Donna Berryman once again gave her annual update program in two locations: Boston and Worcester. Not only does Donna do a fabulous job of keeping us amused and actively involved in her presentations, but she does a great job of reviewing and going into greater depth regarding all the changes over the past year. This year special attention was paid to RSS feeds and My NCBI. Just one great new feature, which Donna mentioned, is the ability to set up a journal “hedge” by using the subject categories in the Journal Browser. If you were not able to make either session, you can download the following handouts from the MAHSLIN website:
November 8, 2006
1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., Children’s Hospital Boston (includes wrap-around)
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Mass Medical School
MAHSLIN and NNLM/NER are once again sponsoring this webcast in two locations! The first part of program will cover an introduction to Web 2.0. and some of the implications for our libraries. The second part will explore in greater detail some of the new technologies which are helping to define Web 2.0, including RSS, feeds and blogs, podcasts and Wikis. While it is usually never safe to try to predict the future, in the third part of the program, the presenters will try to evaluate which trends have true application benefits over those, which might be considered niche or passing fads.
The wrap-around session in Boston should be a great addition to the webcast as Brandy King, librarian at the Center for Media and Child Health, will talk about the new blog she has created for the CMCH website. Additionally, Cara Helfner, librarian at the Kessler Library at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, will discuss the use of podcasts in her library. If you are using one of these new tools and would like to present your project, please contact either Alison Clapp or Nathan Norris.
Registration for MAHSLIN members will be free and will begin October 23rd. The registration form will be posted on the MAHSLIN website and an email will go out over the listserv.
The MAHSLIN Education Committee is very excited to announce that we have received grant funding from NNLM/NER to host this program. Sue Stableford, who will be our instructor, is a dynamic and passionate speaker. Many of us enjoyed her presentation at a recent NAHSL meeting in Portland, ME. Through both presentation and smaller group work, she will:
In addition to helping our own membership write jargon-free documentation, we are hoping that this will be a way for our membership to demonstrate within our institutions our interest, support and involvement in health literacy.
Sue has offered to tailor the program based on the audience. Please feel free to send any documentation from your library as Sue will use this in her presentation and you will receive valuable feedback. This documentation could be a newsletter, guide, class handout or any other printed material. Sue promises not to dissect all the flaws in the document but to focus on ways to strengthen it. Be brave – you will be the beneficiary of good advice on ways to improve your communications. Please contact Alison Clapp (Alison.clapp@childrens.harvard.edu) if you would like to contribute a document.
We are counting on the MAHSLIN membership to get the word out to staff within their own institutions and will be emailing a flyer to everyone on the MAHSLIN listserv. We need you to widely distribute this flyer within your hospital or health care institution to publicize this program to the physicians, nurses, social workers and all other allied health professionals who might be involved in any patient education activities. The goal is to have librarians working together with other professionals with the common goal of creating understandable printed communications.
by Christina Fleuriel
"You need to be proactive!" That’s the exhortation we have heard for at least the last several years. Undoubtedly we have been to classes or brain stormed with our colleagues to figure out how best to do it. Sometimes we have likely not wanted to hear those dread words again. “I don’t have enough time in the day as it is!”
In my case being proactive found me. In July of 2005 the Benacerraf Library received a Docline request from North Shore Medical Center for a pre-publication article. Fortunately we have an online subscription to that journal, but the information on the request was not as helpful as I might have liked. Finally, to make certain that I was looking at the same information as the requesting doctor, I called Penny and found out that the doctor had gotten the information from something called MedPagetoday. I went to Google, typed in Medpage Today and got to the home page. Registering was easy and free. I got the information and the doctor got his article.
MedPagetoday.com is aimed at physicians, but I believe it can be useful to health information specialists as well. I receive one e-mail per day with headlines of new stories in the medical field; there are between half dozen and a dozen articles per e-mail. Sometimes there are summaries of meetings, such as the recent World AIDS conference or ASCO meetings. Doctors can get CME credit for some articles.
Initially, after helping fill that Docline request, I scanned the headlines and printed articles to put on the library’s current awareness bulletin board. We had posted newspaper clippings for several years on the assumption that not everyone can read the newspaper thoroughly every day. Shortly After subscribing to MedPage Today, I started sending the links to stories to the physicians or researchers who would be most interested. Last August I sent the URL to a story to the researcher who works on healthcare disparities; I knew of him and his work from reading our in-house newspaper. He e-mailed me back to thank me and to tell me that it “filled a major gap on a grant that I’m writing.” I was pleased about that. Then in late November Ted Kennedy was at Dana-Farber to announce that Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Care and UMass-Boston had been awarded a 5-year 4.3 million dollar grant to work on healthcare disparities. What I had thought might be an interesting article helped us reap a significant benefit.
Subsequently I have forwarded links to articles to other doctors. One piece was a presentation at a conference; the full article has not yet been published. The doctor to whom I had sent it was quite interested, so I took the extra step and found the e-mail address of the presenter and emailed her to inquire about a possible publication date. I hope to be sending my doctor that article in the next month or so.
Call it being proactive or chutzpah, but it works. It takes very little time to scan the article headlines. Especially as I have sent some article links to doctors whom I have never seen in the library, it lets them know that I am there. A little proactivity has helped with administration as well. A new COO started as DFCI during the winter. I sent her an e-mail welcoming her and extending an invitation to meet and discuss what the library could do for her. When I saw her on the elevator recently, I mentioned that I still wanted to stop by her office and check on what she needed. I also saw the CFO in the ladies room and asked her how the library could help her. I did have a captive audience, so to speak.
We all know about the stereotype of librarians. In a perverse way I relish that. If people have low expectations of me, when I pull the figurative rabbit out of a hat, its all the better. With more ideas of where to find information, we can really wow them.
reported by Dorothy Barr
This year, the North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries (NAHSL) combined with the New York-New Jersey MLA chapter for the Annual Meeting. With over 200 participants, it was a very successful meeting. For those who missed it, here are a few random highlights:
Dr. David Hunt spoke on Medicare and Patient Safety, and noted that the entire system needs to change. We can’t change the human condition, but we can change the conditions under which humans work - in other words, the entire system. He pointed out that Lister struggled to get attention for his antisepsis techniques, but at about the same time Theodore Bilroth in Germany implemented antisepsis with great results because he did have the authority and resources, and there was an integrated system in place. Needed changes have to come to the attention of those in authority or nothing will happen; leadership and systems are vital to success. It’s also important to minimize the cycle of blame and recrimination and concentrate on why defenses fail rather than on who goofed. He does think that we are nearing a Strategic Inflection Point – when fundamentals in a business are about to change.
Megan Fox led the group on a whirlwind tour of new technologies. Her presentation is available at http://web.simmons.edu/~fox/pda/NAHSL.pdf and is well worth a look – there is some amazing stuff out there!
Renee Drabier discussed working with IT and the importance of establishing good relationships. This theme was echoed by another presenter, Andrea Mercado, who also spoke in the afternoon (see following). (One of Andrea’s repeated suggestions was to take your IT folks cookies!)
Andrea Mercado gave a breathless talk on Uncovering the Secrets of Successful Library Web Sites. She offered many tips, such as thinking of your Web site as an online branch – a remote point of service; learning to think like a user, not a librarian; the importance of planning, and of regular maintenance to keep your site both fresh (so people will keep coming back) and clean (up to date and not cluttered); must-haves and also must-not-haves for your site; and much more.
Kathleen Bauer from Yale spoke about meeting users’ needs through evidence by using surveys, data and usability testing.
NLM and MLA both gave Updates. Good news: the visibility of LinkOut is being fixed, and they are reviewing subject headings and will reach a decision “soon.” David Funk, the incoming MLA President, said that his theme would be “Only Connect” – from Howard’s End, emphasizing the importance of medical librarians constantly making many different kinds of connections.
>The final session, on Tuesday morning, was a panel on Creating WOW! Services for Millennials, presented by Richard Sweeney from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He first spoke about the characteristics of different generations; Millennials are those born after 1980 and they are very different from previous generations at the same age. Most importantly, they are used to having more options and to multi-tasking; they are creative, challenging, and competitive, though at the same time they have grown up working in groups and playing multi-player games; and they think graphically. He recommended two books: Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive (which talks about the Inflection Point); and Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. Then he brought on a group of Millennials and asked them questions, which quite dramatically illustrated his points. It was a very valuable session, and well worth staying through the morning!
Next year’s NAHSL meeting will be in Woodstock, Vermont, from October 27-30. In addition, MAHSLIN and NAHSL will probably have a joint program in the spring, just as we did last June. So stay tuned!
The 2006 MAHSLIN Annual Meeting poster, “Think Globally, Act Locally” was displayed at the NAHSL meeting in Hartford, CT., October 15-17, 2006. The 8’wide by 4’ high poster, put together by the 2006 Planning Committee, Margo Coletti, Bette Bissonnette, Cathy Guarcello, Peter Droese and Nathan Norris captured the essence of the meeting with colorful slides and descriptive paragraphs. Many people stopped by to admire it and ask about the meeting. The Committee plans on submitting the poster to MLA for display at the 2007 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. The poster will also be on display at Saints Medical Center from November 19-30, 2006 and at the 2007 MAHSLIN Annual Meeting, April 27, 2007. Watch for details of the meeting in the coming months and save the date!!
Submitted By Peter Droese, Edited by Kris Alpi
The Medical Library Association Public Health and Health Administrative Section is pleased to announce version 2.0 of the Core Public Health Journal Project. The project is available online from the Medical Library Association Public Health and Health Administration web site http://publichealth.yale.edu/phlibrary/phjournals/.
The first version of the list was launched in 2004. In May 2006 the project received the Louise Darling Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Collection Development. The project has an oversight committee of five librarians, and over 30 librarians and public health professionals worked in teams consisting of a lead compiler, compiler and reviewer. I served as lead compiler for the Health Services Administration and reviewer for Public Health Practice.
The project covers 30 to 40 journals titles in each of the following public health areas: Biomedical & Laboratory Practice; Biostatistics; Environmental Health Sciences; Epidemiology; Health Education/Behavioral Science; Health Services Administration; International Public Health; Maternal & Child Health; Occupational Safety & Health; Public Health Dentistry; Public Health Nursing; Public Health Nutrition; and Public Health Practice.
Journals are grouped by the following categories: Essential Core, Research Level Core, and Grey Literature. Each journal entry contains the following information: title, price, publisher, URL, indexing status in PubMed, and the Subject lists.
Currently the list is available as a draft. The oversight committee is seeking comments and suggestions, which can be submitted via the web site. The next call for volunteers will be in October 2007.
Send your news to Dorothy Barr at dorothy.barr@umassmed.edu and Meg McNichol at mmcnichol1@partners.org. Both are your MAHSLIN Newsletter co-editors.
Thanks to all of our contributors for their articles!