In This Issue:

• Welcome
  
  
• Director's CorNER
  
  
• A Word About the Name
  
  
• Ill Advised
  
  
• Know Tech
  
  
• Membership Drive
  
  
• Wise Guys
  
  
• Links
  
  

This September and October Javier Crespo (Conusmer Health Coordinator) along with his colleagues from the Lamar Soutter Library, UMass Medical School-- Gael Evans, Barbara Ingrassia, and Barbara Winrich had the opportunity to teach Worcester area seniors about "Navigating the Net for Health Information." The seniors were enrolled in a program based at Assumption College called the Worcester Institute for Senior Education, WISE for short. Fifteen people signed up for the class, which was taught in the Psychology Computer Lab at Worcester State College over the course of five Tuesdays.

Javier and Barbara Winrich taught the first class on September 25th. Needless to say, it was a learning experience for all parties. The class learned about the Internet and the organization of its knowledge base. Barbara and Javier learned what it was like to teach a group of senior citizens the intricacies of mouse control and flashing screens!

The next week Cyberseniors.org used the class time to introduce their new training module that teaches seniors how to find good health information on the Internet. (Cyberseniors.org has a contractual agreement with the Worcester Senior Center to provide computer training to their members.)

On October 9th Gael and Barb Ingrassia taught the seniors about search engines and how to evaluate web sites. While Gael was expounding about Google.com and AltaVista.com, Barb made her way around the room from terminal to terminal distributing handouts, answering questions, and calming down the frantic clickers.

Gael taught the class on herbal and alternative/complementary medicine sites by herself, because Barb Ingrassia was away at the annual NAHSL meeting. This was a daunting task, since there was no one extra to help with the technologically challenged and the challenging technology. In spite of this the class enjoyed surfing such sites as the Longwood Herbal Task Force page displayed by the Shepherd Library at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.

Javier taught the final class on October 23rd: MedlinePlus. Barbara Winrich distributed MedlinePlus bookmarks, Medspeak brochures from the Medical Library Association, and the feedback survey. Everyone found our classes to be valuable and the students want us to come back and teach again!

We are planning to offer another series of classes in the 2002 Fall semester.