Seats are still available, and you can register at http://nnlm.gov/sea/training/register.html.

Here is how the day is shaping up:

8:30-9   Welcome and University of Miami’s contributions to the Haiti relief effort  (Mary Moore, Chair of the Department of Health Informatics at the Miller School of Medicine,   University of Miami and Executive Director of the Medical Libraries and Biomedical   Communications)

9-9:20   NN/LM EP&R Activities (Dan Wilson, Coordinator for the NN/LM National Emergency Preparedness & Response Initiative)

9:20-9:50   Public Health Information Needs Before and During a Disaster (Antonio Gonzales, Public Health Preparedness Planner, Miami/Dade County Health Department)

9:50-10:10   BREAK

10:10-10:40   Miami/Dade Public Libraries and Emergency Response (Raymond Santiago, Library Director of the Miami/Dade Public Library System)

10:40-11:10   Bill & Linda Gates Gulf Coast Libraries Project (MaryEllin Santiago, Library Consultant)

11:10-12   Panel Discussion with morning speakers

12-1   Lunch (Special guest (tentative): Dr. Art Fournier, MD.  Author of  The Zombie Curse: A Doctor’s 25-year Journey Into the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic in Haiti  http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11541)

1-1:30   Disaster Information Management Research Center (Stacey Arnesen, Head of DIMRC, via Adobe Connect)

1:30-2   South Central Region of NN/LM Survey on Public Libraries and Disaster Response (Michelle Malizia, Associate Director of the NN/LM South Central Region)

2-3   Discussion and Planning

Registrations are now being taken for the upcoming NN/LM Hurricane Summit on Wednesday, February 8th, in Miami, Florida (click on the registration link below).  Seating is limited, so if you are in the Miami/Dade area and would like to attend, please register soon.  The event will be well documented and tweets will be displayed during the summit in the NEPRTimes section of the Toolkit.  A full report of the summit will be made available on the Toolkit in late February or early March.

When:              Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Where:            Louis Calder Memorial Library, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Purpose:        To provide a forum to discuss best practices and to develop new strategies for how libraries can prepare and respond to          natural disasters.

Moderator:     Dan Wilson, Coordinator, National Network of Libraries of Medicine Emergency Preparedness & Response Initiative

Registration:   http://nnlm.gov/sea/training/register.html 

Featured speakers:

Dr. Raymond Santiago, Library Director of the Miami-Dade Public Library System.  As Director, Dr. Santiago is responsible for a County department with over 600 employees, and 49 facilities serving over 2.5 million residents with a budget in excess of $50 million.  In recognition of his accomplishments, the Library Journal named Dr. Santiago the 2003 Librarian of the Year. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Public Library Association’s Charlie Robinson Award, honoring his efforts as a risk-taker and change agent. In October 2008 the Miami-Dade Public Library System was awarded the National Medal for Library Service from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Mary Moore, Chair of the Department of Health Informatics at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami and Executive Director of the Medical Libraries and Biomedical Communications.  Mary has been Director, Louis Calder Memorial Library, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.  She became involved in community engagement 25 years ago when she was asked to provide  curriculum development and program evaluation for a major DHHS grant that brought telemedicine services to isolated rural communities on the Texas-Mexico border.  Later she realized the value of library services in disasters. During Hurricane Rita she received a phone call at home from a physician who asked her to look up a treatment protocol.  That began her efforts in library participation in disaster preparedness and recovery.

Michelle Malizia, Associate Director of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, South Central Region (NN/LM SCR) located in Houston.  The NN/LM SCR, under contract with the National Library of Medicine, has a long-standing history of providing assistance to libraries after a disaster. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, they provided funding to libraries throughout Louisiana and Southeast Texas to help them recover after the disaster.  Michelle will report on a 2010 NN/LM SCR conducted assessment project of the needs of Gulf Coast libraries after a hurricane.

MaryEllin Santiago, Library Consultant. Ms. Santiago was Project Manager of the Gulf Coast Libraries Project, (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) that helped rebuild 21 public libraries lost in the storms of 2005.  She is currently working with cities across the United States to build and develop “Engaged Communities” that understand and value the public library as a key community asset.

Dan Wilson, Coordinator, NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Initiative.  Dan oversees the maintenance of the national emergency preparedness and response plan, works with regional medical library liaisons and state coordinators on preparedness and response issues, provides training in service continuity, and facilitates mutual aid agreement with libraries.  He works at the University of Virginia’s Claude Moore Health Sciences Library where he is the Associate Director for Collections & Library Services.

Antonio Gonzalez, Public Health Preparedness Planner, Department of Public Health. Miami Dade County Health Department.

For more information, contact:

Dan Wilson

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

University of Virginia

danwilson@virginia.edu

(434) 924-0192

We now have a virtual 10-Step program!  The program, under 16 minutes, is broken down into an introduction and 10 individual steps, so it can be worked on as time permits.  In between some of the steps are assignments that, when completed, will greatly improve the readiness capabilities of your library.  Please feel free to offer your comments or suggestions.

Click on this URL and then look below the photographs: http://nnlm.gov/ep/10-stepsservice-continuity/.

For a taste of the program, here is the Introduction:

We added a Recent Comments widget to the right column.  Please help feed this by commenting on our posts!  Also, there is now an RSS feed display of recent messages from the DIMRC Disaster Outreach listserv on the left column underneath the NEPRTimes Twitter feeds.

FEMA is asking residents of Florida and the East Coast to be aware of the progress of Tropical Storm Emily.  See the FEMA update:  http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=57048.

Thanks to FEMA for the heads-up about this conference, being held tomorrow, June 15–check out the conference site here:  http://www.meta-leadershipsummit.org/.   Here’s the description from FEMA’s news update: 

Empowering Business, Government and Nonprofit Leaders to Act Together in Times of Crisis
Leadership during large-scale disasters like terrorist attacks, natural disasters and pandemic flu is the focus of the Long Island Meta-Leadership Summit for Preparedness on June 15, where more than 200 leaders will gather to better prepare and respond to public health and safety emergencies.  Offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the CDC Foundation, the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative – Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Meta-Leadership Summit for Preparedness fosters greater cross-sector collaboration among business, government and nonprofit leaders during emergencies.  The Long Island Meta-Leadership Summit is the 36^th and final in the series of highly-evaluated Summits that have been held to engage leaders across the country. More than 4,700 leaders have attended a Summit to date, and over 2,500 have joined the Meta-Leadership Online Community. Visit the online community to watch a sampling of video soundbites from Summit participants in their own words: Tampa Bay; Nebraska; San Diego County; Greater Los Angeles and Greater Houston.

We are all heartsick to hear about the catastrophic tornado damage that occurred in Joplin, MO last night, as well as in other areas of the Midwest.  See the New York Times story about Joplin here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24tornado.html?_r=1&hp.  It gives better information than some other sources, particularly about St. John’s Regional Hospital in Joplin, which sustained a direct hit, and mentions near the end of the story that nurses who had been on the sixth floor when the tornado warning was announced, immediately began the appropriate response procedures.  Sources say that the tornado was “rain wrapped,” which made it difficult or impossible to see.