The National Library of Medicine (NLM) invites you to attend the Disaster Information Outreach Symposium, March 29 – 30 , 2011. This free event will be held at the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland and is sponsored by NLM, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association.

Registration is now open at http://www.orise-registration.org/dimrc. Seats are limited, so please register early!

Trusted health information is essential for preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters and public health emergencies. Librarians and libraries can play an important role in meeting the information needs of responders and the public during  all phases of disasters.

This symposium will feature research, project reports, and personal experiences of librarians active in managing health information and library resources to improve disaster outcomes. Librarians’ actions in response to the H1N1 influenza outbreak, the Haiti earthquake, major U.S. hurricanes, and local emergency events will illustrate practical ways to be involved.

Presentations will also focus on the online resources, communication tools, mobile technology, social media, and NLM programs that can support responders’ abilities to make well-informed decisions and communicate health messages to the public.

Updates on professional development for librarians will include discussion of disaster competencies and training, a new disaster information specialization offered by the Medical Library Association, and volunteer opportunities with community agencies.

Speakers include health professionals, librarians, and information/informatics researchers who have a wealth of experience in disaster-related activities. Who should attend? -  librarians, information professionals, library staff and students, as well as responders, clinicians, and public health workers – anyone interested in learning about health information and disasters.

For more information, please visit http://disasterinfo.nlm.nih.gov/dimrc/symposium2011.html.  To receive updates on the symposium and news on other disaster information outreach-related resources, you may also wish to join our DISASTR-OUTREACH-LIB listserv at http://disasterinfo.nlm.nih.gov/dimrc/dimrclistserv.html.

Submitted by Cara Breeden, MLS
Aquilent, Inc., in support of the mission of the Disaster Information Management Research Center Specialized Information Services Division National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health cara.breeden@nih.gov

Debra Berlanstein
Head of Reference and Research Services
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Health Sciences and Human Services Library

The Southern Management Campus Center at the University of Maryland Baltimore was the site of a very successful statewide program November, 18, 2010 entitled “Connections: Emergency Preparedness for Librarians and Emergency Personnel.” The program was funded by a generous grant from the NN/LM, Southeastern/Atlantic (SE/A) Region and planned, organized and co-chaired by librarians Debra Berlanstein and Meredith Solomon from the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and P.J. Grier from the  NN/LM, SE/A office.

The program brought together over 65 participants from libraries across Maryland together with emergency personnel. Keynote speaker Rebecca Hamilton, State Librarian of Louisiana shared her moving story of beginning her tenure just weeks before hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the gulf state. She focused on the ordeal of overseeing the state’s libraries in the aftermath of the disaster and all of the valuable lessons learned. Other speakers included Richard Muth, Director of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, Amy Major, an attorney with the Center for Health and Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Cindy Love from the Disaster Information Management Research Center at the National Library of Medicine and Jodi Stiles and Greta Marlatt from the Homeland Security Digital Library. The day also brought the opportunity for networking and starting important conversations about developing emergency plans. The organizers plan to follow up with attendees in the Spring to see if the program brought them closer to developing emergency plans in their libraries and working together with their local emergency personnel.

For more details, speaker presentations and resources visit the website http://www.hshsl.umaryland.edu/disaster/

November 30, 2010

Time: Noon – 1:00 pm EST

Please join us for a presentation and short discussion on implementing a generic disaster clause in vendor e-licenses and contracts. Joanne Romano, Licensing and Serials Librarian from the Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library will present the experience in crafting language that was inserted into their existing license with Wiley Publications so that the Library could provide emergency resources to users in a Chilean university.  She will also address other aspects of the emergency, such as communications, assessment of need, technical aspects, accomplishments and lessons learned. The Universidad de Talca experienced a strong earthquake on February 27, 2010, which was located just 65 miles north of the 8.8 epicenter.Though this particular disaster happened internationally, it is important to remember that a disaster can strike locally, at anytime. Developing an initiative to have flexible “disaster clauses” incorporated into a library’s e-resources licenses is a proactive step in library emergency readiness. If a disaster occurred in your service area and emergency license clauses were in place, then this is ONE less item to worry about because you would’ve had the ability to just “flip the switch”.

Joanne Romano is also joined by representatives from Wiley Publishing.

How to get connected:

What do you need to join these conferences?

* A computer (with Flash installed)
* A telephone

How do I connect?
Go to this URL: http://webmeeting.nih.gov/beyondthesea/
Enter as a Guest
Sign in with your first and last name
Follow the instructions in the meeting room to have Adobe Connect call your phone or call 1-800-605-5167 and enter the participant code 227471 when prompted.

Reasonable accommodations will be provided upon request. If you require special accommodations, please call 410-706-2855 at least 2 weeks prior to the event.

Test your connection: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm

Get a quick overview: http://www.adobe.com/go/connectpro_overview

List of previously presented web conferences on subjects such as marketing your library and NN/LM updates.

DOCLINE Team would like to take a moment to acknowledge a DOCLINE milestone – the 30 millionth request was entered into DOCLINE today.  The 30 million requests includes both Loansome Doc and DOCLINE transactions.

DOCLINE Request # 30000000 was entered by Saint Louis University on October 19, 2010 at 12:06 pm Eastern Time.  University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno filled the request 4 hours later at 4:06 pm Eastern Time.

DOCLINE serves over 2,900 libraries in the United States, Canada, and other countries around the world.  Currently, DOCLINE libraries report more than 1.6 million serial holdings. The current fill rate is 92.9% and the average number of libraries to which a request must route before completion is just 1.26! The average time for lenders to fill a DOCLINE request is 1.04 days.

Many thanks to our DOCLINE users for their dedicated service to health professionals and the public in need of biomedical literature and health information, and for the years of support to the DOCLINE system and your many ideas for improving DOCLINE.

- The DOCLINE Team (Barbara, Brent, Karen, Lis, Lisa, Maria, and Tugger)

DOCLINE Customer Service
National Library of Medicine
US: 1-888-FINDNLM begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-888-FINDNLM      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-888-FINDNLM      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-888-FINDNLM      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-888-FINDNLM      end_of_the_skype_highlighting (press 3, then press 1)
Intl: 301-594-5983 (press 3, then press 1)
https://docline.gov

Patricia Reynolds, MLIS
Director, Bishopric Medical Library
Sarasota Memorial Hospital
patti-reynolds@smh.com

Disaster preparedness is going high-tech, regional, and Facebook.

Palm Beach County emergency managers, and counterparts in Miami-Dade, Broward and the Keys, have launched a one-stop web page with tips, lists, instructions and links for 15 different disaster scenarios from hurricanes to wildfires to terrorist attack. The page, www.ReadySouthFlorida.org, has downloadable emergency preparedness brochures, and links to each local county’s emergency management website.

There’s also a “Ready South Florida” social media site on Facebook, Palm Beach County emergency manager Bill Johnson said Friday. The program, patterned after the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s www.ready.gov web page, also features brochures and public service announcements. The web page is split into three themes: get a kit, make a plan, and be informed. People can click to get a checklist for food or other supplies, a list of shelters, or other important information. The website is in English and eventually also will be in Spanish and Creole, Johnson said. Having four county web pages available in one place is key for a region where many work in one county and live in another, or have relatives or friends elsewhere in South Florida with whom they’ll have to care for in an emergency, said Johnson, who came to Palm Beach County from Miami-Dade and whose home there was smashed by Hurricane Andrew. Now, he said, “you don’t have to memorize the websites. You can move from one agency to the other.” He said counties also are trying to standardize the pages to reduce confusion. Because disasters aren’t limited to hurricane season, Johnson said he hopes the web page will help people make sure they have a kit assembled year-round and have all preparations and plans in place.

The National Library of Medicine announces the activation of the Emergency Access Initiative in support of medical efforts in Pakistan.  The Emergency Access Initiative is a collaborative partnership between NLM and participating publishers to provide free access to full-text articles from over 230 biomedical serial titles and over 60 reference books and online databases to healthcare professionals and libraries affected by disasters.  While the project was established to assist libraries affected by disasters in the United States, NLM and the publishers are activating the Emergency Access Initiative in light of the growing healthcare issues developing in the aftermath of widespread flooding in Pakistan.

The Emergency Access Initiative serves as a temporary collection replacement and/or supplement for libraries affected by disasters that need to continue to serve medical staff and affiliated users.  It is also intended for medical personnel responding to the specified disaster.

EAI is not an open access collection – it is only intended for those affected by the disaster or assisting the affected population.  If your library is working with a library or organization involved in relief efforts in Pakistan, please let them know of this service.

Emergency Access Initiative:  http://eai.nlm.nih.gov

NLM thanks the participating publishers for their generous support of this initiative:  American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American College of Physicians, American Medical Association, American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists, ASM Press, B.C. Decker, BMJ, Elsevier, FA Davis, Mary Ann Liebert, Massachusetts Medical Society, McGraw-Hill, Merck Publishing, Oxford University Press, People’s Medical Publishing House, Springer, University of Chicago Press, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer.

Sample journal titles:

. Accident and emergency nursing

. American journal of infection control

. Annals of internal medicine

. Archives of surgery

. Burns

. Depression and anxiety

. Disaster medicine and public health preparedness

. Environmental toxicology and pharmacology

. International journal of cardiology

. International journal of infectious diseases

. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association

. Journal of emergency medicine

. Journal of traumatic stress

. Lancet

. New England journal of medicine

. Surgery

Sample book titles:

. Merck manual of diagnosis and therapy

. Public health & preventive medicine

. Trauma

. Handbook of critical care

. Human virology

. Infectious diseases: the clinician’s guide to diagnosis, treatment and prevention

. AHFS drug information

Online Databases:

. Cochrane database of systematic reviews . DynaMed . UpToDate

For questions regarding the Emergency Access Initiative, please email custserv@nlm.nih.gov or call 1-888-346-3656 in the United States, or 301-594-5983 internationally.

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.

Tom Hipper
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness & Response (ASPR)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

HHS, specifically ASPR/APSA, is currently attempting to create a database of agencies that have the capacity to transmit text messages/data to cell phones during a public health emergency (tornadoes, hurricanes, disease outbreaks, etc.). We are reaching out to all levels (federal, state, local, private, etc.) to add as many agencies  as we can.

While we are aiming for as exhaustive a list as possible, once we have a fairly representative list we will begin work on the ultimate goal of this project – to provide a database of expert created/approved emergency messages to which agencies in the database will have access. We will be working with CDC and subject matter experts to create the content, and we will obtain feedback from the agencies to ensure that the available content meets their needs.

The expectation is that this database will expedite the process of disseminating information during an emergency, while simultaneously reducing mixed messages. HHS will not be sending out the content to members, but rather the content will be available in the database for whenever they decide to use it.

If you are interested in being added to our database and/or learning more about the project, please send me the following:

• Name
• Agency/Department
• Phone number and email
• Brief description of coverage area and messaging capabilities

We would also greatly appreciate it if you would forward this message on to other agencies that may find this database to be helpful. The more agencies that are aware of and use this database, the more effective it can be.

Thank you so much for your time and please contact me (tommy.hipper@hhs.gov), or my colleague Ira.Dreyfuss@hhs.gov, if you have any questions.

Patricia Reynolds, MLIS. Director, Bishopric Medical Library, Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Sarasota, FL – patti-reynolds@smh.com

This is a wonderful web site of translated materials of all kinds with one section dealing with disaster preparedness.  Signage is also available in multiple languages.

(there are also many pages of great materials dealing with other health related topics) - http://www.healthinfotranslations.org/disaster-preparedness.php

Disaster Preparedness -Preparing for a Disaster

To better prepare our community members to deal with emergencies, this section of the website has information about how to prepare and respond to disasters. This information is:

1. Easy to read
2. Translated into different languages with English (dual language)
3. Available free without copyright restrictions

These materials are provided as a project from:

• The Columbus Medical Association Foundation
• The Central Ohio Trauma System
• Columbus Public Health
• Franklin County Board of Health
• Mount Carmel Health
• Ohio State University Medical Center
• OhioHealth

With support from:

• The Columbus Medical Association Foundation
• The Central Ohio Trauma System
• Columbus Public Health
• Franklin County Board of Health
• Health Resources and Services Administration
• Ohio Department of Health

By Dan Wilson, Chair, SE/A Emergency Preparedness & Response Committee

Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, we are preparing to fail.”  He also said, “A small leak can sink a great ship,” but I’ll save that quote for another article.  It’s hurricane season, and this summer’s  extreme heat has caused power outages and severe storms throughout our region.  In fact, just a few weeks ago the University of Virginia Health Sciences Library was closed for a day-and-a-half due to a power outage caused by a sudden microburst.  How’s your readiness level?  Do you have procedures in place for keeping your core services and resources available following a service disruption?  If not, click on over to the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Toolkit (http://nnlm.gov/ep/) for a wealth of resources designed to help you prepared for any type of service disruption.  For regional preparedness resources, see SE/A’s Emergency Preparedness & Disaster Recovery Resources (http://nnlm.gov/sea/services/emergency/disasterrelief.html).  Want a personal consultation?  Contact PJ Grier, your emergency preparedness coordinator for SE/A , by phone at 1-800-338-7657, or by email at pgrier@hshsl.umaryland.edu .  You may also contact me, Dan Wilson, chair of your SE/A Emergency Preparedness & Response Committee.  I can be reached at 1-434-924-0193, or danwilson@virginia.edu.