Posted on behalf of Carolyn Lipscomb, Program Manager, AAHSL Future Leadership Committee:

NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program, 2009-2010

Call for Applications

The Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) is pleased to announce the 2009-2010 year of the leadership program jointly sponsored by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and AAHSL. The NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program is focused on preparing emerging leaders for the position of library director in academic health sciences libraries.

“The partnership with NLM has demonstrated its value in encouraging and preparing the next generation of leaders of our libraries,” said AAHSL president Julia Sollenberger. “Its merit is recognized by institutions across the country as they recruit for director positions.”

Fellows will have the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills in a variety of learning settings, including exposure to leadership in another environment. They will be paired with mentors who are academic health sciences library directors. In addition to the individual relationship with their mentors, fellows benefit from working collaboratively with other fellows and mentors. Experienced program faculty and mentors will provide content and facilitation for the cohort. The program takes advantage of flexible scheduling and an online learning community to minimize disruption to professional and personal schedules. The sponsors will provide financial support for up to five fellows and will underwrite travel and meeting expenses.

Thirty-five fellows have participated in the program since its inauguration in 2002. To date, thirteen fellows have assumed director positions.

“The program was key in securing my job as director and continues to sustain me,” noted Neville Prendergast, fellow, class of 2007-2008, and director at Tulane University. “It provided the learning environment to interact with my mentor and other leading directors very willing to share their ideas and experience. It places you in the position of ‘thinking like a director.’”

Chris Shaffer, fellow, class of 2006-2007, and university librarian at Oregon Health & Science University, said, “My mentor ‘opened the books’ to me and taught me about budgets of public and private universities. As a new director, I often turn to the other fellows in my cohort for advice and community, and I can get support from all the mentors who have participated in the program.”

Gary Freiburger, mentor, class of 2008-2009, and director at University of Arizona, stated, “My fellow’s visit to our library gave me a chance to see our operations through fresh eyes. As a mentor, I not only have the chance to rethink my assumptions, I also have the benefit of working with a cohort of directors who share information and experiences.”

Program Overview

The one-year program design is multi-faceted: three in-person leadership institutes; attendance at an Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting; a yearlong fellow/mentor relationship; Web-based courses and discussions on issues related to library leadership; and a two-week site visit to the mentor’s home library (in one or two-week segments).

The program is designed to:

• Introduce fellows to leadership theory and practical tools for implementing change at organizational and professional levels;
• Introduce fellows to critical issues facing academic health sciences libraries;
• Develop meaningful professional relationships between fellows and mentors that give fellows access to career guidance and support;
• Expose fellows to another academic health sciences library and its institutional leadership under the guidance of their mentors;
• Examine career development and provide models of directors to fellows;
• Create a cohort of leaders who will draw upon each other for support throughout their careers;
• Promote diversity in the leadership of the profession; and
• Offer recognition to emerging leaders and enhance the competitive standing of fellows as they pursue director positions.

Application

The NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program is currently accepting applications and nominations for the August 3, 2009, deadline for potential fellows and mentors for the 2009-2010 experience. Candidates for fellow should have a strong interest in pursuing a directorship in academic health sciences libraries, as well as a minimum of five years of department head level or higher responsibility, or equivalent experience, in an academic health sciences library, hospital library, or other library-related setting. Applications from qualified minority candidates are encouraged. Mentors should have at least five years’ experience as director of an academic health sciences library.

The program brochure, including information on program design, schedule, and application process, is available at http://data.memberclicks.com/site/aahsl/NLM-AAHSL-Leadership-Fellows-Program-2009-2010.pdf

For more information about the program, please contact Carolyn Lipscomb, Program Manager, AAHSL Future Leadership Committee, carolynlipscomb(at)cs.com.

Posted on behalf of NLM History of Medicine. Questions may be directed to Jill Newmark, Exhibition Registrar in the NLM History of Medicine Division: newmarj(at)mail.nlm.nih.gov

The NLM History of Medicine Exhibition Program is accepting requests to host a new banner exhibition scheduled to be available October 4 2009.

The title is Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Yellow Wallpaper

In the late nineteenth century, at a time when women were challenging traditional ideas about gender that excluded them from political and intellectual life, medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes. Artist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health, rejected these ideas in a terrifying short story titled “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The famous tale served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s professional and creative opportunities.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/about/exhibition/travelingexhibitions/literature.html

As with NLM’s other banner exhibitions, we are asking host libraries to cover incoming FedEx expenses, which usually run a couple of hundred dollars. The booking period is 6 weeks. The online exhibition will feature K-12 lesson plans and a higher education module and will be available after Labor Day.

An additional note, historian Helen Horowitz advised on the project and developed the higher education module, and is currently writing a book about the topic. She’ll be speaking about her research at the History of Medicine Division Seminar this September 9 for those who are interested. http://www.smith.edu/history/fac_hhorowitz.htm

National Library of Medicine’s Training for You Locally!

PubMed® Training in Bronx, NY!

The National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC), in conjunction with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Middle Atlantic Region (NN/LM MAR) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is offering one FREE hands-on class at the D. Samuel Gottesman Library in Bronx, NY!

The following class will be taught by the staff of the NTCC:

PubMed® (7.5 MLA CE Hours)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

8:30am to 5:00pm

Anyone who has used PubMed regularly has noticed some of the many changes. This PubMed® class is of particular interest to those who want a review of recent changes to the system, including medical librarians, researchers, medical editors, and anyone who searches for biomedical journal article citations.

This full-day class is designed to teach students how to use PubMed® which includes MEDLINE citations. The class also includes an overview of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) and its importance as a tool to both searchers and indexers.

The training session is FREE and intended for health sciences library staff, public librarians, health professionals, and anyone interested in using these free National Library of Medicine (NLM) databases.

To REGISTER for this class, or to look for other class locations, simply click on this registration form link (http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/classes/register.html).

We hope to see you there.

For further information about our classes, please go to: http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/

For further information about this site location, please contact:

Racheline G. Habousha

habousha(at)aecom.yu.edu

In order to raise the profile of the Community Health Library (CHL) at Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC), the CHL librarian participates in local community health fairs.  A Small Project Award allowed the purchase of an eye-catching, easily transported, tabletop presentation board as well as 50 USB drives to be used as giveaways at the health fair displays.  Both the USB drives and the header of the presentation board were customized with the library name and/or logo.  The USB drives were also preloaded with three documents providing consumers with information to use to evaluate health websites, tips on using search engines, and a suggested list of highly regarded, authoritative health websites for quick access to credible consumer health information resources.  The goal of the project was to increase usage of the CHL and its resources.

The CHL librarian attended two community health fairs in the spring of 2009.  The CHL display included the presentation board, which prominently featured resources available for use at the CHL, and the USB drives as well as pamphlets, CHL brochures, and NLM promotional items featuring MedlinePlus. Print copies of the handouts that had been preloaded onto the USB drives were also available. The CHL table was visited by approximately 100 people over the course of the two health fairs.  The display was well received and all of the USB drives were given to interested consumers.  Request for four consumer health literature searches were received and completed.

The Small Project Award allowed the library staff to test the use of USB drives as a promotional item for health fair displays and an important lesson was learned.  Many people who stopped at the CHL table were older adults, and this has been the case at some other community fairs as well.  A significant number of these senior citizens either did not use a computer or thought they would need assistance to use a USB drive, consequently the USB drives were of less interest to them than were the print materials provided on the table.  The CHL librarian has attended other health fairs where the target population was families and the USB drive might have been better utilized as a tool at such a health fair.  This lesson reinforced the importance of research prior to attending a health fair. By learning more details about the target population, promotional items can be selected that would be most appealing to that particular group.

The CHL at HUMC provides consumer health information to patients, family members and friends, employees and the community at large in Bergen County, New Jersey.  Information is sent via mail, email or fax and reference requests can be submitted by all of these methods as well as by telephone. The CHL is located within the Samuel and Sandra Hekemian Medical Library at HUMC.

Deborah Magnan - Hackensack University Medical Center- Samuel & Sandra Hekemian Medical Library.  Hackensack, NJ

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine MAR Offices will be closed on Friday, July 3, 2009 to observe the 4th of July holiday. We will reopen at 9 am on Monday, July 6, 2009. The National Library of Medicine will also be closed on the 3rd of July.

This piece is meant to provide a short introduction into some of the privacy features on social networking websites that newcomers might be unaware of. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list. Please send any feedback to: MihlraL@mail.amc.edu.

You’ve likely heard about some of the more popular social networking websites:

• Facebook (http://www.facebook.com)
• Flickr (http://www.flickr.com)
• FriendFeed (http://friendfeed.com)
• MySpace (http://www.myspace.com)
• Plurk (http://www.plurk.com)
• Twitter (http://www.twitter.com)

Perhaps you are curious to see what they are all about and experiment with the sites, but are uncomfortable with the idea of strangers seeing your personal business.

Though not universal knowledge, all of these sites have privacy settings that let users restrict the visibility of their postings. Most don’t require you to use your full name; many let you use any name (or non-name) that you want. The bigger social networking sites typically let users specify which segments of their profile (such as research interests) they want the public to see, while setting others (such as photos or videos) to private.

Many also let you set privacy settings at a very granular level. For example, each photo uploaded to Flickr, a photo and video-sharing website, can be set to be viewed by only you, your friends/family (as defined by you), or anyone. So if a librarian wants to post photos of their library’s recent renovation to their web site to show the world, but keep personal photos private, they can (see image below):

Facebook’s privacy settings are a bit more complicated than Flickr’s, mostly because the site contains more types of information than Flickr. Each profile contains certain default segments, such as contact information, personal information, status update, etc. Users can also add external applications to their Facebook page, such as games or quizzes. Both Facebook-created and external applications’ privacy settings can be set via Facebook.

The first step is setting a blanket privacy setting for an entire profile. Typical settings (as permitted by Facebook) include making your entire profile visible to everyone, only those in your network (a city or college affiliation selected by a user), or just friends. Beyond that, each profile segment’s privacy setting can be customized (see image below). Facebook also permits users to set up groups. One use for this might be to set up two separate groups, friends and colleagues. If someone wants to prevent colleagues from seeing their photos or status updates, for example, they can do that by typing the group’s name by the appropriate privacy setting.

Settings as viewed in Facebook under Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Profile:

Twitter, a micro-blogging web site, works a little differently. The user can either make their updates (”tweets”) public or private. If the tweets are set to private, the person must individually approve each user (”follower” in Twitter) who wants to view their page. Otherwise, this is what the person sees:

From a beginner’s perspective, this allows them to experiment and use Twitter without worrying about anyone seeing what they write. They can “follow” as many other users as they’d like without worrying about their posts being seen. However, one cannot comment on another user’s postings, and vice versa, if they are not mutually following each other on Twitter. This could limit social interactions on the site. Unlike some of the other social networking sites, Twitter’s restrictions are all or nothing - either someone can freely follow you, or they cannot without approval.

Another privacy issue related to social networking sites is that the contents of many of these sites are now picked up by search engines. If anything is posted in your real name, this could be picked up by a search engine and publicly available on the Web.  For example, Twitter tells its users that its pages rank high in Google searches.

However, by utilizing common sense and some of the privacy features listed here, individuals can experiment with social networking websites and interact with friends and colleagues, while still keeping private information private.

Leigh Mihlrad
Systems & Technology Librarian
Albany Medical College
Albany, NY

HHS” Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is seeking comments on the preliminary definition of “Meaningful Use” of electronic health records as presented to the HIT Policy Committee on June 16. Comments on the draft description of “Meaningful Use” are due by Friday, June 26, 5 p.m., EDT, and should be no more than 2,000 words in length. Select to access instructions for submitting comments.

On May 27, 2009, the Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce (”Partners”) released a description of a Funding Opportunity in FY 2009 to promote quality improvement in public health. Since the release of this notice, we have received many requests for information and clarification. These questions have underscored the need for formal clarification of the solicitation and the related application process. In order to be consistent in our responses and fair to all potential applicants, we have decided to retract the current notice and to formally reissue it as soon as possible as a formal solicitation in www.FedBizOpps.gov.

As a consequence of our decision, the due date for proposals in response to this solicitation has been postponed and is NOT Friday, June 19.

In early July, the National Library of Medicine, on behalf of the Partners, expects to post a Statement of Work and a Request for Proposals on www.FedBizOpps.gov that will specifically describe the submission instructions and criteria for selection. The new due date for submission of proposals will be no earlier than mid-July.

As soon as the solicitation becomes available, it will be posted via the NN/LM Regional listservs and announced on the Partners website (www.PHPartners.org).

We regret any inconvenience this delay might have caused you or your organizations.

Questions may be emailed to Lisa Lang, at nichsr@nlm.nih.gov.

Queens Library (NY) has been named 2009 Library of the Year by Library Journal and Gale. The cover story of LJ“s June 15 issue, headlined “The Politics of Excellence,” announces this award.

Read the full press release and the LJ cover story here:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6665057.html?rssid=191

We congratulate MAR Resource Library member Queens Library!

A hot fun day was had by all at the Healthy Kids Day at the State Fair on July 22^nd in Delaware. The Delaware Academy of Medicine”s Consumer Health Services exhibit table was well placed at the front of the kid”s tent and was visited by more than 1000 kids and adults. The kids attended from all over Delaware with Day Camps, Head Start programs and families. We provided pencil cases, pencils, bookmarks and magnets with our new logo, as well as toothbrushes to all who visited the table. There were activities for the kids, including exercises led by Miss Delaware 2007, demonstrations of the Delaware Champion Cup Stackers and visits by the Titans. We even had a visit by Grover! Thanks for all your support in making this a successful event.

Linda Leonard- Delaware Academy of Medicine.  Newark, De.