Introduction
This Consumer Health Manual is a collaborative effort of medical librarians and consumer health librarians at public libraries. The topics or 'chapters' that comprise the Manual are topics the librarians felt would have been helpful when they began organizing their consumer health collections.
The idea for this Manual originated at the first meeting of the Consumer Health Advisory Committee of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine South Central Region (NN/LM SCR), held during the annual South Central Chapter/Medical Library Association (SCC/MLA) meeting in October 1999. The Committee was comprised of medical librarians from throughout the South Central Region: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
The Manual has been recognized by both librarians and health professionals throughout the US. In 2006, the coordination of the Manual was transferred to the Consumer Health Coordinators of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine and is now an inter-regional project. Articles are written both by NN/LM Coordinators and US librarians with expertise in a particular area.
If there are ideas that you would like to suggest for inclusion in future revised editions of this Manual, please contact the Consumer Health Outreach Coordinator at the NN/LM SCR:
nnlm-scr@exch.library.tmc.edu
800-338-7657 (in AR, LA, NM, OK, and TX)
713-799-7880
