Spring greetings from wintry Chicago! Today’s snowfall brings us closer to cracking the top ten worst Chicago winters in recorded history. Even if we do not feel a sense of honor in this designation, we are emotionally moved by its impact.

I am delighted to be serving as RML Director for the Greater Midwest Region. I began work at UIC on November 1, 2007. Later in November, I was officially welcomed at a lovely reception attended by my colleagues at the University, the GMR Office, and the local health sciences library community.

As much as I enjoyed the conversation, food, and fun, I am happier still with the work itself. I am impressed with our regional plan and the significance of our initiatives. Together, the GMR membership, awardees, and volunteer leadership are having a positive impact on consumers, health practitioners, and scholars in our region.

In the past four months, I have learned about our major initiatives, our services, and our members. We are moving forward in all program areas.

We are making progress on a major new initiative of the National Library of Medicine, the development of a national emergency preparedness plan. We have appointed an emergency preparedness working group that includes a representative from each state. In addition, we will address emerging plans and their implementation at a Resource Library Directors meeting on April 14-15. Dan Wilson, Coordinator, NN/LM National Emergency Preparedness Plan, will participate in the meeting, and also lead a planning session with the emergency preparedness working group on April 16.

In addition to the five states that already implemented GoLocal projects, two more are in progress. The most recent projects to go live are in Minnesota and Illinois. They join Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. The GoLocal projects in North Dakota and Iowa have been approved by the National Library of Medicine and will be active soon.

The GMR Office expects to fill two coordinator positions in the next few months, enabling us to have a full staff. We appreciate your patience during the past year. I hope that you will not hesitate to contact me if we are not meeting your expectations for customer service.

I also want to let you know that the Library Advocacy Group has been appointed. We anticipate launching the Consumer Health Group in the next few months.

Enjoy spring when it finally arrives. We look forward to seeing you at the MLA Annual Conference in Chicago. Please stop me and say hello when you see me at the meeting.

~Kathryn Carpenter

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 8:58 am and is filed under From the GMR, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.