Learn about the history and future directions of MedlinePlus Go Local in Naomi Miller’s latest article, The NLM Hosted Go Local System: An Opportunity for Medical Libraries. Most importantly, learn how your library can benefit by participating in Go Local.

Welcome to October!

Marking Medical Librarians’ Month and to celebrate the work of medical librarians throughout the country, the National Library of Medicine has put out its annual page featuring the work of medical librarians and the interesting projects they conduct for their institutions and beyond.

This year New England Network Member institutions and their librarians in New Hampshire and Maine are recognized for their work respectively in theater and outreach to immigrant populations. Read about those projects at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/lo/profiles08/ner.html .

And you can read about the projects from all of the regions in the Network at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/lo/profiles08/.

Happy Medical Librarians’ Month!

Your local NNLM coordinators spent the past week at exhibiting at the ASTRO (American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology) at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Our participation at national exhibits help us to get the word out to health professionals about the high quality resources available through the National Library of Medicine. Most conference attendees were familiar with PubMed. Our objective is to educate about advanced search features. Though, the My NCBI feature came out in 2005. There is still a large majority of health professionals who are unaware of this outstanding feature. My experience is that when care providers learn about the “current awareness” feature (that they can save searches to have them emailed on a regular update)…there is much excitement. This is a time saving and educational tool, which is essential for keeping up to date with new research.

Keep your providers up to date on the “hot topics” most relevant to them. Help them to register for a MyNCBI account, customize searches with them and have them emailed to them. My observation is that most providers are just not using RSS yet. We need to be where are users are at…

Here is our own Lauri Fennell, Outreach and Education Coordinator, demonstrating MyNCBI.

Beyond an Apple a Day: Providing Consumer Health Information at Your Library

Want to improve your consumer health collection and services? Interested in improving your reference skills for providing health information for the public? Then this class is for you. Starting with a discussion about the information seeking behaviors of consumers, the class focuses on the provision of consumer health information services for the public. We will also cover health literacy, planning the service, the reference interview, consumer health online, collection development, collaboration, community partnerships, outreach and marketing. Students will also learn about how to stay up to date on consumer health librarianship.

Course approved:
• 8 Medical Library Association contact hours
• May be applied towards the MLA Consumer Health Information Specialization.

Dates: January and February 2009
Format: A course shell you can access online 24/7 at your own pace as well as two interactive online sessions (dates to be announced)

Assignments:
• forum discussion of health information seeking of providers and consumers
• patient education rewrite exercise
• forum discussion on aspects of the reference interview including challenges, evaluating health information and usage of disclaimers
• needs assessment for program development
• collection development activity
• practice literature searches
• create a sample outreach project
• develop an elevator speech to promote your service

Instructor: Michelle Eberle Consumer Health Information Coordinator, NN/LM NER
Interactive sessions co-facilitated by: Terri Ottosen Consumer Health Coordinator, NN/LM SE/A

To register: Please contact Martha Pearson.

On Tuesday, September 23rd, I had the honor of providing a training session to the health staff at the Wampanoag Tribe in Mashpee, MA. I had the opportunity to learn about the tribe’s health information needs and discuss opportunities for partnering with the tribe to educate about online health information. The Tribal Health Center is very eager to incorporate NLM consumer health resource training into their health information outreach.

Caring for the Mind: Providing Reference Services for Mental Health Information

Responding to mental health reference questions is challenging for even the most experienced librarian. In “Caring for the Mind”, participants will learn how to effectively provide reference services for mental health information for the public. Participants will learn the best web sites, databases and collection development materials to respond to mental health related questions. Best approaches to handling challenging reference interviews will be explored. This class will increase your knowledge of consumer level mental health resources.

Course approved:

· 4 Medical Library Association contact hours

· May be applied towards the MLA Consumer Health Information Specialization.

· 2 additional credits pending for interactive sessions

Dates: November 10- Dec 5, 2008

Course is free!!!

Format: A course shell you can access online 24/7 at your own pace as well as two interactive online sessions (dates to be announced)

Assignments:

Readings
Reflections on readings
Resource review / literature searches
Mini quizzes – no grades! …for self assessment only.
Crossword fun!

Instructor: Michelle Eberle, Consumer Health Information Coordinator

Please contact instructor with any inquiries about course.

To register: Please contact Martha Pearson.