Last week, Go Local North Dakota reported utilizing the Featured Site option on the North Dakota Go Local homepage. For those of you in Minnesota, the Featured Site on My Health  Minnesota→Go Local links to flood Information as well. Take a look at the useful and interesting information on both the North Dakota and Minnesota Go Local sites.

For all you Web 2.0 participants, of particular interest is the the social network site created by The Forum, the newspaper for the Fargo-Moorhead area:  http://flood.inforum.com/. To access MedlinePlus Go Local, see http://medlineplus.gov and follow the link to Go Local.

Kathryn Carpenter, Director, University of Illinois at Chicago Library of the Health Sciences, the Regional Medical Library for the GMR, has turned her Spring 2009 blog message into a podcast. The audio file is 5:03 minutes long and is an MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 file, commonly referred to as mp3. Here is a chance to hear Kate in a new format: (.mp3 file). The text of this message is available in pdf: A Message from the RML Director Spring 2009 .

The podcast was recorded using the free software Audacity and then encoded to an mp3, playable on a variety of media players including an iPod, with such software as QuickTime, iTunes or Media Player. Listen to this podcast and use the Comments section let us know your thoughts on what you hear.

If you would like to learn how to make your own podcast, consider taking the podcasting class taught by GMR Technology Coordinator, Max Anderson. To find out more about this class, see: Can You Hear Me Now? How to Make a Podcast.

Several Network members are in or near the Red River flood zone. The GMR will post information regarding any closings or other pertinent information related to rising river levels. For local river reports, please see The Fargo Flood Homepage: http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/fargoflood/, provided by North Dakota State University in Fargo, ND, and NOAA’s National Weather Service: http://www.weather.gov/.

For GMR Emergency Preparedness information, please see: NN/LM Emergency Preparedness and Response: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/member/emprep/index.html. Regional coordinator for ND is Ann Pederson and for MN, Paul Dahl.

Network members are encouraged to utilize the Comments section on the GMR blog to report relevant information.

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Note:

GMR Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for North Dakota, Ann Pederson, suggests the City of Fargo’s webpage as another source of information: http://www.cityoffargo.com/Flood09/.

–The Editor

Dan Wilson, Coordinator of the NN/LM National Emergency Preparedness Plan, has added several new items to the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness Toolkit at:  http://nnlm.gov/ep/

1. An online tutorial  that provides an overview of the Toolkit – available through the new Tutorials tab near the top of the page. The tutorial was produced using a free service called Screencast-o-Matic.
2. Risk Assessment Maps and Charts is a new feature found in the right hand side bar on the main page – these maps are great for teaching purposes.
3. Mutual Aid Agreement (MAA) is offered as a less formal version of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and provides partnering libraries with a tool to forge an agreement for providing mutually agreed upon services during disaster situations.  The MAA template is found through the Model MOU/MAA tab on the main page.

September is Emergency Preparedness Month and although the Midwest is known more for tornadoes than hurricanes, this past weekend we experienced unusual amounts of rain and subsequent flooding, in part due to the effects of what was hurricane Ike. Major flooding has occurred in northwest Indiana and greater Chicagoland, causing evacuation of residents, school closings and traffic reroutes.

As if just in time, the City of Chicago has instituted a new city service called Notify Chicago http://notifychicago.org (more…)

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine has selected emergency preparedness as a major focus for the current contract. In Spring 2008, some of you received a baseline Emergency Preparedness Assessment survey about your level of preparedness as well as your barriers to preparedness. From a random sample of 117 GMR member libraries, 65% responded to the survey. Here are some highlights: (more…)

With the hurricane season’s dynamic reminder of nature’s power comes an explosion of information on hurricanes.  The Specialized Information Services (SIS) branch of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has added a new section on Hurricanes to their Environmental Health and Toxicology section.  Visit: Hurricanes: Links to Health Information Including Toxicology and Environmental Health at http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/hurricane.html

(more…)

The June 23, 2008, posting of new National Library of Medicine (NLM) web pages includes several timely MedlinePlus topics in English and many in Spanish. Check the links below for information on earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes and other natural disasters. In addition, the NLM Technical Bulletin for May-June announces the release of the new Enviro-Health Links page on Disaster Recovery and Environmental Health page. (more…)

The State Library of Iowa has a posting on their website regarding Reports Coming in from Iowa Libraries Affected by Flooding: http://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/archive/2008/08June/flood08. This site is updated regularly and invites libraries to report their news so that the information can be aggregated and shared.

The aim of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Disaster Information Management Resource Center (DIMRC) http://disasterinfo.nlm.nih.gov/ is to provide access to quality disaster health information to the nation at all stages of preparation, response, mitigation and recovery. For more information about the DIMRC, see the Fact Sheet: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dimrcfs.html

Find out more information About the Center, NLM Disaster Information Resources, and Projects, Partnerships, and Program. The DIMRC is a service of Specialized Information Services (SIS).