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• Director's CorNER
  
  
• Ill Advised
  
  
• Inside Outreach
  
  
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• Tech Time
  
  
• Tres Chic
  
  
• Announcements
  
  
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INside OUTreach

Outreach, n.

The act of reaching out. Also, the extent or length of reaching out; spec. the fact or extent of an organization's involvement in the community. Also attrib. - Oxford English Dictionary

There's been a lot of discussion going on lately around me about outreach and not just because of my position here in the NER. I've also been privileged to be a member of a team studying outreach at the Lamar Soutter Library for the past few months. Surprisingly, one of the tricky issues has been just what is outreach? How is it defined? What do we mean when we talk about outreach? The team at Lamar Soutter is still working on these questions and we hope to come to some conclusions about the nature of outreach, its methods, models, and meanings before we are finished.

Traditionally, when librarians think about outreach, we think about programs that take us outside the library walls. Sometimes, these involve partnering with community groups or with groups perhaps not generally seen as our primary clientele.

A terrific example of this sort of outreach in our region is the ongoing S*P*I*R*A*L project which brings together librarians from the Tufts University Health Sciences Library and the South Cove Community Health Center, a Boston based community health center serving the needs of Asian Americans in Massachusetts. Together, they have worked to compile health information resources in Asian languages that will be useful for the patients and the health professionals of the South Cove Community Health Center. And, since the information is available on a website, they are reaching out much farther than their greater Boston community. Take a look at the website.

S*P*I*R*A*L: Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages Tufts University Health Sciences Library and South Cove Community Health Center http://www.library.tufts.edu/hsl/spiral/

Oftentimes, outreach can be reaching beyond the library walls and our "regular" user base extending our reach, helping to bring information resources and tools to a larger group. Such a project in our region is headed by Betty Cohen, head of the Social Work Library at Boston College. While the Social Work Library supports the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College, this project will allow them to interact and provide useful services to social workers not only on campus or currently in class, but those working in the field, providing them with an opportunity to update their skills in using the internet and online resources to search for evidence on which to evaluate their practice. Look for additional information in upcoming issues of the NER'eastah about this project.

The NER is all about outreach. We assist with funding projects such as the SPIRAL project and the evidence-based social work project as well as others I haven't mentioned in this article. When we accept invitations to do training, to speak at conferences, or to exhibit at regional or national meetings, that's all part of our outreach activities. We are taking the resources of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the NER to a wider audience.

In your libraries, every time you make an effort to provide information and resources to a new group, that's outreach. When you partner with a group outside of the library to provide services, that's outreach. And outreach allows us to publicize the library while providing essential services while learning how to best meet the changing needs of all our constituent groups.

If the NER can assist you in your outreach activities, please feel free to contact us. That's what we're here for.

Don't forget to check out the latest NLM Technical Bulletin: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/tb.html

Donna Berryman, Outreach Coordinator