Submitted by Alice E. Hadley, Librarian
U.S. Naval Hospital, Guam
Condensed and edited for publication in Latitudes

On the tiny island of Yap in the far western Pacific, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, working together with Guam’s Ayuda Foundation, funded a project to establish the new Yap State Hospital Medical Library to replace the one destroyed in Typhoon Sudal in 2004. (more…)

The purpose of the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan is to help mitigate the impact of disasters on healthcare providers and their patients by helping Network member libraries maintain their information services in the event of a disaster. We can only know to what degree the Plan will have been successfully implemented in the Network by assessing the current level of and barriers to preparedness. Also, by identifying what kind of NN/LM support might be helpful, we can then provide that support to increase a library’s preparedness and ability to respond to emergencies. (more…)

It will be two years next month that Arizona was struck by storms and flooding severe enough for the President to declare a major disaster. As June comes to a close, firefighters continue to battle hundreds of wildfires throughout California, the result of lightning storms and dry conditions throughout the state. A little over a year ago, Hawaii experience severe storms, high surf, flooding, and mudslides in Hawaii, Kauai, and Maui counties. This past February, northeastern Nevada experienced a magnitude 6.0 earthquake that was felt across much of the West, from northern Idaho and Utah to Southern California. And the Pacific Basin is regularly affected by almost every hazard you can imagine!

So what can WE do?

On June 20, 2008, regional Network office staff and Medical Library Association chapter representatives Irene Lovas and Peggy Tahir met with Dan Wilson and Susan Yowell to facilitate the regional adoption of the National Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan, an important step in helping libraries respond to emergency situations like those described above. (more…)

Recently, PubMed has undergone a flurry of enhancements and modifications. And that trend is very likely to continue! The latest changes include the way that Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) works and the introduction of a new Citation Sensor feature. These changes, along with the beta version of an advanced search mode for PubMed, were the highlights of a “PubMed Review” theater presentation from the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA). A detailed description of the new features is included in Boost for PubMed Search Results: New ATM and Citation Sensor Introduced, published in the NLM Technical Bulletin. (more…)

Welcome to our new EFTS members! There are now 188 EFTS members in the Pacific Southwest, representing 47% of our DOCLINE libraries! The following 13 libraries have joined EFTS since February 1, 2008: (more…)

On May 7, 2008, a new feature became available on MedlinePlus, which provides access to high quality health information in languages other than English and Spanish. The new service benefits people who prefer to read health information in their native language. It also helps the information professionals and health care providers who serve them. The collection contains over 2,500 links to information in more than 40 languages and covers nearly 250 Health Topics. (more…)

One of the goals for the 2006-2011 NN/LM PSR contract is to assist Network members with negotiating licensing agreements for electronic resources. In developing our proposal for the contract period, we began by identifying existing buying consortia in the region. (more…)

As MLA President, Mark Funk visits MLA chapters around the country. He is an accomplished photographer and chronicles his visits with stories and photos on his blog, Only Connect! His report on his Las Vegas trip to the Joint Chapter Meeting of the Northern California and Nevada Medical Library Group and the Medical Library Group of Southern California and Arizona is available here . Check out those photos with Elvis!

The LinkOut Team at NCBI is releasing a new LinkOut Library Submission Utility during the first week of April 2008. (more…)

The Medical Library Association’s educational webcast, “Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices: Discovering the Participatory Web,” was a great success! (more…)