AIDSinfo is a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services project, managed by the National Library of Medicine,  that offers the latest federally approved HIV/AIDS medical practice guidelines, HIV treatment and prevention clinical trials, and other research information for health care providers, researchers, people affected by HIV/AIDS, and the general public.  Along with housing the latest HIV medical practice guidelines, the Web site provides access to many other resources related to HIV treatment and research. Health information specialists are also available by phone, e-mail, and an online chat to assist the public with accessing this information.

AIDSinfo now offers a mobile site that allows users to access its resources and information on-the-go.  The new site optimizes many of the main site’s features for phones and other mobile devices. When viewing AIDSinfo on your mobile device, you will be automatically redirected to the mobile site. JavaScript must be enabled on your device for the mobile site to function properly. The AIDSinfo mobile site is available at http://m.aidsinfo.nih.gov.

The following AIDSinfo features are available on the mobile site:

• Guidelines: Federally approved medical practice guidelines related to HIV/AIDS, available in PDF format.
• Clinical Trials: Clinical trials database to help patients and health care providers locate trials studying HIV/AIDS, searchable by topic or keyword.
• Drugs: Database of fact sheets on HIV/AIDS-related drugs, searchable by drug name, drug class, or via an A-Z index.
• Glossary: Database of medical and scientific terms related to HIV/AIDS treatment and research, searchable by keyword or via an A-Z index.
• e-newsletter: AIDSinfo weekly newsletter showcasing the latest on HIV/AIDS treatment and research.
• Twitter: Tweets about HIV/AIDS research and treatment from AIDSinfo, available from the Twitter mobile site.
• HIV Awareness Days: AIDSinfo specialty pages marking annual HIV/AIDS awareness days.
• Questions?: Contact information for the AIDSinfo call center, where information specialists are available to answers questions via online chat, phone, and e-mail.

With Hurricane Earl making it’s way up the east coast, we thought it might be a good time to remind our network members of the emergency preparedness and disaster recovery resources we have on our site.   We have links to the Emergency and Preparedness Toolkit and a list of our Emergency Preparedness State Coordinators and other emergency/disaster recovery resources.  If the NN/LM, SE/A office can be of any assistance, please let us know.

The National Library of Medicine and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine will be closed on September 6, 2010 in observance of the Labor Day Holiday.

Position Title:     Chief, Technical Services Division

Organization:     National Library of Medicine

Closing Date: September 17, 2010

Salary Range: $123,758-155,500

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the world’s largest biomedical library and the developer of electronic information services that deliver data to millions of users every day, including scientists, health professionals, and the public.  NLM plays a pivotal role in enabling biomedical research, supporting health care and public health, and promoting healthy behavior.  In support of this mission, NLM seeks qualified applicants for the position of Chief, Technical Services Division with responsibility for the Library’s technical services and collection development functions to build and organize a collection of over 12,000.000 items, including selection and acquisition of electronic and print materials, licensing, processing, cataloging and metadata description.   The Chief of the Technical Services Division reports to the Associate Director for Library Operations in managing the operations of 90 employees in the Serial Records, Selection and Acquisitions, and Cataloging Sections; formulating and interpreting policies; analyzing technical services programs for continuous improvement; developing and monitoring operational and collection budgets; and staffing requirements.  The office of the Chief, TSD also oversees the deployment of the integrated library management system with the OPAC and other automated enhancements to facilitate access to the collection resources.  The incumbent will take the lead in developing and implementing innovative redesign of processing workflows for acquisitions and cataloging, expanding the scope of electronic resources for the collection, launching a digital repository, and reshaping the Division’s workforce to meet the challenges of new organizational priorities.

NLM’s unique position as the world’s largest biomedical library, its dedicated and diverse staff, and a history of developing technology solutions to improve the collection, processing, and dissemination of information provide an excellent opportunity for an experienced library professional with a strong background managing technical services in a complex library environment, outstanding communications skills and a results-oriented approach to problem solving.   As a national library, NLM works closely with the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, National Archives and Records Administration, American Library Association, other government agencies, institutions and international organizations to develop standards, policies and workable long-term solutions to problems facing research libraries today.  The Chief of NLM’s Technical Services Division serves as the Library’s expert on collection development and technical processing and represents NLM at national venues and professional groups and organizations with opportunities to engage in national level collaborations and partnerships.

For full position description and qualifications visit USAJobs:

HHS/NIH-2010-2826
Complete posting on USAJOBS
Supervisory Librarian
Technical Services Division, Library Operations
Closing Date: 09/17/2010

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is seeking a Director for Patient Education and Health Literacy to lead the implementation of health literacy standards for Vanderbilt Hospitals, which includes 600-bed Vanderbilt University Medical Center and The Monroe Carrell Children’s Hospital; Vanderbilt Medical Group and Clinic, with over 1,200 physicians; and the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, ranked #15 in US News and World Reports annual ranking of graduate medical education.

This newly created position will establish the strategic plan for the Health Information Center, oversee the development of patient education content and material, and coordinate metrics to measure communication effectiveness. Focusing on operational partnerships, this highly visible role will initiate graphic and readability standards across the medical center and support new patient education programs.

Located in Nashville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt University was listed among Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” for 2009.  Vanderbilt University and Medical Center is the largest private employer in middle Tennessee and second largest in the state, employing more than 19,700 and has an annual regional economic impact of approximately $5 billion of which the Medical Center’s impact totals over $3.4 billion.

Successful candidate will offer:

• Master’s Degree with at least 10 years of related experience
• Demonstrated success in health literacy and patient education
• Experience in an academic medical center or highly complex organization
• Passion for patient education, quality, and safety
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written

Please send inquiries and resumes in confidence to:

Page Ettle
Consultant
Grant Cooper & Associates
800-886-4690 x104
page@grantcooper.com

NIH Director’s Transformative Research Projects Award Program
Announcing funding for Transformative Research Projects (T-R01) Award Program:

• Exceptionally innovative, high risk, original and/or unconventional research
• Clinical, basic, and/or behavioral/social science research projects
• Up to $25 million total costs per year for a single project
• One-third of total funding budget geared to projects with more than $1 Million in direct costs.

The deadline for submitting Transformative Research Project applications is October 27, 2010 with Letters of Intent due by September 27, 2010.  See the instructions in the RFA <http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-10-010.html> (RFA-RM-10-010). Additional information, including Frequently Asked Questions about the Transformative Research Projects Program is available at: http://commonfund.nih.gov/T-R01 . Send questions to T_R01@mail.nih.gov.

NIH Director’s Pioneer and New Innovator Awards Program
NIH welcomes proposals for 2011 NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards and New Innovator Awards for innovative approaches to major challenges in biomedical or behavioral research.

• Pioneer Awards:
  • Up to $2.5 million in direct costs over 5 years
  • Open to scientists at any career stage.
• New Innovator Awards:
  • Up to $1.5 million in direct costs over 5 years
  • For early stage investigators (ESI), defined as those who have not received an NIH R01 or similar grant and are within 10 years of completing their terminal research degree or medical residency.

NIH expects to make at least 7 Pioneer Awards and at least 33 New Innovator Awards in summer 2011.  To continue its strong record of diversity in these programs, NIH especially encourages women and members of groups that are underrepresented in NIH research to apply.

The deadline for submitting Pioneer Award applications is September 13, 2010. See the instructions in the RFA <http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-10-008.html> (RFA-RM-10-008) and http://commonfund.nih.gov/pioneer for more information. Send questions to pioneer@nih.gov.

The deadline for submitting New Innovator Award applications is September 20, 2010. See the instructions in the RFA <http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-10-009.html> (RFA-RM-10-009) and http://commonfund.nih.gov/newinnovator for more information. Send questions to newinnovator@nih.gov.

DOCLINE and Loansome Doc will be unavailable from 5:00 PM Saturday, September 4, 2010 to approximately 5:00 PM Eastern Time Sunday, September 5, 2010, while our database software is being upgraded. Our apologies in advance for any inconvenience this may cause DOCLINE libraries or their patrons.

From the NLM Technical Bulletin:

By J. Shore, Index Section

Shore J. MEDLINE Character Set Expansion. NLM Tech Bull. 2010 Jul-Aug;(375):e13.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ja10/ja10_medline_char_set.html

Since the inception of MEDLINE, NLM has limited the characters used to those typed from a standard US keyboard and a small set of frequently used diacritics (see this character set at Limited MEDLINE/PubMed Character Set).

Starting in early September 2010, NLM will accept for newly created MEDLINE records any UTF-8 character in the Latin (Roman) and Greek scripts as well as mathematical and other symbols commonly found in biomedical literature. Other scripts such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean are not supported (see MEDLINE/PubMed Character Set for the expanded character set).

The most notable difference is the addition of Greek characters to the database. Previously, NLM spelled out Greek letters, for example, replacing β (Unicode 03B2) with beta. PubMed users are now able to search for these characters either by copying and pasting the text from an online source or by spelling out the letter as they always have done. Both approaches retrieve the same set of citations.

NLM will continue to standardize some characters:

All instances that represent a Double Quote will be translated to the straight double quote ” (Unicode 0022).

All instances that represent a Single Quote (this includes prime and apostrophe) will be translated to the straight single quote ‘ (Unicode 0027).

Em Dash, En Dash, Hyphen, or Minus will be translated to the single dash – (Unicode 002D).

See Diacritics in PubMed Displays and Searching for additional information.

The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association  Professional Development Committee is pleased to announce the continuing education courses scheduled for the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.   Registration is not yet open–we are sharing the courses for your planning purposes.  Course times and costs are listed on the CE portion of the meeting website – http://www.macmla2010.org/

All CE courses will be held on Wednesday, October 13, 2010.

Courses may be canceled if there is not sufficient enrollment.

Member rates are available to members in good standing of MAC, other MLA chapters, and ANCHASL.

Courses at the Friday Center

* Promoting Effective Use of E-resources – 8 hrs – Barbie E.Keiser, Inc.

* Health Information Literacy & Libraries – 4 hrs – Kay Hogan Smith

* Grants and Proposal Writing – 4 hrs – Sheila Snow-Croft

* The Librarian as a Professional, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Complexity – 4 hrs – Jerry Perry

Hands-on Courses at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Courses will take place at the Health Sciences Library at UNC-CH.

Transportation assistance will be provided for those who need it.

* Technology Planning for Health Sciences Librarians – 6 hrs – Wallace McLendon and Bart Ragon -This project has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No NO1-LM-6-3502

* Asking the Right Questions: Data Collection for HealthInformation Outreach – 4 hrs – Cynthia Olney

* Finding Information in Numbers and Words: Data Analysis forHealth Information Outreach – 4 hrs – Cynthia Olney

For more information on the courses, see http://www.macmla2010.org/

The MedlinePlus team recently enhanced the scrolling features on the MedlinePlus English and Spanish homepages.

First, an alternating  pause/play button, added to the left-hand controls, allows users to override the automated scrolling of the features as desired.

Second, the scrolling feature no longer rotates through four features continually.  Instead, features rotate once through (1-2-3-4) and then the rotation stops after the feature returns to the first item.

During the automatic rotation of features, users may click the pause button to stop the rotation.  Once the automatic rotation is stopped, the pause button becomes a play button, which users can use to restart the rotation.

These changes give users greater control over the scrolling feature on the MedlinePlus homepage.  Please contact the MedlinePlus team via the Contact Us link on every page of MedlinePlus if you have any comments or questions.