We are excited to announce another round of funding from the NN/LM PNR to support purchase, installation, and/or upgrading of hardware and software to enhance access to health information.

Up to three (3) awards of up to $5,000 each are available to NN/LM member organizations in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. The purpose of these awards is to enhance the capacity of a library or organization to offer electronic health information services for health professionals or health consumers.

This funding can be used for:

• computer equipment, scanning or document imaging equipment, or other hardware
• software for Internet or Web-based transmission of documents
• Internet access fees
• trainings or demonstrations related to a new information service

Applications from community-based organizations are especially welcome.

A spring 2007 assessment of libraries in the Pacific Northwest revealed a number of technology and connectivity gaps including the need for wireless Internet access, facilities for computer-based instruction, document delivery equipment, and other hardware and software upgrades. This funding is intended to help libraries and other member organizations to meet those needs. We hope that this funding can also provide an opportunity for network members to collaborate with their institutional Information Technology personnel. We were pleased to award technology improvement project funding to three network member organizations in the fall of 2008 and to five more in spring 2009. Those projects are currently underway.

We aim for recipients of these awards to be distributed across our five state region. Priority will be given to proposals that:

1. Respond to a previously identified health information access need

2. Have active support of the institution’s information technology staff

3. Include a clear strategy for evaluating project outcomes

Consideration of requests for funding will begin on March 1, 2010. Proposals should be submitted using the Technology Improvement Awards Application form .

For additional information, see the official funding announcement or contact Alison Aldrich, NN/LM PNR Technology Outreach Coordinator, at aldrich3@u.washington.edu , 1-800-338-7657.

Gapminder is an international non-profit organization with a mission to better use statistics for “minding the gaps” in socioeconomic indicators within and among populations. Gapminder World features colorful animated graphs that show trends over time in a very compelling way.

In this video, Gapminder founder Hans Rosling interprets a graph about global development over the last 200 years:

[11/30 Update: If YouTube is blocked for you, you can watch this same video (but without narration) here, or try this video on TeacherTube.]

The software behind Gapminder is called Trendalyzer. Google acquired Trendalyzer in 2007. Now you can create your own Trendalyzer animations using Google Spreadsheets and the Google Gadget Motion Chart.

Science librarians and researchers will appreciate this motion chart from the site Eigenfactor.org, a project of Dr. Carl Bergstrom’s lab at the University of Washington. The motion chart shows the relative impact of scholarly journals over time.

by Jane Saxton
Director of Library Services
Bastyr University
Kenmore, WA

“We live forward, but we understand backward.”

-William James

This is the True Story of what happened when we received an NN/LM PNR Technology Improvement Award.

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Hope Leman, Research Information Technologist at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis, Oregon, submitted the following as a comment on our October 27 post E-Patients Rising. I am re-posting it here in order to highlight the great resources Hope suggests for learning more about the e-patient movement. Thanks Hope!

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I have been to several conferences recently: Medicine 2.0, Health 2.0, the Connected Health Symposium and e-Patient Connections Conference 2009. At each of those I was privileged to hear e-Patient Dave speak. He is a remarkably incisive thinker on these issues and his keynote at the recent Medicine 2.0 conference (provocatively entitled, “Gimme My Damn Data!”) made a deep and positive impression on the attendees.

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A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 61% of American adults are e-patients, meaning they look online for health information. In a presentation for the Medical Library Association Tri-Chapter Conference earlier this month, Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project, reported on what survey data indicated about questions like these:

• What kind of health information do e-patients seek?
• How many e-patients use mobile devices as opposed to more stationary computers?
• How many use social media to connect with healthcare providers or other patients?
• How many e-patients are also e-participators, meaning they create, tag, and share health content online?
• How satisfied are e-patients with the information they find online?

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A screencast is a recording of actions performed on a computer screen. Screencasts are used to demonstrate computer-based tasks, such as website navigation, and are especially useful for distance education. Screencasts include audio and video, or sometimes just video with captions. Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, and similar software can be used to create high quality, professional looking screencast tutorials, but not without significant investments in time and money.

Until recently, it would have been unreasonable to think about creating a screencast to address just one person’s specific information need. However, thanks to a number of free web-based tools that have come on the scene in the past few years, producing a screencast no longer needs to be a major production. In just minutes, you can create a screencast, upload it to the web, and share it any number of ways. Here are some free tools you can use to incorporate screencasts into your everyday interactions with information seekers.

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