By Brenda Fay
Aurora Sinai Medical Center Library
Milwaukee, WI

The Wisconsin Health Sciences Library Association (WHSLA) exhibited at the annual Wisconsin Student Nurses’ Annual Convention on February 5, 2011, at Kalahari Resort and Convention Center in Wisconsin Dells. Over 250 nursing students, faculty, and nursing leaders from across Wisconsin attended the meeting.

The WHLSA table included the large gray case GMR display with screen shots of NLM online resources, handouts on Mobile MedlinePlus and PubMed full-text, and several giveaways including NLM bookmarks, pens, and WHSLA brochures. Raffle prizes, including two Littman stethoscopes, donated by WHSLA, helped to generate enthusiasm and increase attendance at the booth.

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The Health Literacy Kentucky Steering Committee invites you to attend our upcoming Summit in Bowling Green, Kentucky on March 24-25, 2011.

Our lineup of plenary session speakers include Linda Harris from HHS; Terry Davis from LSU, and Toni Cordell, a well-known patient advocate in the field of health literacy. We will also have Michael Villaire from the Institute for Healthcare Advancement presenting a “Health Literacy 101″ breakout session workshop. (more…)

By Amy Donahue, MLIS, AHIP
University of Minnesota Bio-Medical Library

Back in December 2010, I had the opportunity to attend the free Wisconsin Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD) Conference. (Link to brochure: http://emergencymanagement.wi.gov/news/2010/2010_VOAD_Conference_Brochure.pdf). Lodging, lunch, and breakfast were provided for those who traveled more than 50 miles, which included me, and was sponsored through state funding.

I decided to go to the 3-day event after e-mailing the conference organizers to see if it would be appropriate for me to be there as a medical librarian with an interest in disaster information–given that I have no direct relationships with any VOAD member organizations.  They encouraged me to come, and it was a great opportunity. The conference was held in Fort McCoy at the Wisconsin Military Academy. (more…)

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is pleased to announce that it will be hosting NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) Discovery Workshops focusing on biomedical and genomic databases this December. This free two-day series of workshops on NCBI tools will be held at UIC on December 15-16, 2010.  Register at: http://tinyurl.com/NCBIWorkshops

Program Overview
The Discovery Workshops consist of four 2.5-hour hands-on sessions emphasizing a different set of NCBI resources. Each session uses specific examples to highlight important features of the resources and tools under study and to demonstrate how to accomplish common tasks.

The four sessions of the Discovery Workshop will focus on the following areas:
1. Sequences, Genomes and Maps
2. Proteins, Domains and Structures
3. NCBI BLAST Services
4. Human Variation and Disease Genes

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Social Justice lies at the heart of public health. It is central to its mission and is frequently described as public health’s core value. The social circumstances in which we are born, live, and work, play a greater role in longevity and overall health in the United States than genes, health insurance and access to health services…Ultimately education, transportation and housing policies affect the health of people. The challenge for any government–municipal, regional, state and federal–is to introduce health consequences into all discussions of social policies.

These opening lines in this year’s Preliminary Program for the 138th Annual American Public Health Association (APHA) Meeting and Exposition really help set the tone to explain why social justice is a public health imperative. Join us in Denver at APHA this year November 6-10, 2010, to explore this link and discover more about the social determinants of health! (more…)

By Chris Childs
Education & Outreach Librarian
Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa

A poster highlighting the Hardin Library’s Critical Access Hospital outreach project was displayed during this year’s Library Technology Conference on the campus of Macalester College in St Paul, MN. The purpose of this conference was to provide instructional sessions on technologies that affect how users interact with libraries, and how libraries use technology to create new and more effective ways to manage their resources. You can find out more information about this conference by going to http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/libtech_conf/2010/

One of the technologies mentioned during this event was the web-based tool LibGuides. I attended a session hosted by two librarians from the Hamline University Law Library in St Paul. They discussed the process of transferring all of their web content to various LibGuides. It was a very interesting presentation and very well attended. I left with the impression that a lot of librarians were either just getting started with LibGuides, or were hearing about them for the first time.

Due to the interest in LibGuides, I felt that our poster was very timely. Several people were fascinated by the idea of creating a LibGuide for a specific population located outside of the library and then using that LibGuide to connect them to free resources from various institutions. For many, seeing the poster and reading about how the LibGuide was key to the success of this project reinforced the importance of using them to reach out to populations outside of their libraries.

Are you handy with a video camera? Do you like technology? When you have gone to MLA in the past, have you wished: “I wish I could have videotaped that darn conference!” This is your opportunity!

Why not apply to be a videographer for MLA ’10? This is the first time in the history of MLA that we will have official videographers at the conference. Come be a part of history and learn some new technologies at the same time.

Fill out the application: http://bit.ly/aPhudy.

Even if you haven’t had a LOT of experience with a videocamera, training on the use of the camera will take place on Sunday during the conference. We need at least 3 videographers for the conference.

The application will be open until April 30, 2010. Official videographers will be announced May 8, 2010.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me – max [at] uic [dot] edu.

Over the past few years, the MLA annual meeting has utilized an increasing number of online social networking tools to help participants interact with both one another and with meeting content. In the spirit of this year’s theme of “Reflect and Connect,” the annual meeting website features the Conference Community (http://tinyurl.com/confcom). The primary goal of the Conference Community is to enable connections and communication among in-person and virtual attendees.

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The Ohio Health Sciences Library Association (OHSLA) spring meeting will be held on Monday, April, 19, 2010, at Mount Carmel Health Sciences Library, Mount Carmel Health Systems, Columbus, Ohio, from 9:30am-3:30pm. Beyond conducting the business of the organization, this meeting will feature two MLA continuing education classes. Holly Burt, GMR Outreach and Exhibits Coordinator, will present a 2-hour class on PubMed for Experts where she will highlight advanced searching techniques. Max Anderson, GMR Technology Coordinator, will also provide a 2-hour class titled Geeks Bearing Lite Gifts.

Please contact Bette Sydelko, OHSLA President/Program Chair, for additional details.
bette.sydelko at wright.edu or 937-775-3840.

We at the GMR are pleased to sponsor webcast sites across our region for the March 24, 2010, MLA Webcast: Now’s The Time: Understanding The Electronic Health Record Maze And Health Science Librarians’ Roles

The complete list of sponsored sites is available at: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/webcastrecipients.html.

Find information about this webcast and additional site locations at: http://www.mlanet.org/education/distance_ed/ehr/.

Please contact the site directly if you wish to attend.