No doubt many medical librarians throughout the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) are dreaming of beaches and beautiful sunsets thanks to this year’s Medical Library Association (MLA) conference being held in Hawaii (May 15-20, 2009). Others may be dreaming of the recently announced funding opportunities in the GMR (http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/). Some may be dreaming of both.

If you are in the “both” category, perhaps you missed a great MLA News article from March 2009 entitled Seeking Grant Funding for Consumer Health Projects. Although the GMR does not fund grants per se (our subcontracts and awards work on a cost-reimbursement basis), the information in the article available online to MLA members after signing in to the MLA News website has some great pointers that are useful to anyone looking to secure funding for a great consumer health or other project. Read the rest of this entry »

Eileen Severson
MLIS Supervisor
Library and Health Information Services
Health Sciences Library
Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center
La Crosse, WI

At the WHSLA 2009 Annual Meeting in La Crosse, WI, the board was honored to award the Librarian of the Year award to Barbara Benisch Sisolak, Senior Special Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Department of Surgery Library.

Barb has demonstrated many times her qualifications for this award.  Since becoming the Senior Special Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Department of Surgery, she has been an active participant in our many library professional organizations.  She has participated in WHSLA as member of the Communications Committee, President-Elect, and subsequently President and Past-President.  Barb is a participant in surgery society conferences as well.  In all of her roles in library and health-related organizations, Barb is the consummate professional and serves as a mentor to others new to the organization, the profession, or outside the profession.

Read the rest of this entry »

I would like to personally thank the recipients of the Technology Improvement Awards for Year 3 for their hard work, determination in offering services to their users.  It is always interesting to review applications for these awards.  You tend to get a really good idea of what our member libraries need and the projects they are working on - and this information not only helps the library applying for the award but others thinking about applying for an award.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announced our funding opportunities for Year 4 (May 1, 2009 - April 30, 2010). Please see the summary of awards and subcontracts at: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/

A table outlining the number of each type of award and subcontract and the funding amounts for each can be found at: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/current.html

Two new awards are being offered in Year 4, so check out the Calls for Applications for these awards:

EFTS Award: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/efts/eftsrfp.html

Planning and Assessment Award: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/planning/planningrfp.html

Please contact me, Ruth Holst, or one of the GMR Coordinators (http://nnlm.gov/gmr/about/staff.html) if you have questions about funding. For more information about Year 4’s Outreach Programs, please see the Outreach Program Summary May 1, 2009 - April 30, 2010 at: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/about/04outreachsum.html.

-Ruth

The creators of the Second Life, Linden Lab announced their 1st Linden Prize winners last week (http://lindenlab.com/lindenprize). Among the two winners was “Virtual Ability Island”; the virtual island that was created as a part of the Alliance Virtual Library. This is a group of virtual islands use by people with chronic health and disabilities.

The Alliance Library System (ALS) in Illinois, a member of the GMR, worked with the Virtual Ability Organization to plan and build this award winning orientation center. Virtual Ability Island was partially funded by the NN/LM consumer health subcontract - “Share the Health”. The ALS will have the distinction of being the first NN/LM supported project that has received this prestigious virtual award. ALS and Virtual Ability continue to partner on health information services in Second Life.

Prestigious Linden Prize was given to two winners chosen out of 230 applications and 10 finalists. The winners were awarded $10,000 each. Here is the announcement from the Linden Lab: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009/04/30/the-linden-prize-goes-to-studio-wikitecture-and-virtual-ability

Please contact Lori Bell (lbell927@gmail.com), if you would like to know more about this award winning virtual island or the partnership! Congratulations!!

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

Partnering for Patient Empowerment Through Community Awareness (PPECA) Article

Rhonda Reimer, the Special Project Coordinator of the Pella Regional Health Center in Pella, IA, and I recently collaborated on an article for the Focus On Patient Safety, the official newsletter of the National Patient Safety Foundation.  The article, entitled Hospital Uses PPECA “Train the Trainer” Program to Help Community Groups Empower Patients, discusses the PPECA  presentation made at the hospital and how the staff took the knowledge gained and created their own community outreach program on patient safety.

You can read this article by going to http://npsf.org/paf/npsfp/fo/pdf/Focus_Volume_12_%20Issue_1.pdf

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

New Influenza A (H1N1) also known as the Swine Flu Resource Guide Available from the Hardin Library

A new resource guide containing information on Influenza A (H1N1) has been created and is available from the Hardin Library.  All of the information contained in this guide is free and available to the public.  The guide includes: national & international resources, maps, blogs, an RSS and Twitter feed, Iowa resources, articles, and consumer health resources available in English, Spanish and multiple Languages.

The URL for this guide is http://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/content.php?hs=a&pid=43862 Please feel free to link this guide to your institution’s website.

By Barbarie Hill, Manager Edward L. Pratt Library Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Cincinnati, OH

Plans for the 2009 Midwest Chapter Annual Conference are firming up, and a lot of information has been added to the web site at http://midwestmla.org/conference2009/.  Check it out and start making your plans to come to Columbus to Seek, Explore, Discover with us October 3-6, 2009

Location: Hyatt on Capitol Square, Columbus, OH
Sponsors: Midwest Chapter/MLA and Ohio Health Sciences Libraries Association (OHSLA).

If you are unable to attend the MLA annual meeting this year, the Midwest Chapter meeting may be your only chance to meet with colleagues from across the region and recharge your professional batteries by engaging with stimulating speakers and attending top-quality CE courses.  And you’ll get all of that at a bargain rate!  Even if your institution pays only a part or none of the cost for you to attend professional meetings, you’ll get the most for your money at a regional meeting. Registration for the conference has not yet opened, but you can still begin now to prepare by:

• Checking out the conference web site http://midwestmla.org/conference2009/
• Submitting your travel request to your administrators
• Submitting a paper or poster abstract (May 31 is the deadline)
• Choosing CE courses of interest to you
• Making a reservation at the Hyatt on Capitol Square in Columbus for Oct. 3-6
• Talking to your colleagues about attending

See you in Columbus in October!

There have been 100’s of news reports lately about the Swine Flu Outbreak that is now a worldwide situation and is responsible for 91 cases (at this writing) and one death in the United States.  For those who are not satisfied getting your news via traditional news sources, here are some options:

• The CDC is using Twitter to deliver Swine Flu information.  You can follow the  CDC’s @emergency account on Twitter
  

  CDC on Twitter

• Swine Flu Tweets allows you to track tweets (posts on Twitter) from Twitter about the outbreak on a Google map.
• Another way via Twitter to follow trends and conversations is to keep an eye on tweets tagged with the keyword #swineflu.
• Facebook, the social networking utility has also been instrumental in delivering Swine Flu information.  (How accurate the information is, can be debated!) They have a tool called Lexicon which analyzes how fast conversations about Swine Flu traveled on their site.  Between April 20 and April 27, their maps of data show the most conversations show up in Texas and California.

As you hear of any additional methods of communicating this outbreak, let us know about them!

Update - Here’s a one more place to look:

• Swine Flu Volunteer Network via Ning (thanks for Siobhan Champ-Blackwell)

The National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide links to resources about the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak. The National Library of Medicine Division of Specialized Information Services has released an Enviro-Health Links page on Swine Flu. This page contains links to resources about the flu outbreak, including transmission, prevention, treatment, and the genetic makeup of the influenza virus. MedlinePlus released a new health topic page on Swine Flu: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/swineflu.html. The page is also provided in Spanish: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/spanish/swineflu.html.

MedlinePlus - Multiple Languages provides information in Arabic to Vietnamese on the MedlinePlus: Flu - Multiple Languages site: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/languages/flu.html. Related Multiple Language links from MedlinePlus include the Germs and Hygiene resources: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/germsandhygiene.html translated in ASL (American Sign Language), Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, Hmong, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

The World Health Organization site: http://www.who.int/ provides information in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and English.

An easy way to post updated information is to use the widget seen below:

Clicking on Get widget now! will bring you to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Image and Icon Library and the code for this installing the widget on your web page.

Additional resources are included on PandemicFlu.gov providing one-stop access to U.S. Government swine, avian and pandemic flu information.