Anna Ercoli Schnitzer
InfoPoint Librarian
Health Sciences Libraries
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

Women’s Health and Fitness Day Event 2009

Sponsored by the University of Michigan (UM) Medical School, various University of Michigan Health System units, and even a few grocery stores, the 2009 Annual Women’s Health and Fitness Day Event took place at Ypsilanti High School in Michigan on Saturday, January 24th. The event had been organized and was facilitated by the UM Women Medical Students. (more…)

Barbara Knight, MA, MLS
Lila Pedersen, MALS, AHIP
Harley E. French Library of the Health Sciences
Grand Forks, ND

On December 9, 2008, the staff of the Harley E. French Library of the Health Sciences at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks held a reception to honor Judy Rieke, PhD, retiring Assistant Director and Collection Management Librarian. Judy had been with the Library of the Health Sciences in that position since 1992. In those 16 years Judy guided the transition of the library collection from print-based to our largely digital-based collection today.

Judy assisted with the library’s move to the current building in 1994 and was able to fulfill her interest in historical and rare books by organizing the Harry D. Benwell History of Medicine Reading Room. During her time on the staff, she monitored two special gift collections which today number nearly 2,000 volumes. One collection featuring historical pathology and anatomy books is from University of North Dakota School of Medicine alumnus Dr. James D. Barger, and the second is from former faculty member Dr. Anthony B. Gustafson. (more…)

Christopher Childs
Education & Outreach Librarian
Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa

Partnering for Patient Empowerment Through Community Awareness (PPECA)*

Partnering for Patient Empowerment Through Community Awareness (PPECA) a project that focuses on patient safety, is a collaborative effort between the Hardin Library, University of Iowa College of Public Health and its Institute for Quality Healthcare, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC), Consumers Advancing Patient Safety, and Zipperer Project Management which specializes in patient safety information projects. A three hour long train-the-trainer presentation is given that is broken up into several different modules. I teach the third module called Prepared with Information: The role of information in the safety of care. I’ll talk about the importance of getting the patient to become a more active participant in the healthcare process, tips on how this may be accomplished, and I’ll demonstrate some useful resources such as MedlinePlus and Iowa Go Local. While the location for these presentations has always been in a hospital setting, our audience usually always includes members of the local community. We always invite a public librarian from the area to join us and include a handout on consumer heath/patient safety information that hospital staff and community members can use to create their own program.

For more information on PPECA, please visit our website at http://hosted.lib.uiowa.edu/ppeca/about.htm

Critical Access Hospitals

This project began by a request from the Director of Patient Care Services at Marengo Memorial Hospital, which is one of nine UI Critical Access Hospitals (CAH). She wanted allow her staff access to Hardin’s resources even though they aren’t affiliated with the University of Iowa. Our director, Linda Walton agreed to allow staff members access to (more…)

Christopher Childs
Education & Outreach Librarian
Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa

Since August of 2007, the staff at the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Iowa have been working on getting our Iowa Go Local project completed for the public unveiling at the Iowa State Fair on August 11th, 2008. I started working at Hardin at the end of February of 2008 and part of my responsibilities as the community outreach liaison, is to promote Iowa Go Local across the state. I wrote an article for the Fall 2008 issue of MIDLINE, the newsletter of the Midwest Chapter, Medical Library Association, to talk about my experiences working on this project. This article gives the reader a recap of the history of the project, including its challenges and an account of the promotional activities that continue today.

The link to MIDLINE is http://midwestmla.org/midline/

Visit Iowa Go Local at http://www.medlineplus.gov/iowa

Lisa Massengale, Assistant Information Services Librarian, University of Illinois at Chicago Library of the Health Sciences (LHS), took her outreach to a new dimension as a presenter on WILL-AM 580, Public Media Broadcasting Service of the College of Media at the University of Illinois. The interview was broadcast on Focus 580 with David Inge, on October 20, 2008, but is available in podcast format from the Focus 580 website: http://will.illinois.edu/focus580/interview/focus081020b/.

Lisa is the librarian working with Heartland Health Outreach on the New American Health Information Portal, a project funded through the GMR. Listen to Lisa and Susannah Fox, Associate Director, Editorial, Pew Internet & American Life Project, on Health Information Online: Sorting Out the Good from the Bad, and Who Uses It.

The Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) is pleased to announce the launch of The New Americans Health Information Portal (NAHIP).

http://palantir.lib.uic.edu/nahip/

This portal is a collaboration with the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights. Our new portal links to a variety of quality multi-lingual health education documents. Languages include: Amharic, Arabic, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese, Croatian, French, Haitian Creole, Karen, Khmer, Lao, Russian, Somali, Swahili, Thai, Tigrina and Vietnamese.

We hope this site is useful and welcome feedback. For comments on website: lmassen1 at uic.edu

This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. N01-LM-6-3503 with the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Fellow Illinoisans and other GMR network members may be interested in the following combined online Web conference and in-person training on Health-E Illinois.

The Rolling Prairie Library System (RPLS), Alliance Library System, Lewis & Clark Library System and Shawnee Library System are offering a training session on Health-E Illinois, the GoLocal for Illinois, on Tuesday, November 11, 2008, from 10:30-11:30 a.m. This event is free and will be presented by Fran Kovach, Reference & Education Librarian, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. The in-person training will be held simultaneously at the RPLS training room.

For more information and to register, please go to the following URL:
http://www.librarylearning.info/events/?eventID=4645

By Ulrike Dieterle, MA, MLS
Distance Services & Outreach Coordinator
Ebling Library
Health Sciences Learning Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison

On September 3, 2008 the Wednesday Nite@the Lab  (WN@TL) program at UW-Madison featured BadgerBytes, an exploration of information resources found in BadgerLink.

BadgerLink is a project of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI); Division for Libraries, Technology, and Community Learning.  Its goal is to provide access to quality online information resources  for Wisconsin residents in cooperation with the state’s public, school, academic, and special libraries and internet service providers.  It covers a wide spectrum of topics, formats and lots of full-text documents, e.g., periodical titles, 700 newspapers (including Wisconsin newspapers), children and adult literature, business information, medical databases and a bounty of education resources.  Its list of health and medical resources includes MEDLINE,  Lexi-PALS Drug Guide, a subset of CINAHL, Biomedical Reference Collection, Health Source-Nursing/Academic Edition and Health Source - Consumer Edition.

WN@TL takes place 50 Wednesdays a year and covers a full range of topics related to science, engineering and technology research at UW-Madison, from astronomy to zoology, and from bioethics to biomedical engineering. The program is sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Association and is promoted to the general public.  Admission is free. (more…)

Anna Ercoli Schnitzer
InfoPoint Librarian
Health Sciences Libraries
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

On Sunday afternoon, October 6th, 2008, after weeks of planning, the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries hosted an event inspired by an NLM Exhibit called Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Surgeons. We had the Exhibit on display in our own Health Sciences Libraries for over a month and then it was moved to our main University Library. In conjunction with this outstanding opportunity, we invited one of the surgeons featured in the traveling exhibit, Dr. Alexa Canady-Davis to be our keynote speaker. (more…)

Cathy Eames, MA, MSLS, AHIP
Children’s Hospital of Michigan
Detroit, MI 48201

Children’s Hospital of Michigan celebrated the American Nurses Credentialing Center award of Magnet designation this year. During the lengthy preparation process nurses at CHM increased their focus on developing an evidence based practice climate throughout the hospital.
(more…)