National Network of Libraries of Medicine
nnlm.gov
Archives
This page was archived on: May 02, 2008 | View page metadata
Document content is not current. Links may be broken.
| National Network of Libraries of Medicinennlm.gov |
Archives |
|
This page was archived on: May 02, 2008 | View page metadata | Document content is not current. Links may be broken. |
||
 |
DragonflySpring 2001 -- Volume 32, Number 2 The newsletter of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region. |
The Pacific Northwest regional office of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine has embarked upon a new effort, the Tribal Connections Southwest Project, in which we will be working with tribal communities in the Four Corners area, providing training and resources to support access to health information. How has the Pacific Northwest found itself working in the desert Southwest? It all began with Tribal Connections. The Tribal Connections project, which brought computer equipment, Internet connectivity, and training to 16 tribes in the Pacific Northwest, has been an exciting and rewarding effort. The overall project goal has been to minimize isolation and improve access to remote social and health resources, and these efforts have extended to all five states in our region: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. (A list of the participating American Indian and Alaska Native communities is at http://www.tribalconnections.org/participants/phase1.html).
Meanwhile, in a separate but parallel effort, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation embarked upon its Native American Access to Technology Program (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/publicinfoaccess/nativeamerican.htm). The goal of this program is "to empower Native communities through increased access to digital information resources." The equipment, connectivity, training, and support provided by the Gates Foundation are intended to address the basic information needs of participating communities. As this program has progressed, the Gates Foundation has perceived a need for additional training beyond the instruction in using basic applications provided by Gates Foundation trainers. In response to this need, and with the conviction that health information is a crucial subject domain of great interest and importance to everyone, the Foundation has selected a group with a proven track record. It has funded the University of Washington's Health Sciences Library - the regional medical library for the Pacific Northwest - to provide training in finding and using electronic health information resources coupled with access to these resources. We will be working with librarians, health professionals, and community members from a selection of tribes in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah -- the region known as the Four Corners area.
At about the same time, the National Library of Medicine decided that the Tribal Connections project had proven successful enough to warrant expansion to other areas where tribal life is characterized by isolation, great distances, and inadequate access to computing and telecommunications technologies. Knowing that Gates funding would take us to the Four Corners area, we aimed this expansion at the Southwest. Following a request for proposals that was issued in fall, 2000, the Pacific Northwest regional office of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine provided funding to the Colorado River Indian Tribes in Parker, Arizona; the Pueblo of Jemez in New Mexico; the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico; and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes at the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada.
The Southwest Project, then, is the result of support from both the National Library of Medicine and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We look forward to collaborating with our health library colleagues in these four states, which are each served by a strong and active Resource Library. In addition, these states are members of three different regions within the National Network of Libraries of Medicine: Arizona is part of the Pacific Southwest region; New Mexico is within the South Central region; and Utah and Colorado are in the Midcontinental region (which has a brand-new regional medical library in the Eccles Library at the University of Utah). During these initial weeks of our Southwest Project, we have participated in meetings with interested representatives from most of these institutions. We have also been recruiting two new staff members who will join our team for the duration of this two-year project. One will be primarily responsible for assessing training needs, building community relationships, and conducting training. The other will assess health information needs and create a collection of resources - principally electronic - to address these needs. These two new staff members will form a working group with Roy Sahali, the architect of our previous Tribal Connections work.
The Southwest Project will combine the health information outreach of Tribal Connections with the technology infrastructure provided by the Gates Foundation in order to help bridge the digital divide. As the project proceeds, we'll keep you posted! Meanwhile, if you have questions about this project feel free to contact Roy Sahali (rs@u.washington.edu, 206-543-9253) or Neil Rambo (nrambo@u.washington.edu, 206-543-3402).
Dragonfly, Spring
2001 -- Vol. 32, Number 2
(posted on PNRNews June 15, 2001)
Reprinted from: Liaison, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2001
The Idaho Health Sciences Library (IHSL) received funding from the National Library of Medicine to establish a partnership with thirteen southeast Idaho public libraries in communities extending from Salmon to Montpelier. The first objective of this partnership was to increase health reference skills for public librarians by providing training in the use of PubMed, Infotrac's Health Reference Center, and MEDLINEplus. A day-long training workshop was presented to these librarians in the Oboler Library on the ISU campus. The second objective was to reinforce the IHSL's role as Idaho's resource library in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.
The partnership's third objective was to promote better understanding by consumers of health information resources available on the Internet. All across the nation consumers have shown a desire to participate in their own health care decisions. People want information about the quality of care they receive. As resources become ever more sophisticated, they are presented with an overwhelming number of options. As a result, they may need help in developing the skills necessary to access and evaluate available information. I worked with public library directors to offer ten town meetings that were free and open to all members of the community. Each public library received a stipend to cover costs incurred from staff participation in the project. The town meetings were heavily promoted with press releases, paid display advertisements in local newspapers, public service announcements on both television and radio, flyers posted around the community, and exhibits in the various public libraries. A total of 81 people attended these programs.
Each town meeting began with a group interview in which attendees were canvassed to determine computer skill levels, use of public library facilities, and use of various Internet resources to find health information. Surprisingly, none of the attendees had used online support groups or chat rooms, which seem to be very popular in other parts of the nation. The second item on the agenda was a discussion about evaluating Internet resources for quality. The rest of the evening was devoted to demonstrations of MEDLINEplus, PubMed, and Infotrac's Health Reference Center. Meetings were about 2 � hours long and refreshments were provided. Folders containing a variety of informational handouts were distributed. The presentations were evaluated twice, using questionnaires. The first questionnaire was collected at the end of each program. The second questionnaire was mailed to attendees about one month later, with a stamped, self-addressed envelope enclosed. The purpose of the latter was to determine how well people had been able to put their new knowledge to work. Results are currently being analyzed.
A conference was announced that promised to contribute useful impetus to strengthen this partnership and help to carry it forward. It was called "The Public Library and Consumer Health," co-sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, the Medical Library Association, and the Public Library Association. Since this Washington, DC, meeting was announced too late to be included as an expense in the subcontract, I applied for and received partial travel funding from the Library Services and Technology Act through the Idaho State Library. I hope to continue the partnership with public librarians on a less formal basis and, towards this end, am now submitting short items to a discussion list for Idaho librarians, beginning with summaries of the Washington presentations. My objective is to stimulate public librarians to enhance their consumer health services. I hope that the rich supply of health information available on the Internet will be made more accessible to all interested Idaho citizens via their public libraries.
Dragonfly, Spring
2001 -- Vol. 32, Number 2
( posted on PNRNews June 14,
2001)
In July 2000, the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association published an editorial entitled "SERHOLD and the Public's Access to Health Information" (vol. 88, no. 3, page 269). In this editorial, Nancy Press presented the need for wider availability of health serials holdings information to better support health information for the public. She outlined several steps that could be taken to make it easier for non-health libraries to get copies of health articles for their patrons, including developing the capability to load SERHOLD data into OCLC's WorldCat database. In her conclusion, she encouraged health libraries to "lobby OCLC to load SERHOLD data." Here in the Pacific Northwest, an ad-hoc group of librarians from various constituencies - health, academic, state library - did just that, by submitting a proposal to the Resource Sharing Subcommittee of the OCLC Users Group in the fall of 2000. This proposal, developed in consultation with NLM and endorsed by the Health Sciences OCLC Users Group, suggested that many types of OCLC members would benefit from its developing the technology to accept serial holdings records for batch loading into WorldCat. The proposal identified SERHOLD as a good set of holdings data with which to begin.
What has happened since then? Nancy's editorial and the ad-hoc group's proposal apparently arrived on OCLC's doorstep at the right time, just as an internal OCLC task force recommended that:
OCLC should develop a viable, scaleable service to provide automated batch record processing to update OCLC Union List holdings for OCLC Union List participants and Union List Group Access participants. The service must accept serials holdings information from a participant's local automated system or other sources in a standard format and process it to update the library's OCLC union list holdings. (Full report is at http://www.oclc.org/oclc/union/taskforce.htm)
Shortly afterward, at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Washington, DC, OCLC and NLM announced that they would be working together on a way to transfer holdings from SERHOLD into WorldCat. This was great news! Since then, OCLC has determined which pieces of information from SERHOLD will comprise which parts of OCLC's LDR ("local data record" -- the format used for holdings by OCLC). With NLM's assistance, OCLC is now working on matching the correct bibliographic record in SERHOLD to the right one in WorldCat, so that holdings are attached to the right title. Once that has been achieved (and that is a rather knotty issue since not all SERHOLD records have OCLC numbers), a pilot project will begin in which a few test libraries' holdings will be transferred. The libraries that have agreed to participate in this pilot project from our region are: Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Intercollegiate Center for Nursing Education, Linfield Portland campus, and both Tuality libraries (the hospital and consumer library).
Thanks to these libraries for their participation in the pilot project, and, of course, to NLM and OCLC for embarking upon it!
Dragonfly, Spring 2001 -- Vol. 32, Number 2This is the beginning of the first year of a new five-year contract in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. There is much in the Pacific Northwest Regional Medical Library contract that will be familiar to the region. One provision that is familiar, with slight revisions, is funding for outreach. We will be able to provide opportunities for our Network Members and Affiliate Network Members to obtain support for outreach projects and persistent Internet connections. It is the mission of this RML to improve the health information literacy of underserved populations and populations with poor health status; and the care providers, public health workers, librarians, and other health intermediaries who serve those populations. Outreach is a strategy toward this end. We look to the members of our Network to assist us in accomplishing this work through resource library subcontracts, local outreach awards, and training and exhibit awards. Persistent Internet connections for Network members who meet the criteria will also be funded.
Outreach funding
Persistent Connections
A request to NLM from Wallowa County Librarian Claudia Jones and Troy branch librarian Conni Curry brought Internet connectivity and training to libraries in this most northeastern county of Oregon, 350 miles from Portland.
Claudia says:
"The county's population of approximately 7,000 live in small communities scattered along the valley, on plateaus, and some, like Troy and Imnaha, are located in canyons. We are surrounded by National Forest lands and the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area. There is one main road connecting us to the neighboring county, a 62 mile stretch that twists along the canyon following the river. In addition to the geographic isolation, winter weather makes travel difficult even within the county. The road to Troy is a narrow (one lane) gravel road that twists and winds its way down the side of the canyon to the Grande Ronde River below. I travel it only dring the good weather months and send [library] materials with the UPS driver or the garbage service from November through March... Online access is non-existent other than at headquarters, where I have an older "hand-me-down" PC I use mostly for word processing... Neither branch library has a telephone..."
Working with Nancy Press at the RML, the Wallowa County librarians created a plan for access to health information in Wallowa County. If access can be entirely electronic, transportation issues become much less important. Therefore Internet was seen as the key medium, necessitating that we buy computers and install Internet connections. Wallowa County showed signs of readiness for Internet communication: proactive library staff and good local web expertise (apparent on other web pages in the county). RML staff predicted a successful outcome; after all, librarians who use the garbage truck for delivery of library materials can certainly get plenty of mileage out of minimal investment! In addition, the libraries showed that they are integral to the life of the county; the library has a health resource center and the branch libraries are housed with the one-room schools, reinforcing their status as community centers.
Special funding from NLM was awarded in January 2001 with the proviso that the installation and training work be completed by the end of the RML's five year contract--April 30, 2001! Claudia Jones, Dolores Judkins (of Oregon Health Sciences University), and Nancy Press got to work right away to choose and buy equipment, negotiate with vendors, arrange for installation, and plan for training.
In specific, NLM funding provided work stations, computers, and color printers at four sites in the county: the main county library office in Enterprise, county branch libraries in Troy and Imnaha, and the Enterprise city library. Imnaha and the Enterprise city library now have dedicated phone lines for Internet access, the Troy library is now serviced by a T1 line that had been only in the school, and the county library office now has a DSL line. The project also includes licenses for full-text data bases containing consumer health information, accessible from home by anyone in the county--another move to ameliorate the transportation problems.
Perhaps most importantly, funding also paid for Dolores Judkins of OHSU to travel to Wallowa to teach staff there how to take advantage of their new capabilities. Claudia wrote, "Dolores was fantastic! She provided a wonderful training for 6 librarians, 3 library volunteers, and a staff member from the hospital."
Claudia Jones reported to the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners, "This is like money dropping out of the sky."
The project was written up in the Wallow County Chieftain, February 22 at http://www.wallowa.com/chieftain/2001/8/gin5wpd.html.
Produced by NN/LM PNR.
Maryanne Blake, Editor
Michael Boer, Publication Manager
This publication is funded in whole with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. NO1-LM-1-3516.