MAHSLIN NETWORK NEWS

October 2001

Volume 21 Number 4

EDITORIAL--

ATTACKS IMPACT LIBRARIANS, BRING HEIGHTENED AWARENESS OF BIOTERRORISM ISSUES

By Donna Beales PR Co-Chair, MAHSLIN The attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center have had an impact on every aspect of American life, including librarianship. In the wake of the tragedy, the MEDLIB-L listserv was flooded with expressions of shock and horror.

Members of the library community around the world expressed sympathy and support for American librarians. Colleagues in New York City and Washington wrote to question the whereabouts of professionals working in libraries within the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to report on those they knew were okay, and even to describe events as eyewitnesses.

The consensus of nearly every major government officials is that successive attacks of terrorism will be launched against the United States. In Massachusetts, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MASS) recently stated that he believes the next wave of attacks will include non-traditional weapons, including chemical and biological warfare agents. Given those statements, and the uneasy fact that Boston is the center of a massive investigation into a potentially longstanding terrorist cell, the idea of bioterrorism here in our state is, sadly and suddenly, not unthinkable.

At risk of being labeled an alarmist, I put forth that our profession in particular must act. Medical Librarians in Massachusetts have a duty and a responsibility to make certain that the medical communities they serve are well informed in the areas of disaster preparedness and bioterrorism. Mary Sheryl Horine, MPH, serves as the Bioterrorism Coordinator for the Division of Epidemiology and Immunization, Massachusetts Department of Public Health. I contacted her recently to learn more about the issue. She expressed her appreciation for my call, and my impression was that a collective sigh of relief is echoing through MDPH halls now that a wider group of healthcare professionals is paying more attention to the issue of bioterrorism.

She provided me with the following information: "In the next 6 months, the MDPH will be developing 2 curriculums around Infectious Disease Emergencies for the health care provider. Both will target ICPs, ED physicians and nurses, and EMS providers. The first curriculum will be a 1-hour "grand rounds" style presentation. The second curriculum will be a ½ day training that will hopefully provide CMEs and CEUs and will initially be held regionally throughout the state on a first come first served basis and then will be offered both on-line and hospital by hospital depending on the need. Please share with your group that these will be available in the future."

She also suggested the following web sites as educational starting points:

http://www.usamriid.army.mil/education/bluebook.html

http://www.ahapolicyforum.org/policyresources/MOdisaster.asp

The emergency hotline number in Massachusetts for reporting a potential act of bioterrorism is 1-(617) 983-6800. The line is available 24 hours, but is monitored during the evening by security personnel, who page the immunologist on call. The URL for the Division of Epidemiology and Immunization, Mass. Dept. of Public Health is: http://www.state.ma.us/dph/cdc/epiimm2.htm

May we as librarians seek in every way to act in a positive and professional fashion to assist our healthcare communities during these difficult times.

Deepest sympathies go out to all those who have been personally affected by the recent tragedies.

MASSCAT UPDATE www.masscat.org

Submitted by Pat Vigoritio Medical Library, Morton Hospital

Can’t afford an online catalog for your library? Tired of updating your paper catalog? Trying to find that book you need to borrow? You need MassCat!!

Five of the Massachusetts Regional Library Systems (Central, Metrowest, Northeast, SouthEast and Western) have formed MassCat, a single catalog of the holdings of their member libraries that are not affiliated with one of the existing automated networks. This catalog will be used to identify and support the sharing of library resources between libraries in MassCat and libraries statewide, as part of the Virtual Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. Over seventy libraries have already been added to MassCat. This includes law libraries, schools, museums, and several hospital libraries: Cape Cod Hospital, South Shore Hospital, St. Luke’s Hospital, Berkshire Medical Center, Holyoke Hospital, and Mercy Medical Center. Additional libraries are adding their holdings each month. MassCat members will have access to various services including public access catalog; bibliographic records; cataloging and conversion; and interlibrary loan. Member libraries must commit to add their new acquisitions to MassCat. They may, but are not required to, add their retrospective holdings. Members are also expected to keep holdings information current and to delete withdrawn holdings on a regular basis. Libraries must be members of a Massachusetts Regional Library System in order to become a member of MassCat. For more information on how your hospital library can join MassCat contact your Regional Library System office or Nora Blake, Manager of MassCat at 866/MASSCAT or nblake@masscat.org

BETH ISRAEL HOSPITAL IN THE NEWS Margo Coletti Director, Medical Libraries Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center On August 23rd, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was the site of a workshop sponsored by the Biological and Medical Sciences Libraries and the Libraries Serving Disadvantaged Persons sections of IFLA. The workshop was entitled "Consumer Health Information - A Comprehensive Web-based Resource and a Consumer Health Center." Participating in the two-part workshop were approximately 35 international IFLA delegates. Erica Burnham from the NLM and Javier Crespo from NNLM/NER demonstrated MEDLINE Plus in a conference room on the 10th floor of the Shapiro Conference Center which offered a stunning view of Boston and Cambridge. In between sessions, Len Levin, library director from New England Baptist Hospital, gave a "sightseeing tour" of the skyline that was as popular as the workshop.

The second part of the workshop took place in the Beth Israel Deaconess Learning Center where a tour and an informative talk on consumer health information delivery at BIDMC was delivered by Henrietta Green, MLS; Margo Coletti, MLS; Carolyn Wheaton, RN; and Patricia Folcarelli, RN. As an adjunct to the workshop, Dan Boutchie from Ebsco Information Services was set up in the Learning Center conference room to demonstrate Ebsco’s fulltext consumer health product, Health Source. The entire workshop was deemed a success - and a learning experience - by both its participants and its organizers. In the countries of some of the foreign visitors the concepts of freely-offered health information and patient empowerment are very unpopular. They told the Learning Center staff that recreational fiction was the only literature available to inpatients at their own hospitals, and they were impressed that our physicians would "allow" patients to participate in health care decision-making at all, much less from an educated point of view.

SPECIAL HEALTH LIBRARY COALITION

Submitted by Peter Droese

Division of Medical Assistance

The Special health library Coalition (SHLC) is a group of information specialist and librarians who have a focus area on health and human services. The organization was formed to improve the sharing of information among resource centers and libraries that provide health information tot he community. The organization offers/ produces a directory of member libraries, education programs and networking opportunities. Last years educational program focused on finding information in languages other than English. Each month the steering committee meets and the next meeting is October 24th from 10 - 12 at the Mass. Prevention Center in Dorchester. If you are interested attending or finding out more about the organization please contact Susan Wilson at the Massachusetts Prevention Center at 617-423-4337 or via email at Swilson@tmfnet.org.

ARCHIVES NEWS

MAHSLIN archives are now resident at the Health Sciences Library at Tufts University School of Medicine.

PEOPLE AND PLACES

Elizabeth K. Eaton, Ph.D., will be leaving Tufts as of October 5, 2001. Elizabeth has accepted the position of Executive Director, Houston Academy of Medicine, Texas Medical Center (TMC), Jesse Jones Library in Houston, Texas. The Library serves the 42 institutions at TMC, also is the Regional Medical Library for the South Central Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine program and is a member of the Texas Health Science Libraries Consortium.

Elizabeth became Director of the Tufts Library in 1982. She was instrumental in designing and modernizing the new library on floors 4-7 in the Sackler Building; the library formally opened in 1986. Under Elizabeth’s leadership, the library has become an important part of the integrated, university-wide system; the "print collection" has been augmented by a 21st century " electronic collection" (e.g. at present, over 2,000 full-text journals are accessible on-line); information technology has been integrated into the education, research and patient care mission of the schools and hospitals; and she has established the library as the centerpiece of the schools’ educational programs.

Elizabeth also has served as a faculty facilitator in the TUSM Problem Based Learning Program and has published and presented several papers on this topic and was the Course Director for New Technologies in the Tufts/Emerson Health Communications Program. In 1993, as co-PI on the Tufts Health Campus National Library of Medicine’s IAIMS planning grant, she helped lead a strategic planning effort. The resultant plan led to the development of the Health Sciences Database (HSDB), a curriculum management database base for the Tufts University health sciences schools. In February 2001, the HSDB received a CIO Enterprise Value Award. Tufts University was the first academic institution to receive this award.

Barbara M. Wroblewski, RN, MSN, MLIS was awarded a Mary S. Fay Nursing Enrichment Fellowship in May that included attendance at the MLA in Orlando. Her proposal, "Information Literacy for Nurses", includes a survey of the nursing staff at Brigham & Women’s Hospital where Barbara is a staff nurse in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit - 7C. The survey results will help assess the nurses’ comfort with and use of current computer resources in their daily practice. The goals of this project are to create a user guide for the nursing resources available at the hospital, enhance those resources as needed, and develop an educational program to optimize the nurses’ use of these resources.

Alex Amamchukwu is the new contact person at the Medical Library, Brigham & Women’s Hospital. All inquiries about The Medical library should be directed to his attention. His e-mail address is aamamchukwu@partners.org.

Judith A. Sacknoff, formerly Director of the Medical Library at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is now working in the Waltham Public Schools as a school library media specialist at Bright Elementary School grades K-5.

Kate Kelly has left her position at Treadwell Library, MGH, to become Head of Information Services at the Health Sciences Library at Tufts.

Howard Silver is now at MIT.

Change of email address: Barbara Pastan is now at the Faulkner Hospital. She can be reached at: bpastan@faulknerhospital.org