Fran E. Kovach, MLIS, AHIP
Reference & Education Librarian
Medical Library
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
Springfield, IL

The ILLINOIS RURAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION 23RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE, “Building a Sustainable Future”, was held April 24-26, 2012, at the Keller Convention Center in Effingham, Illinois. In rural Illinois, many different mobile devices including iPhones, Androids, BlackBerries, and iPads are the new stethoscopes. Exhibitor immersion in the conference sessions led to discussions of the use of the National Library of Medicine mobile apps and mobile sites in rural communities.  TOXNET, Medline Plus Farm Health and Safety, and Wiser NIH all received high praises from the HazMat teams.

Through a NN/LM GMR exhibit award, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine Library displayed the new NLM exhibit banner, provided NLM pamphlets, gave out the afghan of “The Curious Herbal” as a booth prize, and offered demonstrations on the iPad of the various NLM mobile sites and apps, including Wiser. After seeing the Wiser demo, a family physician immediately downloaded it onto his iPad. Exhibiting and participating in the annual Illinois Rural Health Association meeting continues to be a worthwhile and rewarding experience.

Healthy People 2020 provides tools for working in the community. MAP-IT, which stands for Mobilize, Assess, Plan, Implement, Track, is a five-stage framework that can be used to plan and evaluate public health interventions to achieve Healthy People 2020 objectives. MAP-IT pages include Planning and Funding resources to help get you on your way. MAP-IT badges may also be inserted in a blog or web page as a link to these resources. Just copy the provided code and insert in your site: http://healthypeople.gov/2020/connect/webBadge.aspx

Healthy People is based on a simple but powerful model:

• Establish national health objectives.
• Provide data and tools to enable States, cities, communities, and individuals across the country to combine their efforts to achieve them.
• Create and implement a plan to reach Healthy People 2020 objectives.
• Track your community’s progress.

The IOM Roundtable on Health Literacy has made available a paper describing the ten attributes of a health literate organization, that is, “an organization that makes it easier for people to navigate, understand, and use information and services to take care of their health”: http://iom.edu/Global/Perspectives/2012/Attributes.aspx

The slide set is available for viewing and download: Attributes of a Health Literate Organization.ppt

By Valerie L Reid
Henry Ford Hospital
Sladen Library & Center for Health Information Resources
Detroit, MI

Please join the Michigan Health Sciences Libraries Association on October 17-19, 2012, at the Baronette Renaissance Hotel, Novi MI, for the following exciting activities:

• 3 days of CE opportunities
• Fine dining and conversation at the Tin Fish (Special Event)
• Poster presentations
• Interaction with vendors
• Opening Night Reception at the Baronette Renaissance Hotel
• Networking
• FUN! FUN! FUN!

Printable invitation can be found at the conference website:
http://www.mdmlg.org/MHSLA2012

Video invitation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CDU_lDUcks

Congratulations to the following sites receiving GMR funding for the
Wednesday, April 18, 2012, MLA Webcast:
Leveraging Mobile Technologies for Health Sciences Libraries

For information on the webcast and a list of additional sites, visit: http://www.mlanet.org/education/distance_ed/techtrends/

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Is it my imagination, or is March actually the busiest month of the year?  What other month offers budget requests, mid-term exams, spring break, theater and ballet subscription renewals, preparation of income taxes, and even “March Madness” in addition to all other routine tasks and strategic priorities that we work at?

It is tempting, with all these to-dos on an ever-growing list, to just go with the flow and take care of tasks as they pass by.  Unfortunately, that approach, while practical, expeditious, and less stressful, also reduces the return on investment of our leadership role, administrative decisions, and work productivity.

Instead of working on the surface level of moment-by-moment news, daily listerv postings, weekly meeting agendas, monthly report-outs, or annual data gathering, we must put our strategic priorities first. Those other duties provide us with useful content, yield foundational decisions, and assure that our units are responsible organizational citizens, all good outcomes to achieve. But they don’t always help us to collaborate, integrate, and innovate, each of which is essential to the future viability of our organizations.

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Did you know that the PubMed Basics trifold brochures are now available in FIVE languages?

• PubMed Basics (English)
• PubMed (French)
• PubMed Basico (Portuguese)
• PubMed Basico (Spanish)
• PubMed 简介 (Simplified Mandarin Chinese)

All but the French version are translations of the English PubMed Basics. The PubMed My NCBI brochure is available in English and Spanish translations. If you know of other versions, please let me know.

Visit http://nnlm.gov/training/resources/intlpubmedlinks.html for these and other Non-English Guides to PubMed.

These brochures have also been added to the MLA Clearhinghouse at http://cech.mlanet.org/.

By Jessica Page
Assistant Professor and Head
Veterinary Medicine Library
Ohio State University

The Midwest Veterinary Conference, hosted by the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association, draws over 5000 veterinarians, technicians and others from Ohio and neighboring states. I often field calls from practicing veterinarians and alumni of OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine regarding how they can access the veterinary literature. Exhibiting at the 2012 MVC seemed like a good opportunity to reach these veterinarians on their own turf to let them know about some of the resources available to them.

The practicing veterinarians who visited our booth had varying degrees of familiarity with PubMed. Some were completely unaware that a free resource for searching the medical literature was available to them, and were eager to have a more targeted search tool than Google. Others who already used PubMed were happy to gain demonstrated and written tips on effectively searching the veterinary literature. Most veterinarians we spoke with were unaware, and pleased to learn, that they were eligible for library cards from the State Library of Ohio, which would give them convenient access to materials from the OSU Libraries and those of other OhioLINK member institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

The GMR is offering to sponsor a number of sites for the upcoming MLA Webcast: Leveraging Mobile Technologies for Health Sciences Libraries to be held on Wednesday, April 18, 2012, from 1:00 p.m.–2:30 p.m., CT.

Visit:  http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/mlawebcast/ for detailed information on how to become a sponsored site.

The GMR will cover the registration costs for up to two (2) sites per state in the region for this webcast. Because of the limited number of sites we can sponsor, we encourage you to work with your state and local librarian groups to identify centralized locations. Sites will be selected based on geographical location, accessibility, and potential number of attendees.

The deadline to email/fax your registration and email supporting information to the GMR is NOON, Friday, March 23, 2012.

Contact Holly Burt at the GMR, if you have any questions.
For more information on this webcast, visit:  http://www.mlanet.org/education/distance_ed/techtrends/

This week, the NLM’s Technical Bulletin had an item about mobile TOXNET access.  For those of you who are not familiar with TOXNET, it is a set of databases on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health and toxic releases.  It falls under a larger group of database and services available from the NLM – the Specialized Information Services, or as they are more commonly known, SIS.

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