by Barbara Platts, MLIS, AHIP
Munson Healthcare
Traverse City, MI

Conference Update

Please join us for the 2008 Midwest MLA/MHSLA Conference, Vital Signs: Keeping You and Your Library Vibrant and Healthy from October 17th to 21st at the Troy Marriott in Troy, Michigan. Registration information is available online at http://www.rsvpbook.com/event.php?459908.

Conference Update: New Plenary Speaker: M.J. Tooey, Executive Director of the Health Science and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland and former MLA President, will be the new plenary speaker. In her address, Vital Signs, Bottom Lines: Remaining Relevant in Interesting Times, she will discuss strategies for surviving, growing and thriving in the changing healthcare environment.

Hotel Update: There are still plenty of rooms available at the Troy Marriot - both doubles and singles. You must call or email Lucy Micakaj, the Marriott Hotel Group Room Coordinator to book a double room.  All other room choices can be reserved online.  Lucy can be reached at (248) 680-9663 or lucy.micakaj@marriott.com. If you had trouble booking a room at the Marriott, please contact Lucy. If you’ve booked a room at a different hotel, please consider moving to the Marriott. Staying at the conference hotel will be much more convenient and will help us reach our room commitment.

Please check out the conference blog at http://midwestmla2008.blogspot.com for complete conference information. We look forward to seeing you at the 2008 Midwest MLA/MHSLA Conference in October.

A joint MLA-NLM Task Force was commissioned to assess opportunities for integration of live and virtual information assistance into electronic personal health records products. The work of the Task Force has progressed on two fronts: identification and examination of PHR tools and development of ways to better integrate PHRs and the library community. (more…)

We are excited to announce a funding opportunity from the NN/LM GMR to support purchase, installation, and/or upgrading of hardware and software that enhance access to health information. This funding opportunity is the Technology Improvement Award. Awards may be used to improve information services to health professionals and health care consumers through the use of technology. What types of projects can you fund with this award? Some ideas include:

• Purchasing equipment and/or software (i.e. a scanner, web server, public access computer) to aid in delivering health information electronically;
• Paying for Internet access for one year;
• Paying for wiring and/or installation of new connections;
• Upgrading computer equipment.

(more…)

Margaret (Peggy) Richwine, MS, MLS, AHIP, will retire September 30, 2008 as Outreach Services Director at Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) Libraries. Ms. Richwine has over twenty years at IUSM Libraries serving in Reference, Cataloging, Interlibrary Loan, and Outreach Services. With grants from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), she created Shared Hospital Electronic Library of Southern Indiana (SHELSI) http://library.medicine.iu.edu/body.cfm?id=77, the consortium of hospital libraries in Southern Indiana that share access to electronic resources.

She was also awarded a series of contracts to manage a team of Indiana librarians that assisted the National Library of Medicine in the development and maintenance of MedlinePlus. As a capstone to a long and productive career, Ms. Richwine led the Indiana team to establish InHealthConnect http://apps.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/local/indiana/homepage.cfm?areaid=13, one of the pioneer Go Local projects to use the NLM system.

We are very proud of Peggy and her accomplishments and wish her the very best.

Carole Gall, MLS, AHIP
Gift Officer & Medical Resources Consultant
Indiana University School of Medicine Libraries

Anna Ercoli Schnitzer
InfoPoint Librarian
Health Sciences Libraries
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

The four-day Ann Arbor Art Fair in its 49th year, came to a close on Saturday evening, July 19, 2008, and this year for the first time the University of Michigan Library was part of the action. Although Booth #12 in the Non-Profit section of this huge fair was originally reserved and rented by the Health Sciences Libraries, we opened our tent flaps to affiliated library volunteers from the Science, Graduate, Undergraduate and Business libraries as well. It was an extra pleasure to have a cross-section of library collaboration, and we needed all the help we could get, since we had to provide staffing for a total of 45 hours. (more…)

Patricia W Martin
Taubman Medical Library
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

The National Library of Medicine through the GMR awarded an 18 month health disparities subcontract to the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries for their proposal Michigan Health Literacy Awareness Training Program. HSL is partnering with Washtenaw Literacy, a county-based literacy training effort, to raise awareness among area health professionals of the issue of low literacy and poor health literacy among their patients, and to provide communication techniques and resources to improve patient care. (more…)

Christopher J. Shaffer has accepted an appointment as University Librarian at Oregon Health and Science University Library, Portland, which he will assume on August 1, 2008. Chris has most recently been the Assistant Director, Technology and Outreach, at Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, University of Iowa.

Many of you will remember that Chris was Technology Coordinator at the GMR from 1996 to 2002. Congratulations and best wishes, Chris!

Maureen Watson, Reference Librarian, Ferris State University, Michigan College of Optometry Reading Room, shares the following information from MLA-FOCUS: Michigan librarians and GMR network members Misa Mi, Sandra Swanson, and Marie Lise-Shams received the Hospital Librarian Research Award for their poster Health Sciences Librarians in Michigan: Connecting to Emerging 2.0 Technologies. Congratulations!

The Outreach Express Award entitled Only Connect….to the Community was funded by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region (NN/LM GMR). This award allowed the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) National Planning Committee ‘08 to provide the first annual community service events. The two community service events held in Chicago, Illinois, allowed medical librarians to put words such as advocacy and visibility into action by creating partnerships with public librarians and volunteering in the neediest community, North Lawndale on the west side of Chicago. (more…)

by Barbara Platts, MLIS, AHIP
Munson Healthcare
Traverse City, MI

Registration is now open for the Midwest/MHSLA 2008 Conference!

You can register online via http://www.rsvpbook.com/event.php?459908. Payments for registration may be made by credit card or check.
In order to get the member rate for conference registration, you must be a member of either Midwest Chapter MLA or MHSLA.

• Click to join Midwest Chapter MLA
• Click to join MHSLA (Michigan Health Science Libraries Association)

To keep the planet “vibrant and healthy,” we will not be providing bags at this conference. Please recycle and “BYOB” (bring your own bag!).