaison, will continue last month’s library valuation presentation. They will discuss the economics of library services and resources and how you can communicate them to your stakeholders.. Using EFTS as an example, they will demonstrate how you can show the value of adopting sound business practices. There  will also  be an opportunity for you to share your experiences, practices and/or successes with the other attendees.

See an example of what can be learned and a product produced as a result of the Web 2.0 101 online class that MLA offered earlier this year. Marty Magee, Nebraska and Education Liaison will present the background and experience in creating the “Nebraska Notebook”, a collaborative project focused on MedlinePlus, GoLocal Nebraska and CHIRS (Consumer Health Information Resource Service) completed with an MLS practicum student, and the McGoogan Library of Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center .

Join us Wednesday Sept 17, 2008 at 10am MT, 11am CT at http://webmeeting.nih.gov/mcrupdate/

Are you interested in learning more about “microblogging” services like Twitter and FriendFeed? Perhaps you’ve heard about them and wondered if they had any application for the library. Join me for a 1-hour session online where I’ll demonstrate Twitter and FriendFeed as well as showing some examples of how libraries and other organizations are using these services to push information out to their patrons.

The session will be held online using Adobe Connect; all you need to participate is a web browser and a telephone. The session will be held on Thursday, September 18, from 1 - 2 pm Mountain Time, 2 - 3 pm Central Time. No sign up is required; please see the instructions below for participating.

If you can’t make the session, don’t worry; I will also be recording it for later viewing.

Class information:

Where: Online at https://webmeeting.nih.gov/psrsd/. On the day and time of the class, please go to this web address. Log in as Guest with your first and last name. There will be instructions in the meeting room for you to join the teleconference.

Description of class:

During this 1-hour session, participants will:

• Learn how to send and receive “Tweets” using Twitter clients
• Learn how to set up a FriendFeed page to push out information from a variety of services
• View and discuss examples of how library and other organizations are using microblogging.

No experience is required; however, I welcome others who have used these services to share your experiences with the class.

If you have questions, please contact Sharon Dennis at sdennis@lib.med.utah.edu. [SD]

You may have heard talk of a new browser that is being developed by Google. The browser is still in Beta, but is available for download. You can read about the browser features here and you can download it here.

I downloaded the new browser and tried it for about 30 minutes. I didn’t like it at first (probably just because it was different than what I was used to), and so I uninstalled it. However, I tried it again this past weekend, with a more open mind. Chrome has grown on me. I love the new Tab feature. When you click to open a new Tab, you are presented with a page that has thumbnail images of sites you visit most frequently. If one of those thumbnails is your intended destination, just click on the thumbnail, and you are taken directly to the web site.

When you install Chrome, you will be given the option to import bookmarks from your current browser. If, like me, you use both Firefox and Internet Explorer, the bookmarks from Firefox are imported by default. So, if you prefer one set of bookmarks over another, make sure to choose Additional Options during setup, which will let you specify bookmarks from IE.

If you have tried Chrome, and have discovered other features that you like, let me know…rbrown3@kumc.edu.
[rb]

The September issue of NIH News in Health, the monthly newsletter bringing you practical health news and tips based on the latest NIH research, is now online at http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/. In this issue of NIH News in Health:

“Good Health to Go: Eating Smart at School”
“Back to School with Diabetes: Plan Ahead for a Smooth Start to School”
“Health Capsules”:

• Children’s Physical Activity Drops
• Diabetes and a Healthy Pregnancy
• Featured Web Site: NIDA Goes Back to School http://www.backtoschool.drugabuse.gov/

Download a PDF version for printing http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/pdf/NIHNiH Sep08.pdf [scb]

National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC) trainers will be training just prior to MCMLA in Cody. Add some FREE professional development to your schedule.

Learn new skills and brush up old ones.

• NLM Gateway & ClinicalTrials.gov - Friday, October 3, 2008 2:00pm-6:00pm
• PubMed - Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 8:30am-5:00pm

Register at: http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/classes/register.html?schedule_id=430

Register today! (mm)

1) Check out opportunities for professional growth where the NN/LM MidContinental Liaisons are training at the NN/LM MCR web page -http://nnlm.gov/mcr/. Look for the Calendar of Events on the right hand side.

2) What if you missed MLA and all the good information shared there. You can still check out the MLA CD’s from the NNLM/MidContinental Resources collection of Materials for Loan. See: http://nnlm.gov/mcr/education/ill/index.html

Don’t wait - expand your world today! (mm)

Please join your colleagues in Cody, Wyoming for the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Midcontinental Chapter of the Medical Library Association, “Open Spaces, Frontier Places” : October 3-7. It’s a great opportunity to focus on health and information access on our rural and urban frontiers! The deadline to sign-up for the NLM Gateway/Clinical Trials and PubMed classes has been extended to Sept.12.

To learn more about the conference, visit the website: http://www.mcmla.org/meetings/2008/index.html and the

conference wiki: http://mcmla2008openspaces.wetpaint.com [jh]