By: Jennifer Feeken, MLIS
Librarian
Regions Hospital Medical Library 11202B
640 Jackson Street
St. Paul, MN 55101
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By Kacy Allgood, MLS
Reference Informationist
Indiana University
School of Medicine Library
Indianapolis, IN

Save the date!

You are invited to the 2011 Midwest Chapter Annual Meeting, to be held in Indianapolis, October 8th-11th. The meeting will be held at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown. The conference hotel is located near the Circle Center Mall, Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Colts, the Indiana State Museum, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis Zoo, NCAA Hall of Champions, an IMAX 3D Theater, outdoor art and canal. Nearby dining includes the Oceanaire, Shula’s Steak House, St. Elmo’s Steakhouse, and much more. (more…)

The John Crerar Library of the University of Chicago is pleased to announce that online registration for the 2nd biennial Kathleen A. Zar Symposium We’re Teaching, But How Do We Know If They’re Learning? is now open. The program is tentatively scheduled to from 9:00 am – 4:30 pm on Friday, June 3, 2011. Registration cost is $70 and includes continental breakfast, lunch buffet and conference materials.

We are thrilled to announce the keynote speaker for the symposium will be Megan Oakleaf. Megan is an Assistant Professor in the iSchool at Syracuse University where she teaches “Reference and Information Literacy Services” and “Planning, Marketing, and Assessing Library Services.” Her research interests include outcomes assessment, evidence-based decision making, information literacy instruction, information services, and digital librarianship. She is on the faculty of the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Immersion Program. (more…)

We’re Teaching, But How Do We Know If They’re Learning?
Assessment of Library Instruction Activities
2nd Biennial Kathleen A. Zar Symposium
Friday, June 3, 2011
The John Crerar Library/The University of Chicago

For more information about the symposium:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/crerar/kaz2011.html

Call for proposals
The organizers of the 2nd Biennial Kathleen A. Zar Symposium to be held Friday, June 3, 2011 invite proposals for presentations in the area of assessment of library instruction activities. Proposals should be submitted using the form found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/kaz2011 . Invited and contributed presentations will provide a framework for thinking about library assessment, as well as describing practical approaches for measuring learning outcomes. Proposals selected for full oral presentation will be eligible for a travel stipend.
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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.