Submitted by :
Ann Dixon, Director, Homer Public Library
Carey Restino, Coordinator, Friends of the Homer Public Library

The Homer Public Library, in collaboation with the Friends of the Homer Public Library and local emergency responders, held a month of activities aimed at increasing the community’s emergency preparedness thanks to a $5000 NN/LM Community Preparedness Day Award.  Events, which were timed to coincide with national Disaster Preparedness Month, kicked off on September 21st with a special Story Time about safety and natural phenomena that occur locally, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. (more…)

NN/LM PNR is pleased to announce one more new funding opportunity: Disaster Health Information Outreach Awards.

The purpose of the Disaster Health Information Outreach Project is to design programs for improving disaster medicine and public health information access for health professionals, first responders and others (paid or volunteer) that play a role in health-related disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Emphasis is on providing information or access to health and medical information in a way useful to the target audiences, and increasing the awareness and utilization of high-quality professional-level online medical and public health information resources on disaster, all-hazards, and emergency topics including resources from the National Library of Medicine. The purpose is also to promote new and creative collaborations on disaster health information needs among and to the mutual benefit of librarians, information specialists, or informationists and the disaster workforce.

Approved projects will be funded up to $15,000.

For more information, see the full funding announcement or contact Gail Kouame at gmarie@uw.edu or 206-221-3449.

Proposals will be accepted until February 1, 2012. However, if you plan to submit a proposal, we need a brief statement of intent no later than January 13, 2012 to help our planning process. Please submit your statement of intent to apply to nnlm@uw.edu.

We are happy to announce a new funding opportunity in the Pacific NW Region, the Health Information Services Promotion Award. Proposals are due December 30, 2011 and projects must be completed by April 30, 2012.

This is an award of up to $5,000 for projects that promote the value of health information services offered by an information professional within the organization or community. Proposals are due December 30, 2011 and projects must be completed by April 30, 2012. (more…)

Congratulations to the two winners in our contest for National Medical Librarians Month! Beshia Popescu, Medical Librarian at Peacehealth St. John Medical Center in Longview, Washington; and Ken Pfaff, Librarian at the Grotto Library of the Cortiva Institute in Seattle, Washington submitted the winning entries for a $500 scholarship each to MLA in Seattle in May 2012. (more…)

Laurel Egan from St. James Healthcare in Butte, Montana, shares her thoughts on medical librarians as a resource in our last  entry in the contest to recognize National Medical Librarians Month. Winners will be announced soon!

Medical Librarians: Your Ultimate Search Engine.

Definition: A search engine is a web site that collects and organizes content from all over the internet. Those wishing to locate something would enter a query about what they’d like to find and the engine provides links to content that matches what they want. http://realestate.about.com/od/sv/g/defsearcheng.htm.  In other words, we as medical librarians locate, collect, and organize in order to provide needed information for our patrons. The statement that medical librarians are the best resource when searching for health information goes beyond the usual perception that we can obtain or retrieve information. It also applies to the expanding role of creating vessels that assist in organizing and assembling information to create better access for our patrons. (more…)

NN/LM PNR is pleased to announce funding opportunities for Community Preparedness Day Awards.  Community Preparedness Day Awards assist libraries in in becoming active partners in the community’s emergency preparedness, response and recovery planning activities.  Awards of up to $5000 each are available to NN/LM member organizations in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. (more…)