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.

The Lankenau Hospital Medical Library”s mission is to support the clinical research and educational requirements of the Lankenau Hospital medical staff, nursing, ancillary staff, and other personnel through the maintenance of a comprehensive and current  collection of educational materials.  The primary objective is to teach medical staff and hospital personnel to access medical and health information so that they are better able to perform their duties and responsibilities.  The presentation primarily introduces and demonstrates how to research information on the library”s web site.  We increase awareness and focus on the resource sites available on NLM/PubMed, such as, LinkOut, MedLine Plus (Consumer Health), Clinical Trials and other PubMed Services.

The presentation is given by the Lankenau Hospital Medical Library Director, Mazen Hassan, M.D., as well as Library Staff, Kary Heller, BA, MLS and Maria Panoc, MT, MBA.  At the presentation, the participants are shown how to access the system intranet and log onto the Medical Library Web Site. The audience is introduced to all the respective services available to our patrons.  The emphasis is on performing a literature search utilizing NLM/PubMed and LinkOut.  The presenters are quite interactive with the audience and it is a dynamic exchange of questions and answers.

At the end of the presentation, each participant receives an evaluation form.  They evaluate both the presentation and presenters on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) on whether or not the objectives were achieved.  The presentations have been quite successful with most objectives having a score of 5.  The Library has experienced an increase in the utilization of our services by the nursing staff.  The audience realized the breath and depth of information on our site and, in turn, the library web site has been linked to the nursing home web page.

Maria Panoc- The Lankenau Hosptial Medical Library.  Wynnewood, PA

Posted on behalf of National Training Center and Clearinghouse:

National Library of Medicine”s Training for You Locally!

PubMed® Training in Princeton, NJ!

The National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC), in conjunction with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Middle Atlantic Region (NN/LM MAR) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is offering two FREE hands-on PubMed classes at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, NJ!

The following two classes will be taught by the staff of the NTCC:

PubMed® (7.5 MLA CE Hours)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

8:30am to 5:00pm

PubMed® (7.5 MLA CE Hours)

Thursday, October 29, 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.

All the training sessions are 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 any or all of these classes, 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 NTCC”s classes, please go to: http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/

For further information about the site location, please contact:

MaryBeth Kren

mkren(at)rwjf.org

(609) 627-5895