http://apps.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/local/georgia/aboutus.cfm?areaid=29

What

Go Local (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/golocal.html) is a federally-funded initiative to link users of MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) premier consumer health information website, to health services and providers in their local community. The Go Local initiative enables a patient or consumer anywhere in Georgia to visit the MedlinePlus website (www.medlineplus.gov) for information on a health topic or condition (diabetes, for example) and then be able to link directly to a Georgia Health Go Local website to locate related services, healthcare providers or institutions, support groups, advocacy organizations, etc. in their own county or zip code.

Who

The libraries of Georgia’s four medical schools (Emory University, Medical College of Georgia, Mercer University School of Medicine, and Morehouse School of Medicine), GALILEO, Georgia 2-1-1, Georgia academic librarians, Georgia Health Sciences Library Association, Georgia Public Health Association, Georgia Public Library Service, Georgia Rural Health Association, Georgia AHECs, and others, have helped implement an NLM “Go Local Project” in the state. Project coordinators for the statewide project are Jan LaBeause, Director of the Library and Peyton T. Anderson Learning Resources Center at the Mercer University School of Medicine, and Susan Smith, Health and Education Liaison/Reference Librarian, Georgia State University. A multidisciplinary, statewide advisory board created in July 2005 provides guidance and establishes policies.

How

The project is being implemented in phases, first incorporating existing databases, services and resources such as the GRID database (Georgia Rural Health Interactive Directory) at the Medical College of Georgia; the Department of Community Health’s (DCH) listing of all licensed health facilities in Georgia; and Georgia’s 2-1-1 information and referral services. Once these resources have been successfully utilized as the basis for Georgia’s Go Local website, we will systematically begin to add resources county by county across Georgia.

The new public face of HHSs Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects, known as CRISP may be accessed by going to http://report.nih.gov/ and clicking on “Search FundedScientific Projects”, or by going directly to http://report.nih.gov/crisp.aspx. Bookmarking this site will provide you access to the enhanced features as they come on-line.

The new system will continue to provide the same ability to search NIH-funded research but eventually will include more information associated with funded projects, including budget information and links to publications and patents resulting from NIH-funded research.

In addition, the new version of CRISP on the Web will offer a new way of searching for grants and contract portfolios that reflects current research investments in specific diseases and other conditions, and research areas.

In the past, users have searched CRISP using terms that were manually indexed for each abstract. Indexing for Fiscal Year 2008 will be automated to provide a more extensive and flexible set of search options.

April 28, 2008

Dear Members of the NIH Research Community:

I am writing to remind you that the mandatory NIH Public Access Policy (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html) applies to final peer-reviewed manuscripts accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008. Making published research funded by NIH accessible to everyone, including health care providers, patients, educators and scientists, helps advance science and improve human health. We all have a role to play in achieving this goal, and I appreciate your efforts to make the NIH Public Access Policy successful.

The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (see http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm), which was signed into law late last year. Compliance with this Policy is a legal requirement and a term and condition for all active grants and contracts awarded as of April 7, 2008. Failure to comply may trigger one or more enforcement actions, depending on the severity and duration of the non-compliance.

Please see the Public Access Web site for the tools you need to comply with the Policy. The Web site houses Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), training information, and other resources.

To ensure compliance with the Policy, please remember to:

Address Copyright - Make sure that any copyright transfer or other publication agreements allow your paper to be submitted to NIH in accordance with the Policy.

Submit Papers upon Acceptance for Publication

1.    Some journals will submit the final published article on your behalf, without your involvement. See http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm for a list of these journals.>

2.    For any journal other than those on this list, please:

a.    When submitting a paper for publication, inform the journal that the final peer-reviewed manuscript is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy.

b.    Make sure that any copyright transfer or other publication agreement allows the final peer-reviewed manuscript to be submitted to NIH in accordance with the Policy. For more information, see the FAQ Whose approval do I need to submit my article to PubMed Central? and consult with your Institution.

c.    Submit the final peer-reviewed manuscript to NIH upon acceptance for publication at http://www.nihms.nih.gov/. See the Submission Process for more information.

Cite Papers

• When citing your NIH-funded papers in NIH applications, proposals or progress reports, please include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) for each paper.
• NIH will monitor compliance through citations. Effective May 25, 2008, when your NIH Program Officer reviews your progress report or application, he or she will be expecting a PMCID in the citation of every applicable paper that arose out of your NIH funding, or a manuscript submission system reference number (NIHMSID) if the PMCID has not been issued. See Section C of our FAQ for examples.
• If you publish through a journal listed under http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm, there might be a slight delay in assignment of a PMCID. That is okay. We have signed agreements with these journals that allow NIH to resolve submission with them without your involvement. To facilitate your Program Officer’s job, we ask that you indicate ‘PMC Journal- In Process’ until the PMCID is available.
• The NIH Public Access Policy is a legal requirement and represents an important opportunity for science and medicine. We are very interested in your feedback on the Policy and are soliciting input through a request for information from March 31, 2008 to May 31, 2008. Please send any comments or suggestions to http://publicaccess.nih.gov/comments.htm.

Sincerely,

Norka Ruiz Bravo, PhD

NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research

The new Health Care Notification Network system was created by Medem of San Francisco, California. It is supported by a group of pharmaceuticals, insurance firms, organizations, and medical centers, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, J and J, as well as the American College of Surgeons, among others (full list at http://www.hcnn.net/docs/HCNNSupporters.pdf). The network will be using email to quickly disseminate time sensitive drug safety alert information to health care professionals.

• HCNN replaces the current, paper-based alerts sent to physicians and other healthcare providers via U.S. mail.
• Alerts include medication recalls, warnings and national public health emergencies.
• HCNN fulfills new FDA guidance for electronic communication of patient safety notification and is supported by medical liability carriers, U.S. medical societies, national patient advocacy groups, health plans and many other national healthcare organizations that are dedicated to improved patient safety.
• HCNN protects healthcare provider privacy. No email addresses will be sold or disclosed to any third parties.

Registration for U.S. physicians and other health care providers is available immediately at http://www.hcnn.net. For more information about the HCNN and online patient safety Alert services, see http://www.hcnn.net.

We’ve made some changes to SEA Currents in the hopes that the newsletter will be easier to use and to make it more interactive.

First we’ve opened Comments to the world. All you need to do is enter the name you wish to appear on the comments-a real name, or a nickname, or whatever you like, and an email address. The email address will not show up on the public post, but is meant to keep machines from posting comments directing us to online drugstores or even less savory locations. So, please, comment away! (If your comments do not show up immediately, do not panic, our comment filter may believe that your comment is comment spam and is holding on to it for an administrator to allow it. Give us at least one business day to allow comments before emailing us to see what happened.)

Second, we now have a link on the lower left-hand side of the screen allowing readers who do not want come to our website or make use of RSS subscriptions to subscribe via email. If you register using this link, you will receive the text of SEA Currents posts as soon as they are published. If you have already registered at the SEA Currents site, please do so again, since we are not assuming that everyone who registered initially wants email notifications. To register immediately go to  the email registration page.

We hope you enjoy reading SEA Currents and that the experience has become richer for you with these additions. If you have other improvements to suggest, please let us know.

by Janice Kelly, executive director

In January the Regional Advisory Oversight Committee voted to add a new standing committee to the SE/A regional advisory structure. The RAC Emergency Preparedness Committee is charged to provide leadership in promoting emergency preparedness, continuity of service and follow-up reporting for emergencies. The committee is comprised of representatives from each state in the region with Dan Wilson from the University of Virginia serving as chair.

To fulfill its charge, committee members will:

• Assist the SE/A with developing and implementing a regional emergency preparedness plan to ensure continuity of service for Network members.
• Recommend improvements and new avenues for the SE/A to promote and deliver emergency preparedness/disaster recovery support to Network members.
• Serve as regional coordinators for emergency preparedness activities in the state:
  • Promote emergency preparedness in individual libraries and the state
  • When necessary, work as part of the regional emergency team to ensure continuation of services and recovery to affected Network member(s) in the state
  • Provide the SE/A office with follow-up and reporting of events following a disaster to include a description of the incident, the response, follow-up activities, and lessons learned.

Appointed to the new committee are:

AL: Jie Li, Senior Librarian
University of South Alabama Biomedical Library

DC: Leah Pellegrino, Librarian
George Washington University Himmelfarb Library

FL: Nadine Dexter, Associate University Librarian
Florida State University Medical Library

Allison Howard, Catalog/Reference Librarian
University of South Florida Shimberg Health Sciences Library

Gediminas (Geddy) Paulaitis, Director for Access and Biomedical Communications
University of Miami Calder Medical Library

GA: Kevin Bradford, Instructor/Clinical Information Librarian
Medical College of Georgia Greenblatt Library

MD: Teresa Knott, Deputy Director
University of Maryland, Baltimore Health Sciences and Human Services Library

MS: Susan Clark, Head, Reference
University of Mississippi Medical Center Rowland Medical Library

NC: Robert James, Associate Director of Access Services
Duke University Medical Center Library

PR: Charles Sequi Caballero, Assistant Librarian III
University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus Library

SC: Felicia Yeh, Assistant Director for Collections Management
University of South Carolina Library

TN: Marcia Epelbaum, Assistant Director
Vanderbilt University Eskind Biomedical Library

Richard Nollan, Associate Professor
University of Tennessee, Memphis Library

Sandra Oelschlegel, Director
University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine Preston Medical Library

VA: Daniel T. Wilson, Assistant Director for Collection Management & Access
University of Virginia Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

WV: Jean L. Siebert, Learning Services Coordinator
West Virginia University Health Sciences Library

NN/LM: Beth M. Wescott, ex-officio
Network Access Coordinator

We thank them all for agreeing to serve.

Soon you will be learning more about the national emergency plan and may be asked to respond to a short questionnaire on your library’s emergency preparedness activities. Your participation will greatly enhance our ability to assist you in an emergency. Thanks for your cooperation.

The Library Submission Utility will be updated to a new version in the first week of April. NLM plans to shut down the current utility in the morning of April 1 (Tuesday) to convert all participants’ holdings information to the new utility. They hope to bring the new utility up on Friday, April 4, 2008. Please note that the functioning of library icons and links in PubMed will not be affected during this period.

In addition to LinkOut, the new version of the utility has an improved layout and offers new functions, including a management interface for Outside Tool and Document Delivery Service.

For a sneak preview:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/linkout/doc/SU2/NewSU.htm

Should you have any questions, please write to lib-linkout@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The Library Submission Utility will be updated to a new version in the first week of April. NLM plans to shut down the current utility in the morning of April 1 (Tuesday) to convert all participants’ holdings information to the new utility. They hope to bring the new utility up on Friday, April 4, 2008. Please note that the functioning of library icons and links in PubMed will not be affected during this period.

In addition to LinkOut,the new version of the utility has an improved layout and offers new functions, including a management interface for Outside Tool and Document Delivery Service.

For a sneak preview:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/linkout/doc/SU2/NewSU.htm

Should you have any questions, please write to lib-linkout@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have established the NIH Intramural Center for Genomics and Health Disparities (NICGHD), a new venue for research about the way populations are impacted by diseases, including obesity, diabetes and hypertension. NICGHD employs a genomics approach, collecting and analyzing genetic, clinical, lifestyle and socio-economic data to study a range of clinical conditions that have puzzled and troubled public health experts for decades. An additional focus of NICGHD will be to provide training opportunities for students and established scientists from developing countries and from minority groups in the United States. Fuller information about NHGRI can be found at its Web site,  http://www.genome.gov.

The trans-NIH center is directed by internationally renowned genetic epidemiologist Charles N. Rotimi, Ph.D., former director of the National Human Genome Center at Howard University. Read the complete NIH News Release at http://www.nih.gov/news/health/mar2008/nhgri-17.htm

NLM now provides an e-mail notification service, PubMed Alerts, that will notify subscribers of major system problems with PubMed; its two companion databases, MeSH and Journals; and the NLM Catalog. If these databases have a significant service disruption affecting all or most users for a considerable amount of time, an alert will be issued. Alerts providing update and resolution information about a problem will be sent if warranted. This is an announcement-only e-mail notification service that will be most useful for heavy users of PubMed. (It does not include other services/databases, e.g., LinkOut, PubMed Central.) Alerts will be sent out by NLM Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time (except Federal holidays). To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@list.nih.gov. Leave the subject line blank and enter SUBSCRIBE pubmed-alerts your name in the body of the message, e.g., SUBSCRIBE pubmed-alerts jane doe. For more LISTSERV commands, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/listserv/commands.html.

The National Library of Medicine has released the NLM Drug Information Portal. The site is at http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov. The NLM Drug Information Portal gives the public, healthcare professionals, and researchers a gateway to current, accurate and understandable drug information from the National Library of Medicine and other key government agencies.

More than 12,000 drug records are available for searching. The search interface is straightforward, requiring only a drug name as a search term, and successful searching is enhanced by the assistance of a spellchecker. Information buttons and balloon pop-ups guide the user by providing helpful hints or a description of the resource and links to the source website.