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Dragonfly, Summer 2001 Adventures in Outreach: What We Know and What We Don't

Neil Rambo
Associate Director

Reprinted with permission from: PH/HA News, Summer/Fall 2001

A forum on outreach to the public health workforce was held at the National Library of Medicine on April 4-5, 2001. Health science librarians and public health professionals gathered to consider the nature of information needs among public health workers and factors that contribute to the effectiveness of information outreach to this audience. Projects that had been funded from 1998-2001 by the National Library of Medicine, either through the Partners in Information Access to Public Health Professionals or the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, formed to body of the work considered. Descriptions for most of the projects represented at the Forum can be found at the Partners website at http://phpartners.org/nnlm_projects.html

Areas of focus for the two day Forum were assessing information needs, defining outreach objectives and determining outcomes, partnerships and sustainability, and fulfilling information needs through Web resources. An outcome of the Forum was the identification of research questions that need to be addressed to better understand information needs in public health settings, in order to design and deliver more effective information services in support of public health goals. Forum organizers tentatively conclude that effective, sustainable outreach starts with a thorough understanding of the audience: especially their information needs but also aspects of their professional culture.

Articles describing the Forum and its conclusions will be posted later this summer on MLANET and will appear in print in the October issue of the BMLA (Bulletin of the Medical Library Association). Information about the Forum and materials presented are available at http://phpartners.org/phof.html.

The Forum Steering Committee consisted of: Neil Rambo, University of Washing\ ton, chair; Kristine Alpi, Weill Medical College of Cornell University; Catherine Burroughs, University of Washington; Marjorie Cahn, Nation/phof.html.

The Forum Steering Committee consisted of: Neil Rambo, University of Washington, chair; Kristine Alpi, Weill Medical College of Cornell University; Catherine Burroughs, University of Washington; Marjorie Cahn, National Library of Medicine; Jocelyn Rankin, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and, Joan Zenan, University of Nevada-Reno.

Dragonfly, Summer, 2001 -- Vol.32, Number 3
(posted on PNRNews August 7, 2001)

URL: http://nnlm.gov/pnr/news/200107/phoutreach.html