Thanks to an alliance between physician assistants and librarians, the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants features a new online column starting this month: “Ask a Librarian”.  This column is a co-authored by  Jim Anderson, Physician Assistant, and Susan Klawansky, Network Member and Librarian at Seattle Children’s Library & Information Commons.  The column will promote collaboration with medical librarians, address questions from physician assistants and point to resources, including  www.nnlm.gov. Congratulations to Susan Klawansky for this important outreach effort.

Earlier this month, U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) re-introduced H.R. 801, the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.” If passed into law, H.R. 801 would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, which ensures public online access to taxpayer-funded, peer reviewed health research literature, and prevent other federal agencies from implementing similar policies.

To read more about this proposed legislation and its potential implications, see:

Full text of H.R. 801

H.R. 801 on OpenCongress

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access

T. Scott - What I Said About Public Access at the ER&L Conference

NN/LM Pacific Northwest Region is pleased to announce that Go Local Montana is now live! This is the first live Go Local project in our region and we couldn’t be more pleased. Montana Go Local is a project of the Voices of Hope with partners 2-1-1/First Call for Help District XI Human Resources Council, 2-1-1/First Call for Help United Way, Montana State Library, and The Help Center. The site is possible thanks to the dedication and hard work of Jackie Fitzgerald.  Voices of Hope would like to send a special thanks to Susie McIntyre for initiating the project. More promotion of the site will follow in the coming months, but you can take a peek at: http://medlineplus.gov/montana.  Congratulations to the entire Go Local Montana team!

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has produced brief training videos to demonstrate two of the four methods for submitting articles to PubMed Central in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.

See the Public Access Homepage for descriptions of each of the four methods. The new videos pertain to Method C: submissions initiated by the author, and Method D: completing the process for submissions initiated by a publisher.

If you weren’t able to attend the three RML Rendezvous sessions on October 31, November 7 and November 14, 2008 (or if you were and want to revisit them) be sure to check out the fantastic electronic licensing information and discussions at the 3Rs of Licensing: Risk, Rights & Restrictions page with the archived session recordings. Many thanks to Diane Carroll for the wealth of information that she shared with us all!

In one week (December 8, 2008), we will join the Valuing Library Services and Cost Benefit/ROI Calculators webmeeting session at 11am Pacific Time.  Barb Jones and Betsy Kelly from the MidContinental Region, NN/LM will reprise their MLA presentation on these tools to enable health science librarians to determine the return on investment and cost benefit of their libraries and services. Come with some numbers and let’s discuss how you can use the online calculators to show the value your library brings to your institution.  We will not use the RML Rendezvous website but the following one:  https://webmeeting.nih.gov/libraryvalue/. Please call 1-866-548-4716 with passcode 243436 if the system does not call your phone at the time of the meeting.

In January 2009, save the dates for our second RML Rendezvous Continuing Education class. On January 14, 21 and 28, 2009, Susan Barnes and Maryanne Blake will offer Community Assessment for MLA CE credit. Additional information and registration for the class will be announced later this month. We look forward to having you join us!

During this first year of NIH Public Access Policy implementation, NIH-funded authors have a lot of questions about how to comply with the new rules. Here are a few resources to check for answers.

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