Local public health departments are participating in national health information exchange (HIE) initiatives, and librarians can have a role in facilitating community access to local health data. The Community Health Informatics Project, a partnership between University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana (UIUC) and the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (CUPHD), is step toward community access to data. The project transformed a collection of data and statistics into an easily-accessible web portal and an informal service became a sustainable partnership among the UIUC Illinois Informatics Initiative, faculty in two schools, and a health department.

Come join us on Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 1pm Pacific time (Noon Alaska, 2pm Mountain) during our free monthly webcast at http://webmeeting.nih.gov/rendezvous to learn more during this session presented by Elaine R. Hicks, MS, MPH,MCHES, Education/Outreach Librarian Rudolph Matas Library of the Health Sciences at Tulane University. We will also feature Ann Madhavan, Public Health Seattle & King County, presenting on 20 Ways to Reach Out to Public Health.

Read more »

October is National Medical Librarians Month, as declared by the Medical Library Association.

This year’s theme, “Medical Librarians: Your Best Return on Investment”,  highlights medical librarians as the best and most cost effective way to obtain quality health information.

To recognize Medical Librarians Month, NN/LM PNR is sponsoring a contest to find out what emerging and new roles librarians in our Region are undertaking.  Tell us what you have done in your institution, or what you plan to do, in order to remain vital and assist with the mission of your organization. We are interested in learning about your activities with patient education, electronic health records, bioinformatics, data management, clinical effectiveness research, disaster response planning and more. Entries will be judged on creativity, originality and relevance.

Winners will be chosen and will receive a membership to the Pacific NW Chapter of the MLA, a $25 value.  Submit your entries by October 31 to Patricia Devine, devine@uw.edu. Winners will be announced in early November and a summary of the entries will be posted on Dragonfly.

Submitted by Jane Saxton, Director of Library Services, Bastyr University, Seattle, WA

This year, the NN/LM PNR awarded funds to several Network Members allowing them to attend Continuing Education courses at the Medical Library Association 2012 Annual Meeting in Seattle in May.  The awardees were asked to write up their “thoughts and reflections” on these classes, which were published in the July 3, 2012 issue of the Dragonfly. Claiming “too busyness” at the time, I promised to send something along later.  Later it certainly is, but a perfect time to assess the lasting impact of the CE I attended: “New Generation Tools for Advanced Biomedical Literature Study.”  What exactly did I learn way back then?  Which new tools am I using today?

Dr. Yi-Bu Chen, Program Coordinator in the Norris Medical Library at the University of Southern California, discussed three categories of new resources that are designed to answer your scientific and clinical questions: Innovative information retrieval (IR) tools, information extraction (IE) tools, and text-mining (knowledge discovery) tools.  Here are three resources, one from each category, that are now part of my search repertoire.Thank you to the NN/LM PNR and to Dr. Chen for introducing me to them! Read more »

Do you have a growing Latino population in your community? Do you need to find health information in Spanish fast but don’t know where to look? Are the only words in your Spanish vocabulary burrito and gracias?

If you answered yes to these questions, then No Comprende? Spanish Health Information Resources for English Speaking Librarians is the class for you. This online course will cover resources for learning basic, library, medical, and Internet Spanish vocabulary. You will also learn to evaluate and identify health websites in Spanish to which you can direct your patrons.

Join Gail Kouame, Consumer Health Outreach Coordinator, and Nikki Dettmar, Education and Assessment Coordinator, for this free asynchronous online class starting September 24th and ending October 15th, 2012. Upon completion of this course participants will earn 4 continuing education credit units from the Medical Library Association.

To register, sign up today at http://nnlm.gov/pnr/training/register.html?schedule_id=1885. Priority will be given to participants from the Pacific Northwest Region (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington) with others admitted on a space-available basis. You will receive a personal email from the course instructor within several days of registering to confirm your place in the course. We look forward to having you join us!

Are You Ready? Testing Your Disaster Plan & Furthering Collaboration Among Heritage Institutions To Improve Disaster Preparedness for Collections

Will you disaster plan work in a real disaster situation?  It’s better to find answers now the after a disaster has occurred!  Attend this workshop to help heritage institutions – libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, etc. – improve disaster preparedness and response for collections. Read more »

New Genetics Education Resource
http://geneed.nlm.nih.gov/

The National LIbrary of Medicine is pleased to announce the release of a new educational resource, GeneEd.  Developed in collaboration with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), teachers and experts in genetics and genetic counseling, GeneEd is a safe and useful resource for students and teachers in grades 9 – 12 to learn genetics.  GeneEd allows students and teachers to explore topics such as Cell Biology, DNA, Genes, Chromosomes, Heredity/Inheritance Patterns, Epigenetics/Inheritance and the Environment, Genetic Conditions, Evolution, Biostatistics, Biotechnology, DNA Forensics, and Top Issues in Genetics. Read more »