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! (more…)

This is one in a series of reports from our funding awardees. Read on to learn what the WSU Riverpoint Campus accomplished with their Technology Improvement Award.

By Bob Pringle, Director of Nursing and Riverpoint Campus Library Service, Spokane, WA

Last fall, we submitted a Technology Improvement Award proposal to the Regional Medical Library. We needed to replace an old staff computer used for ILL processing, and wanted to add a new scanner for use with Odyssey software, in addition to our Ariel station. We received the award in October 2011. We purchased two pieces of equipment: a Fujitsu 6240 color scanner and a Dell computer with 4 GB memory, which meets current WSU Spokane IT standards, spending just over $3,500.

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The National Library of Medicine (NLM) announces a funding opportunity for small projects to improve access to disaster medicine and public health information for health care professionals, first responders, and others that play a role in health-related disaster-preparedness, response and recovery.

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This year, NN/LM PNR funded several of our Network Members to attend Continuing Education Courses at the Medical Library Association’s Annual Meeting in Seattle.  We asked them to send in some of their thoughts and reflections after attending their classes.  Read on to see what they had to say: (more…)

Over the summer, become inspired to apply for one of the new funding opportunities now available from the NN/LM PNR! With a successful application and award, you could bring funding to the table to acquire equipment or software, build collaborations, or pilot a new role that will improve health information access for your clients and communities.

Larger awards for up to $15,000 can support personnel, travel, equipment and other costs to pilot an innovative service in your organization or collaborate on a disaster health information outreach project in your community.

Smaller awards (ranging from $5,000 to $8,000) will fund costs to host a symposium about a stimulating topic; to purchase or upgrade equipment or software; or to increase awareness of the health information services you offer.

We also have funding for awards (ranging from $500 to $2,000) to support costs for professional development, assessment and planning, training, and exhibit activities.

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