A real sense of excitement has taken hold at the GMR Office this year.  The GMR staff are packing their bags and exhibit cases, not to go return to school like expectant students, but to meet with you at your libraries and conferences in your home setting.  It’s our favorite time of the year because we get to learn more about you, your concerns, and your ideas, and what better way to build our relationships than to share your experience in your home states.

GMR staff will be traveling to conferences in every state in the region except Indiana from the end of September to the beginning of November.  In essentially a five-week stretch of time, they will present continuing education courses, host exhibits, and talk with you about your needs, the services that we provide, and ongoing ways to link the two for the benefit of the members and the health professionals and consumers that we all serve.

We will also be out in full force at the MLA Midwest Chapter meeting in Columbus, Ohio, on October 2-6.  Ruth Holst, Associate Director, and Jacqueline Leskovec, Outreach and Evaluation Coordinator, will present a course on using evaluation for library advocacy.  Holly Burt, Outreach and Exhibits Coordinator, will be teaching two PubMed courses, and Max Anderson, Technology Coordinator, will be teaching courses on making pod casts and super searching.  (more…)

Thanks to enhancements to our vendor, EOS, there are now ways for you to interact with the GMR Lending Library and the records in it.  The Lending Library consists of many professional development materials that are only offered to GMR members to check out.  It is a little something extra we wanted to make available to help you offer the best service possible to your patrons.   As a reminder, we also include in our collection, past MLA web sessions.  You can check these items out, review the materials and send the evaluation back  to earn MLA CE Credit.

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The GMR is offering sponsorship of webcast sites for the upcoming MLA Webcast: Cut the Cord: Connecting to our Mobile Users to be held on Wednesday, November 18, 2009, from 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m., central time.  Visit http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/mlawebcast.html for detailed information on how to become a sponsored site.

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Greetings to all in our region focusing on information and health services to the Public Health community.  The GMR has created an email discussion list to help connect those who are working in this specialized field of librarianship.  Join us at:  GMRPH@uic.edu

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If you have not had a chance to enjoy the benefit of the GMR’s free Lending Library, be sure to take a look at what it includes.  Our lending library includes items on topics as diverse as systems librarianship, consumer health reference, copyright liability, conflict management and more.   There are also some great resources for you to earn MLA CE Credit.

Some items that have arrived recently:

• Tailoring Health Messages: Customizing Communication with Computer Technology, by Matthew Kreuter et al. (2000)
• Health Informatics for Medical Librarians, by Ana D. Cleveland and Donald B. Cleveland (2009)
• iFusions: MLA Annual Meeting 2009 2-CD Set
• Guía de recursos sobre la parálisis, Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center (2003)
• Paralysis Resource Guide, Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center (2003)
• Blueprint for Your Library Marketing Plan, by Patricia H. Fisher and Marseille M. Pride (2006)
• Information Literacy Assessment, by Teresa Y. Neely (2006)
• Creating Your Library Brand, by Elisabeth Doucett (2008)
• Is Consulting for You? A Primer for Information Professionals, by Ulla de Stricker (2008)
• Engaging the Community in Decision Making, by Roz Diane Lasker and John A Guidry (2008)
• Addressing Patients’ Health Literacy Needs, Joint Commission Resources (2009)
• Intellectual Property: Everything the Digital-Age Librarian Needs to Know, by Timothy Lee Wherry (2008)

If you have any suggestions of items to be included in the lending library, please email us at gmrlib [at] uic.edu.

For those of you attending the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago this year, please be sure to stop by the GMR’s booth. We will be exhibiting for the National Library of Medicine, booth #3651. A handout of NN/LM presentations and presence at the Conference will be available at the booth.

In addition, in conjunction with our sister NN/LM region, the MidContinental, we are presenting a poster as part of the 2009 Diversity and Outreach Fair. The Diversity and Outreach Fair will take place (more…)

Christine Frank
Director
Library of Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, IL

Library and McCormick Educational Technology (METC) staff volunteered their services at Rush’s Spring Into Health and Fitness Fair sponsored by held at the west side Chicago Christian Industrial League on May 16th. Linda Ronan and Chris Frank staffed a health information table, providing an array of consumer health pamphlets from the National Library of Medicine and the Medical Library Association. The pamphlets were funded with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine Department of Health and Human Services, Under Contract No. N01-LM-6-35-3 with the University of Illinois at Chicago. With their laptop computer and printer, Linda and Chris also answered specific health information questions through quality consumer health information Internet sites, including National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus (http://medlineplus.gov).
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No doubt many medical librarians throughout the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) are dreaming of beaches and beautiful sunsets thanks to this year’s Medical Library Association (MLA) conference being held in Hawaii (May 15-20, 2009). Others may be dreaming of the recently announced funding opportunities in the GMR (http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/). Some may be dreaming of both.

If you are in the “both” category, perhaps you missed a great MLA News article from March 2009 entitled Seeking Grant Funding for Consumer Health Projects. Although the GMR does not fund grants per se (our subcontracts and awards work on a cost-reimbursement basis), the information in the article available online to MLA members after signing in to the MLA News website has some great pointers that are useful to anyone looking to secure funding for a great consumer health or other project. (more…)

Eileen Severson
MLIS Supervisor
Library and Health Information Services
Health Sciences Library
Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center
La Crosse, WI

At the WHSLA 2009 Annual Meeting in La Crosse, WI, the board was honored to award the Librarian of the Year award to Barbara Benisch Sisolak, Senior Special Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Department of Surgery Library.

Barb has demonstrated many times her qualifications for this award.  Since becoming the Senior Special Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Department of Surgery, she has been an active participant in our many library professional organizations.  She has participated in WHSLA as member of the Communications Committee, President-Elect, and subsequently President and Past-President.  Barb is a participant in surgery society conferences as well.  In all of her roles in library and health-related organizations, Barb is the consummate professional and serves as a mentor to others new to the organization, the profession, or outside the profession.

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I would like to personally thank the recipients of the Technology Improvement Awards for Year 3 for their hard work, determination in offering services to their users.  It is always interesting to review applications for these awards.  You tend to get a really good idea of what our member libraries need and the projects they are working on – and this information not only helps the library applying for the award but others thinking about applying for an award.

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