AHRQ releases hospital surge capacity tool
September 15, 2008
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a Web-based tool to help hospitals and emergency planners estimate the resources needed to treat an influx of patients in a disaster. The Hospital Surge Model can estimate the number and flow of casualties needing medical attention for scenarios consistent with the Homeland Security Counsel’s National Planning Scenarios. http://hospitalsurgemodel.ahrq.gov/ [posted on the Medical Reserve Corps listserv http://www.medicalreservecorps.gov/ListservRulesRegulations ] scb

The purpose of the Sewell Fund Learning Partnership program is to provide funding for a mid-career medical or health care librarian or information scientist to spend twelve months in the environment of a host organization. If you are a health sciences librarian or information specialist who is interested in being considered for selection as a Sewell Fund Fellow, the application period begins in January 2009 with applications due by April 15, 2009. Sound interesting? Host organizations who can present a learning environment are also be sought. For more information and the application forms, please go to http://www.sewellfund.org. Questions? Email lpinfo@sewellfund.org If you would like to be contacted by phone, please leave a telephone number and preferred time of day for a return call. /ch

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!

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

The September 17 Breezing session recording is now available online.

Betsy Kelly, Assessment and Evaluation Liaison, and John Bramble, Utah/Network Membership Liaison continued last month’s library valuation presentation. They discussed the economics of library services and resources and how you can communicate them to your stakeholders. Using EFTS as an example, they demonstrated how you can show the value of adopting sound business practices.

Marty Magee, Nebraska and Education Liaison, showed 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. She presented 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.

An emergency can be as wide-scale as an earthquake or flash flood or as local as a burst pipe in the book stacks. Do you know how to ensure the continuation of your primary services and access to your primary resources in the event of an emergency at your library? Learn and share strategies for creating a service continuity plan during this 90-minute online class.

Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Time: 2:30-4 pm MT, 3:30-5pm CT
Instructor: Dan Wilson, Coordinator, NN/LM Emergency Preparedness Project

To participate via Adobe Connect go to: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/contplan/

Log in as Guest with your first and last name. There will be instructions for having the system call your phone.

If you have a phone with an extension or another reason it can’t call you, you can also call in manually at the number below. You can call in starting 15 minutes prior to the start of the teleconference. 1-866-846-3997 Passcode: 579437

If you have questions please contact Claire Hamasu chamasu@RML4.utah.edu or 1-800-338-7657 (1-800-DEV-ROKS)! /ch

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]

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.

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]