He’s free!  Its Tugger our DOCLINE mascot. The folks at NLM thought it was time for you to see another more serious side of Tugger so he is available again. This time he is pictured here with the thing that really drives resource sharing in the health sciences, journals.  If you would like the opportunity to add DOCLINE wallpaper to your pc or maybe just update what you already have then use the link below to capture the side of Tugger that suits you most.

DOCLINE Wallpaper

Christina Wray Creech
Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, Center for Disability Information and Referral
2853 E. 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47408

Do you remember that giddy feeling you got the first time you explored the Internet, or the first time you were reading something for school and you really “got it?” It’s an AMAZING feeling that opens whole new worlds up, and accessible technology is one of the great tools that can help people with disabilities connect and communicate in the classroom and beyond.  There are a lot of different options out there, both with software and hardware, and it can be difficult for people to know where to begin in finding the right fit for themselves or their students.  Now, thanks in part to a Technology Award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Greater Midwest Region, the Center for Disability Information and Referral (CeDIR) can offer visitors the opportunity to try out a variety of different software and navigation tools at an adjustable height table to see what works best for them!

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The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is offering $4.7 billion of stimulus money on the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.   The goal of this program is to support the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas, to enhance broadband capacity at public computer centers, and to encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service.

“Funded at $4.7 billion, BTOP provides grants to support the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas, to enhance broadband capacity at public computer centers, and to encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service. Through this support, BTOP will also advance the Recovery Act’s objectives to spur job creation and stimulate long-term economic growth and opportunity.” - From the BTOP About  Page.

Applications can be downloaded for review beginning July 7.

NTIA is encouraging the electronic submission of applications (applicants requesting more than $1 million in assistance must file electronically).  Applicants who are requesting less than $1 million in assistance may forego electronic filing if this would impose a hardship.

Application Deadline:  Electronic applications must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. ET on August 14, 2009.   Paper submissions must be postmarked no later than August 14, 2009, or hand-delivered no later than 5:00 p.m. ET on August 14, 2009.

This funding is for round 1.  Timelines for rounds 2 and 3 have not been determined as of yet.

More details will be available on the ALA Broadband Funding page and you can review a webinar that took place on July 8 for further clarification.  For those of you in Chicago attending the ALA Annual Conference, please consider attending the Washington Office Update - which will take place 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday July 11 in McCormick Place West (MCP), Room W-474 or visit John Windhausen at the ALA Membership Booth.

From the NLM:

MedlinePlus enhanced its Health News RSS feeds this week. The MedlinePlus Health News feeds now include images and hyperlinks to corresponding MedlinePlus Health Topics. The images add visual interest to the feeds and the Health Topic links allow subscribers to quickly and easily access information on the diseases, conditions, and wellness issues that are discussed in the news stories and press announcements.

You can subscribe to the Health News RSS feeds by copying and pasting the URLs below into your preferred RSS reader/aggregator:

MedlinePlus Health News (English): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/feeds/news_en.xml

MedlinePlus Health News (Spanish): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/feeds/news_es.xml

There were many wonderful posters shown at the Medical Library Association conference held in Hawaii this year.  They are now available online for you to view.  Trapeze Media Solutions has partnered with MLA to digitize the posters and put them online. The posters are even searchable! If you’d like to see what posters librarians from our region and beyond have done, please take a look at the visual display below.  Move your mouse along the display to move the images.  You can use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out.  (If you are having trouble viewing this display, make sure you ahve the most recent version of the Flash Player installed on your machine, available at: http://www.adobe.com.  Otherwise you can go here to see them: http://posterexperience.com/index.php.)

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released the results from a survey this week on the way people are seeking out health information.  Before the advent of podcasts, widespread use of the Internet, the public used traditional means to locate health information.  Visits to the doctor, phone calls to health professionals or trusted friends were the norm.  While these methods are still being used today, the landscape has been altered quite a bit and people have many more options.  What do we do with the information we find online? Do we take that information to our health professionals to augment the discussion? Do we simply trust what we find online and become “armchair physicians?”  The survey results refer to the more technologically integrated health seekers as ‘e-patients.’

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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.

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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!!

Kathryn Carpenter, Director, University of Illinois at Chicago Library of the Health Sciences, the Regional Medical Library for the GMR, has turned her Spring 2009 blog message into a podcast. The audio file is 5:03 minutes long and is an MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 file, commonly referred to as mp3. Here is a chance to hear Kate in a new format: (.mp3 file). The text of this message is available in pdf: A Message from the RML Director Spring 2009 .

The podcast was recorded using the free software Audacity and then encoded to an mp3, playable on a variety of media players including an iPod, with such software as QuickTime, iTunes or Media Player. Listen to this podcast and use the Comments section let us know your thoughts on what you hear.

If you would like to learn how to make your own podcast, consider taking the podcasting class taught by GMR Technology Coordinator, Max Anderson. To find out more about this class, see: Can You Hear Me Now? How to Make a Podcast.

Today at the Amazon Kindle Event, a new, improved Kindle has been shown to the public.  The vision from Amazon is: “to have every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds on Kindle. We won’t stop until we get there. ” Named Kindle 2, some of the more impressive features include:

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