We’ve heard from Ruth Holst and Jacqueline Leskovec at the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) NN/LM office about their activities in promoting NN/LM’s EP&R Plan recently, and they have been busy and creative! The GMR has an active Emergency Preparedness Working Group, composed of librarians, both academic and hospital, from each state in their region. For the EP Working Group, they have developed a role statement for the Regional Coordinators which spells out responsibilities and procedures for them to use in the event of a disaster in their states. The EP Working Group is also creating a checklist of questions that NN/LM RML staff can use when a call comes in from a member reporting an emergency or disaster, in order to ensure consistency of information obtained. GMR is also investigating online class options for use in enhancing training for their Regional Coordinators.

To promote the plan, the GMR sponsored an excellent poster featuring the various components of the plan. It was presented at the recent Midwest Chapter/MLA meeting in Troy, Michigan by Maryann Mlodzik, Cuyahoga Falls General Hospital, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and Barbara Platts, Munson Healthcare, Traverse City, MI, both of whom are their states’ representatives on the GMR EP Working Group (see a photo of Maryann, Barb and the poster in the Picture Gallery). Ruth’s office made several copies of the poster so that the GMR can loan them out to librarians who want to exhibit them at state and local meetings.

GMR Staff member Holly Burt and Working Group member Pat Hamilton spearheaded the group’s efforts to create two tri-fold handouts; one featuring preparedness activities and one for response procedures as outlined in the NN/LM plan. The handouts do a great job of succinctly presenting the NN/LM plan, and will no doubt be very helpful to the members in their region.

Linda Walton, Director, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences at University of Iowa, and also a member of the GMR’s EP Working Group, presented the NN/LM plan to the health science librarians’ subgroup at the Iowa Library Association’s annual meeting in Dubuque (October 15-17, 2008).

It’s exciting to see the promotion of NN/LM’s Emergency Preparedness & Response plan unfold across the country–many thanks to Ruth and Jacqueline for the updates!

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