ConnectMidwest

What do you think of all the 2.0 coverage of the 2009 Midwest Chapter/MLA Conference? Did you enjoy following conference happenings in the Twitter widget webmaster Allan added to this blog for the conference? Have you looked at all those photos of the conference over there on the Flickr badge? As I write this there are 424 photos tagged midwestmla09! So much photo fun! It looks like everyone enjoyed the conference events and were able to do some touring around town as well.

ConnectMidwest coverage of the conference was ably coordinated by our newsletter editor Jason. He even created an online tutorial to show our conference bloggers how to post to Movable Type. Thank you so much Midwest Chapter bloggers for sharing your experience of this year's conference!

One of the conference GMR Technology Forum presenters, Krafty Librarian Michelle Kraft, blogged about the conference as well. Most notably she shared much of the information from her part of the panel discussion. She posted her slides on SlideShare as did fellow Tech Forum panelist Eric Schnell. Michelle also recorded and posted video of the conference poster session.

And lastly, the conference Program Committee has posted the presentation slides from all of Sunday's Contributed Papers on the conference website here.

The most exciting part of the annual Midwest Chapter business meeting is, of course, the announcement our annual award winners by Sheryl Stevens, chair of the Awards and Scholarships Committee.

The 2009 Jean Williams Sayre Innovation Award was awarded to our conference city's own Prior Health Sciences Library Center for Knowledge Management for their development of an Internet-based continuing medical education portal. The $500 award was accepted on behalf of the team by Pam Bradigan, the library's director. Congratulations!

The biggest suspense is reserved for the announcement of the Distinguished Librarian of the Year Award. Last year's winner Logan Ludwig dramatically introduced this year's winner. About halfway through his reading of the exerpts from the nomination letters, I realized who the winner was and started watching her reaction. And what a joy it was to see her totally surprised to hear her name announced for this, the chapter's highest honor! Congratulations to Mary Markland, 2009 Distinguished Librarian of the Year!

After receiving her well-deserved award, Mary, in her role as chair of the Nominations and Elections Committee, reviewed the results of this year's election of officers:

President-Elect: Clare Leibfarth
Treasurer: Sue London
Chapter Council Representative: Bette Sydelko
Recording Secretary: Charniel McDaniels
Chapter Council Alternate Representative: Pam Rees
Potential Candidate for Membership on the MLA Nominating Committee: Melinda Orebaugh

The new Executive Board members took office at the end of the business meeting with the "transfer of the gavel" from Deborah Lauseng to incoming president Elaine Skopelja. Your intrepid blog editor is looking forward to serving the members of the Midwest Chapter for the next three years as part of the fantastic Executive Board team!

These are from a first-timer, and I like linking: this is my disclaimer.

• Clifford Stoll is an incredible speaker and story teller with a whole lot of energy.  These traits make for an excellent keynote, and (jumping from one session to another, in this case, the administration panel) also a librarian who is good at talking to leadership.
  • Here is the inscription from the Hayes Tower bell: "All truth is one. In this light may science and religion labor here together for the steady evolution of mankind from darkness to light; from prejudice to tolerance; from narrowness to broadmindedness."
  • If you ever get a chance to hear Cliff, and you weren't at this meeting, ask him about that inscription.  I loved its meaning, and wanted to share it after looking it up. 
  • Klein bottles!
• This was my first chapter-type meeting, and I much appreciated the number of group sessions!  It was tough to decide which 5/15 papers I was going to go see.  Are the presentations going to be posted somewhere? 
  
  • The Vital Pathways project looking into the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) standards is fascinating, if disappointing.  The current standard for residency programs simply states "ready access" to library without any mention of librarians!  But at least MLA/ACGME are now in conversation, and this is only the beginning.  Education standards for allied health, etc. should also be identified.
  • The University of Michigan group had an excellent survey presentation (2nd one down).  Interesting numbers generate lots of audience response!  Do your users know how to search Google Scholar so that they can get access through your link resolver?  And do you know what an H-index is?
  • Library collaboration with a new department can have major benefits for both groups.  The example in this paper was collaboration with the Research Division, and began when the division approached the library about licensing a tool.  Take advantage of those rare times someone comes to you!  Now the library has several new avenues of promotion (including faculty orientations to the division) and the division's Tech Commercialization department no longer pays lawyers to find patent articles!  The author also noted that sponsorship matters: classes by "the Library" may not get as big an audience as classes by the "Research Division." 
  • I'm biased because this (I'm going to say it) Totally Awesome presentation was done by a co-worker: using web-conferencing software in new ways.  In this case, there was an institutional subscription to Adobe Connect, but the ability to capture simple presentations to post as online tutorials or to use conferencing software to see a patron's screen while they're at home in order to help them can be done through several programs.  And the point was that you may have some great little tool that can be used for so much more than its stated function! 
  • The evidence-based nursing practice presentation has already been described on this blog, so I'll just add that I was excited to get a little of the nursing perspective and vocabulary having just taken the EBHC CE course from one that was more clinical!
• I have several pages of notes from the final two panels, but they're on my laptop.  :)  Fortunately, someone already posted information on the Scholarly Communication one.  I'll just mention that I thought it was an excellant example of two presenters tag-teaming and giving the audience a great overview of the issues at hand.  This was close to my heart since I was physically at NLM when the mandated NIH Policy began, and I'm really excited to see the directions OA is going!  The tech panel, as the last thing, is the most recently (and maybe the most prolificly) twittered #midwestmla09 topic, so check the tweets out while you can!  Maybe someone can capture all of those?  Maybe that'll be my next post.

The day after I got back from the conference I'm still kind of reeling from all the wonderful people I met (both new friends and those I only previously knew at a distance!) and from all the wonderful content.  And so much has been captured online, through this blog, twitter, and the Flickr pool!  Be sure to check it all out.  I'm so glad I got to have this experience, and I'm counting down already until Midwest MLA 2010!  Now time to find some committees...

This is mainly a chronology of the course, with a few statements from the content and my personal impressions.

Pretest-Things to think about: What do you already know? "Baseline" to compare what you know after the class. This is a very helpful feature for self-assessment. I think all courses should provide a simple pre and post test so that participants can more objectively evaluate what they have gained from a course.

Search engine versus directories - Search engine is not human powered (algorithm); you hit a limit where you can't go any further in terms of the pages of results.

Directories-for the most part human powered; most feature breadcrumbs.

Examples: dmoz -open directory project. 84,000 editors (only 4 million sites as opposed to billions), Librarians' Index to the Internet.

Google and Yahoo directories are at least 75% human powered.

Mamma- metasearch engine - shows where search results came from.

Exercise 1- Evaluation (sites other than Google)- Can you tell where the information is coming from? How clear are your search results?

Exercise 2: Advanced searching techniques (either menu or search string) of Yahoo and Google

Exercise: 3: Clustering and Previewing Search Tools (bypassed during class). Try the links on your own:
http://delicious.com/gmrtechcoord/preview.search
http://delicious.com/gmrtechcoord/cluster.search

Exercise 4: Emerging Search Engines: Bing, Wolframalpha, Google Squared

Exercise 5: Specialized Search Tools

Exercise 6: Real Time Search (e.g. searching Twitter and Facebook)

My impressions of the course are as follows:

• I don't think it was necessary to have an classroom exercise for using the advanced search features of Google and Yahoo because information about these functions is readily accessible through the Yahoo Help file, the Google Cheat Sheet, and the Google Quick Reference.

• I still learned new things from the course. I found the exercises where we compared non-Google sites (particularly the "emerging" search engines) to be the most useful.

• Max is an effective instructor who is always very responsive to questions.

• Overall, I found the course to be worthwhile.

• I think that for future iterations of this course, the NN/LM course developer(s) should focus more of the course content on the emerging search tools. I think participants are generally either less likely to be aware of those tools, or are are at least less likely to have used them on a daily basis.




Tags:

• Super Searcher
• basic overview
• internet
• web searching

*Posted on behalf of Elizabeth Smigielski, Recording Secretary*

The board met on Friday evening, the 2nd, for a five-hour meeting. The meeting was well attended with about 15 people present. Throughout the meeting we were joined by Allan Barclay, our Chapter webmaster, via DimDim, virtual meeting software. Allan listened to the meeting over the phone and we could see him through web streaming. Using DimDim was an experiment to test the feasibility of having a future virtual meeting. The MLA Executive Board has been successfully holding virtual meetings during the last year. Incoming Chapter President Elaine Skopelja will be scheduling a two-hour virtual board meeting in January or February as a trial. We will still have a traditional face-to-face spring meeting in 2010. The intention is, assuming the trial January/February meeting works, that we may shift from the traditional all-day face-to-face spring board meeting and instead have smaller monthly or bi-monthly virtual meetings. Many thanks to Karen Anderson, Allan Barclay, and Brian Finnegan from the Communications Committee for their work in bringing virtual meeting technology to the Chapter.

**Note from the blogger known as Jean--My computer decided to die during the last 30 minutes of this presentation, so I apologize for not being able to provide more detailed notes for the last portion**

Scholarly Communication 101

A standard definition of scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use.

More simply, an author submits an article that is reviewed by the publisher, who makes it available to libraries for a certain cost, which is then obtained by users. Unfortunately, with this model, users are purchasing content that they possibly created or content that they supported.

Author → Publisher → Libraries = Users

Naturally, there are several obvious issues with this model

Economics of Publishing - the major issues

1. Extraordinary price increases (average 8%)
Sadly, there seems to be no correlation between price and quality. This is especially problematic in our current economy where we are already operating with reduced budgets.

2. Mergers and acquisitions

3. Bundled content, which is efficient and helps limit inflation
While bundled content allows libraries to have access to more resources, the disadvantage is that there is a loss of control over the selection. It is not uncommon to have access to a bundle that has one useful resource and 3 not-as-useful resources

4.Volume of information

-----

Publishers have the ability to price for profit, and this problem has seriously hurt the libraries buying power. Within this model, the traditional system is unsustainable and scholars are losing access. So, who holds the power in this system and who can help change it?

Faculty, researchers (authors)
Publishers
Librarians, library organizations
Congress, federal government

While having someone who can help impede changes, there is still more that an individual or a library can do to help promote these changes

Change strategies
-Editorial board control
-Declaring Independence
-Collective buying
-Open Access
-National policy advocacy

It's not far-fetched to believe in force by numbers as a strategic change. For libraries, the larger the group, the greater chance we can discuss and negotiate with publishers.

------

What is open access? (most promising strategy to date) It’s free, unrestricted access to research literature and few restrictions on subsequent use. There are two kinds of open access, Open Access Journals (Gold Road) and Author Self-Archiving/Open archiving (Green Road)

1. Open access journals - gold road
-These journals are fully peer reviewed
-Full research content openly available on the web (online only has an inherently lower production cost)
-Publication costs covered prior to publication
-Lower cost structure

Open access - an access model
Business models vary
-Author fees, from research grants
-Subscriptions to non-research content
-Advertising
-Institutional memberships
-Institutional support, subsidies
-Related products and services
-Endowment

Example: Journal of Medical Internet Research, fully accessible online but charge for downloads of the pdf

Some examples of Open Access Publishers include:
Public Library of Science
BioMed Central
Hindawi Publishing
Directory of Open Access Journals
Total number of journals published is 22,000-25,000—so, 15-20% of all journals are open access on DOAJ

2. Author self-archiving/Open archiving - Green Road
Characteristics include:
-Make scholars preprints universally available to all
-Author deposits article in an openly accessible repository
-Disciplinary or institutional repository
-Preprint, post-print, final published version
-Must have appropriate rights

Copyright and Authors Rights

Scholars lose some or all rights for their own works in publishing agreements. To better understand this, one must understand what copyright entails

Copyrights rights include the ability to:
1. Reproduce the work
2. Prepare derivative works
3. Distribute copes
4. Perform publicaly
5. Display publicly

Remember, authors own their copyright to their journal articles and books, however one must be careful not to sign away their right

So why retain rights?
-share research widely
-Author will increase readership and citations
-Remove barriers to reuse and sharing
-Must retain rights to self archive

Retaining rights can affect the balance of power between publishers and authors. As librarians, we naturally want the shift of power in our favor

What rights to retain?
-Use own work in teaching & scholarship
-Distribute to students, colleagues
-Use for presentations, later publications
-Authorize non-commercial uses of work
-Deposit in open online archive or website

And while we may not want to admit this, publishers need some rights too
-A non-exclusive right to publish and distribute a work and receive a financial return
-Proper attribution and citation as journal of first publication
-Right to migrate the work to future formats

How to retain rights?
-An author can negotiate rights transfer with the publisher
-Read and edit the publishing agreement
-Apply an author’s addendum
-Use a Creative Commons license
--provides authors to essentially make their own license
Check Publishers Policies

And, ff the publisher will not negotiate to authors satisfaction:
-Consider publishing the work elsewhere
-Consider publishing the work in an open access journal
-Publish the work as planned with the original publisher.

**Unfortunately, I missed the next part concerning NIH Policy, so hopefully another person can fill in the last segment**

Panelists: Catherine Arnott Smith (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Michelle Kraft (Cleveland Clinic), Eric Schnell (Ohio State University)

This conference was my first attempt at blogging "on the fly" and the attempt taught me that I cannot successfully blog "on the fly". In short, I missed some of the content and context, particularly in Catherine's presentation.

I was very pleased with this Technology Forum. It provided practical and relevant examples of how social networking and mobile technologies are (or might be) applied. Perhaps most importantly, it kept its audience in mind. That is, all 3 of the panelists recognized that the attendees were information professionals who already have at least some awareness on these topics. I was grateful that Michelle and Eric did not waste time defining what social networking and mobile technologies are. They went immediately to issues of why they are relevant and questions of if and/or how they might be applied.

Catherine did spend a brief moment defining PHRs because of some of the ambiguities inherent in the term. Therefore, it made sense, but she still recognized that she was speaking to people who are aware of consumer health information sources.

(Fortunately, Michelle and Eric also posted their slides on slideshare.net, so I don't feel I have to try to describe their content from my sketchy notes).

Introductions by Max Anderson, GMR Technology Coordinator

Michelle's slides speak for themselves and include examples of libraries that are using social networking technologies.

Should your library use social networking? You should have clear objectives if you decide to use it. Don't just do it because everyone else is doing it.

Eric:

Should medical libraries go mobile?
It depends:
--What are your objectives/goals?
--Do you have adequate staffing for these services?
--How often will you update? Does that schedule match your goals?
--Does the objective match the medium?
--Will your users use it?
--What are your institutional policies?

Catherine:

Personal Health Records, Public Libraries-Early Data from a Study

--HIMSS 2nd quarter of 2009 - only .3% of nonfederal medical records were "truly paperless"
--18% of independent physician practices
--focused around payer, provider, not consumer

Personal Health Record:

The oldest form is the patient-held record, meaning the patient is in control of it.
The earliest is the baby book (early 20th century)

Other forms:
Family Medical Books
Medic Alert
Barcoded Insurance Cards
Compact Cards
Passports
Folders
(These may or may not contain patient added information).

The definition of the term Personal Health Record is unclear.
Basically, it is an application "to help a person gather, store, manage, and share data".

Take Home Point: PHRs are not and never will be the official medical record.

Some insurers have created tools that give the illusion they are the official electronic health record, e.g. test results are tethered to the record

There is a stone wall for quality control desired to prevent muddying official record.

Enables consumer contributions to the official record.
The consumer has control of who has access in time of need.
Patient-held connotes the idea of being "given"; the personal health record is different.

www.myphr.com

National use very low: 1% of adults used online - mostly provider sponsored
Evidence of efficiency is limited. Research is currently limited to:
--Markle Foundation
--Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Insurers and Payers:
www.projecthealthdesign.org/home - first phase of funded projects

--Patients Like Me
--WebMED
--Google Health create profiles, diagnoses, lab results (Google Health partner - you can import copies of the official medical record if affiliated with a partner) for you or anyone you are given permission to act for the person.

Microsoft-environment in which PHR can happen [context missing].

healthmanager.mayoclinic.com- has interesting applications and resources to put it in context.

Google Health-You can print off a physical copy.

MyHealthEVet - Now free to all US citizens-labs, immunizations, medical events, family health history, activity journal, nutrition, etc.

The Challenge:
The 3rd most popular place for vets to access their PHR is the public library (following home and work).

VA in Madison getting calls from public libraries for vets who need help.

36 libraries statewide
100 individual workers in Wisconsin
Cities 150,00 popularion and up and villages less than 1000

2 of 3 open tribal libraries
Study funded by Specialized Ingo Services@NLM

Emerging Themes in the Study:
--How awful my collection is
--Body blocking-I can't be answering any medical questions. So, where do you refer?

Aware of MEDLINEplus:

professionals-37%
paraprofessionals-19%
Confused with MEDLINE -4 professional, 4 paraprofessional (8%)

Aware of NLM:

[I missed some of the additional numbers in context here]
Professionals-36%
Paraprofessionals- 17%

Aware of NN/LM:
Professionals - 10%
Paraprofessionals - 3%

Top referrals by paraprofessionals:

--website
--people in library
--hospital library
[more-didn't get the entire list]

Top referrals by professionals:
--health care provider
--university medical center library
--hospital library
--local clinic or hospital
--ask a nurse telephone service

Early conclusions:

--Library school teaches you about libraries.
--Privacy is a huge issue re: PHRs.
--General unawareness that medical librarians exist; major consciousness-raising is necessary.

Catherine gratefully acknowledged the NLM (correct?) for funding this research.

She challenged the audience to help her come up with a way to educate people- and give their thoughts about how we can improve these numbers.

Q & A for all 3 panelists:

Q: Do you see Facebook pages and Twitter or any other 2.0 technologies replacing libraries web pages?

A: Not replacing, but work with it a little more seamlessly--not enough customization, need tp work together with RSS feeds and have the SAME info across all 3 websites, but not replacing a regular web site.

Comments: During the NLM update we heard about the Google web search box and that people are confused about MedlinePlus.

Yes, MEDLINEplus is a very confusing name; everyone knows about WebMD because they advertise during the SuperBowl.

Reference librarians in public libraries have a fear of answering medical questions because it is a more sensitive area. They are afraid of giving out too much information or helping someone from a human perspective. We need more outreach to public libraries. We have several large hospitals and we don't hear from any of those in public libraries, either due to training or something else. It's not that there is no desire to help, but just the nature of the sensitivity and dealing with their care, fears of liability, so more outreach would be helpful.

[For Eric] Q: What kind of knowledge is required to make your web page mobile and is ILLiad mobile for these kinds of requests?

A: I don't know about ILLiad, but a web page with a lot of images and text won't work. It looks nasty. You need codes to strip off the extra information; most mobile can't use Flash, which generally requires a separate site or new style sheet for database driven sites or specifically for a mobile version.

[For Catherine] Q: Do you have any idea if public libraries were giving web sites as answers to ref questions that were asked?
A: At minimum, they were pointing people to a shelf. Answers included "the web" or "I just Google" -- not necessarily what we would consider good quality sites.

Comments/Answers--Eric:

Other countries are ahead of U.S. in terms of mobile technologies. The U.S. is18 months to 2 years behind the rest of the world. Other countries use GSM, so they are ahead of the game.

Michelle:

Facebook Pages can allow comments or to push out information. It depends on how the library has it set up.

Q: Re: the Personal health record- how do you access this? Is it intended to eventually act as a medical alert or act as a short medical history?

A: A lot have a medications area where you can record alternative, prescriptions, and OTC and print to show to physician. Most users get an access code through their insurer.

The VA and Google allow you to set your own password. The question is how much and who will know the information/if you forget your password. It could be used for caregiving of chronically ill adolescents or elderly parents; you could give control to family members. The issue is that they are self-reporting how they are doing.

End of Q & A

Max closed by reminding attendees of the GMR Technology Improvement Award.

Authors: Margaret (Peg) Allen, Joy Kennedy, Pamela Sherwill Navarro, Paul Blobaum.
Presenter: Paul Blobaum
Power Point of this presentation

Paul started by defining EBP and explained that EBP becomes a journey to identify, evaluate, and apply the best evidence to practice.

One of the first slides was a synopsis of medical versus nursing concerns for fractured hip (presentation slides will be available later) to illustrate that the focus of nurses is different from that of physicians with regard to EBP.

Why look at the librarian role? Barriers to research utilization (both individual and organizational) include:

• Lack of time
• Little experience
• Limited ability to understand and interpret research ...and the list goes on.

Survey objectives:

• Effect of EBP on librarians' roles
  
• Changes since 2005 survey
  
• Effect of Magnet status on EBP
  
• Explore librarians' experiences with accreditation

  Survey monkey survey via electronic lists, such as NAHRS, MEDLIB-L.

  Setting: primarily hospitals and health systems

  In 2005, 135 surveys were submitted. In 2008, 361 were submitted, but more were incomplete than 2005, probably due to the longer length of the 2008 survey.

  361 respondents answered the question about barriers to EBP. Out of these responses, 281 cited nurses' lack of time as the primary barrier to EBP. Lack of skills related to EBP was second, with 226 responses. Nurses' information literacy skills came in third as a barrier to EBP with 174 responses. Clinical attitudes and faculty attitudes rounded out the top five.

  Paul noted that being an academic librarian himself, he suspects that curriculum focus, even though it only had 41 responses, is probably the major barrier to incorporating or teaching EBP for academic librarians, but it likely came out relatively low on the survey due to the high percentage of hospital librarian respondents. Faculty are often unwilling to relinquish time to a librarian. (I tend to interpret this point as indicating a potential lack of coherence or consistency throughout the nursing curriculum with regard to incorporating EBP)..

  Regarding evidence based practice in academic settings, in 2005, there were 82 responses (this also includes community colleges and technical schools) related to EBP in curriculum, librarians' teaching role.

  The portion on EBP in hospitals/health systems included the following comments:

  "Nurses are encouraged to follow up on questions that come up in practice, look up the information in the library, and share it with other staff.

  "The hospital administration expects policies and decisions to be based on evidence and the library is often asked to provide help with this."

  Evolving Librarian Roles

  206 hospital libraries responded to the 2008 survey and generally reported increased involvement due to Magnet. Increased online resources or the need for increased online resources was also reported.

  For academic librarians, improving information literacy was the number one role.

  "Helping nurses helps the library and the hospitals efforts to recruit and retain the best nurses."

  In summary, ANCC Magnet recognition helped establish the value of evidence based nursing practice. Nursing education is increasing emphasis on EBP, but current staff and/or faculty lack the skills needed for EBP.

  191 Magnet coordinators responded to a 2007 NAHRS survey (76% of 251 ANCC Magnet hospitals
  
  Library role in the Magnet visit: 30% visited library, 23% conference presence, 13% asked nurses, 34% none.

  Conclusions:
  

  • Huge increase in librarian responses, part hospital librarians.
    
  • More librarians are working in EBNP, but many are still "missing the boat" (haven't been asked to be involved or haven't asked).
    
  • New roles for librarians are emerging (committee work, assist with scholarly publishing process, citation styles and managing bibliographies)
    
  • EBNP requires more than information literacy skills
    
  • Desire for Magnet recognition is not the only motivator in hospitals interest in EBNP
    
  • Opportunities for academic and hospital librarians to collaborate

    Peg Allen commented at the end, really making a point to emphasize the importance of collaboration, and more specifically partnership, not only in the Magnet program but in academia. As was emphasized earlier in the "What Administrators Want from Libraries" Panel; there are "cross-walks" between academia and Magnet and Peg emphasized that she has been long time proponent of these partnerships. For instance, many small hospitals partner with nursing schools.

    Peg insisted that we will require more collaboration, research-sharing, joint appointments, collection development in this climate of budget cuts. If we don't, we won't survive.

    This research has been published in JMLA, but they are also looking at publishing it in the nursing literature, in a journal such as JONA. There is a need to go outside the library literature for such a critical issue.

    Useful sites:
    http://nahrs.mlanet.org/index.html
    http://sites.google.com/site/nahrsnursingresources
    http://sites.google.com/site/nahrsnursingresources/inane (NAHRS/INANE survey of publishing opportunities in nursing journals)

    Tags:

    • contributed papers
    • evidence based practice
    • midwestmla09
    • nursing

Authors: Chris Childs, Linda Walton, and Pam Rees
Presenter: Chris Childs

University of Iowa, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences

One of 10 critical access rural Hospitals the University works with (Murango) was interested in biomedical, nursing lit, EBP: Cochrane, CINAHL, PubMed.

Except for PubMed, it was not possible to provide this kind of access to databases due to licensing restrictions.

Through the interlibrary loan department, they were offered free access to Loansome Doc ordered through Hardin Library at no cost to them.

There are also services they can access through the state library.

Chris created a resource guide to these sources, a reference point through the 10 clinics to indicate what resources are available at Hardin and the state library.

The liaison to the 10 clinics talked with all the nursing directors from the 10 clinics via conference call; 9 of the 10 contacted the Hardin Library again within a month.

For one clinic in Pella, Chris did 8 half hour presentations back to back -- and he learned to never do it that way again. It just wasn't effective for him or the participants.

These hospital staff members access PubMed and use Loansome Doc to access what they can't get electronically.

The resource guide includes information on how to get a state library card, as well as information on PubMed and MedlinePlus. Even though they are free, he put them under Hardin Library since getting free Loansome Doc through Hardin Library.

In these sessions, Chris also talked about the Iowa Go Local Project. The databases covered were a mixture of clinical and consumer health.

Transactions resulting from this outreach project (so far):

--8 people --53 articles requested since August

--He added an Evidence Based Medicine tab in the existing libguide in response to questions--requests for EBP and refreshers of what he discussed.

--Showed MedlinePlus (including its multiple language resource) and state library resources. This took an hour.

They asked him to come back to present more about PubMed and CINAHL.

Another potential option for this kind of situation is group licensing for small hospitals. The academic library gets the contract on behalf of the hospital and the hospital pays.

(One attendee mentioned that in Indiana, EBSCO and Elsevier have been willing to do packages for similar situations).

Presenter: Emily Cullen, MLIS, Galen College of Nursing, Cincinnati
Power Point of this presentation

Premise:Tendencies of millennial librarians might actually give them a competitive edge in the library job market.

Millennial attributes:

--born 1980-2000
--Generation Y Nexter

Stereotypes:

--technology
--multitasking (sometimes to a fault)
--career development/attaining skills
--working as a group
--asking questions; thriving on feedback

Job Market

2006 study: 90% of academic library jobs required a technical skill; 80% required strong communication skills.

Other skills:

--project management
--problem solving

1983 to 2003: 30 % computer skills (was previously mainly database searching; now, it is network security, web development, programming languages). Skill sets of libraries change as technology changes.

Downsizing:
Budget cuts lead to combining job descriptions (including things outside the "library" realm)

Millennials are beginning professional careers.

Term can have a negative connotation, but some are transferrable skills:
--Training in technology skills
--Web development
--Network security
--Integrated Library Systems

Multitasking while using technology--Millennials are able to handle multiple tasks.

Communication skills that have been developed throughout school years:
--Work (and play) well in groups
--Thrive on asking questions, receiving feedback-also helps problem solving skills

Self-directed learners -68% of millennial managers

Job descriptions include:

Required:

--problem solving
--interpersonal skills
--complex and multitasking environments

Preferred:

--e-serials management
--integrated library system
--accounting background

Summary/Conclusions:

--Today's job market demands improved skill sets
--Millennials' knowledge prepares them for the job market

Presenters: Laura Davison & Mary Congleton, University of Kentucky Medical Center Library
Power Point of this presentation

I missed the first few minutes of this presentation, but these are the points I took away:

Potential costs to consider (can go higher or lower depending on what you select):
--Banner- $475
--panels-total $650
--header and 3 panels- $375
--lights, computer equipment, printing costs, giveaways

You can apply for a GMR Outreach Express Award to fund the display--even if your library is not an outreach library.

Promotional tricks: handouts and giveaways -- see GMR web site

Promotional materials order form--GMR will give you up to 250 total items

Handouts--good selection at the GMR site (PubMed brochures, NLM fact sheets, etc.)

Check out non-profit web sites: CDC, organizations, etc.

Target audience--"inreach" versus outreach

Message--use NLM's resources; your tax dollars at work

Dealing with difficult personalities--too many magicians can spoil your exhibit

Creative tricks:
-Booth placement (e.g. hallway -- to "snag" attention of passersby)
-Seasonal decorations or theme
-Use what you have

Preferred Academic Formats in an Academic Center

Ebook definitions have progressively changed with emerging technology. There is still no universal accepted definition, however there are similarities that exist within the myriad definitions. Many of these similarities focus on the types of ebook formats.

This study addresses the specific needs of the users and assist the health science libraries in the selection and delivery of the preferred format of the product. This study was broken into three formats; print, electronic, and PDA's. The types of books were generally focused on what was available, which were health-related textbooks that had images/graphs (some of the books used were Harrison’s Internal Medicine, Manual of Laboratory & Diagnostic Tests, and more that this blogger was unable to type fast enough)

The study started with an orientation, which included a pre-survey that was broken into age groups and PDA ownership prior to the study. A majority of the study participants fell between the 26-35 year range and most of those that had used PDAs were generally aware of the university’s ebook collection. However, only 9 out of the 16 used the ebook resources. Not surprisingly, most of the participants used the electronic resources within the academic atmosphere and within the hospital.

Ultimately, the results demonstrated that the university should continue to purchase web-based resources. Slides from the presentation will soon be posted

Preferred Academic Formats in an Academic Center

Knowing the resources and tools that patrons use is an important issue for any librarian that handles collection development. Not only does it determine what resources the library should offer, but also it creates an awareness as to whether the users understand the resources available.

This study used Survey Monkey to conduct and analyze the results. The survey consisted of 11 questions, cleverly had prize drawings as incentives to participate (the main luring device, because who can ignore a free prize), links were posted on the HSL home page, and the survey was promoted by liaisons to various departments.

An impressive 331 users completed the survey, graduate students and faculty occupied a majority of the respondents. So what did they learn?

The most popular way to access information was PubMed and Ovid. With Medline access, most patrons were familiar with PubMed and used both PubMed and Ovid. Surprisingly, specialty databases like PsychInfo did not have nearly as many users as expected.

While other databases were surveyed, they were not utilized nearly as much as PubMed/Ovid. Other databases included ISI, CSA, and Ebsco. It was mentioned that patrons were having trouble finding links to the less-used databases, which was noted as a future way to better promote the resources

And while the patrons used Google and Google Scholar, only a small portion use the full-text linking through Google Scholar.

The eventual application of these findings include instructional (departments and open classes through the library. This helps focusing their efforts to training—especially with the new PubMed interface), collection development, and reference (what, in addition to PubMed, would patrons use)

Information Needs and Behaviors of Young Breast Cancer Survivors.

Cancer is not a death sentence, but the term “survivor” can be misleading. Being a survivor may indicate that one is cancer free, however that does not include the risks for short-term and long-term quality of life issues. The goal of this study was to examine the information seeking needs and behaviors of young breast cancer survivors by determining whether these survivors have triggers that influence the desire to seek information

A good example of a trigger that influences that information seeking desire: if someone is very depressed, is she more likely to seek information?

Although this study didn't demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between information seeking needs with psychosocial variables, the focus of the study was on young breast cancer survivors that had been symptom free for several years. Not surprisingly, 58% of the participants did not know about Medline. Most of the group either used Google or go to their health care providers for information. This implies that librarians need to enforce information literacy to physicians—especially since most of these women did not use the library for help finding information.

Find, Retrieve, Analyze and Use: Information Literacy Trainings for the Public Health Workers

What is competency? Generally it is an applied set of skills and knowledge that allow people to perform specific work. So when it comes to emergency preparedness, naturally one would want these workers to have a high health competency level. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the case, thus there needs to be an effort for librarians to collaborate with health workers through training activities.

Training does not come through grants or contracts from CDC to local health departments. As a workforce development issue, the NLM recognize this and have provided resources for librarians, but not necessarily for public health workers. Only by librarians promoting and training can these workers become more competent within information literacy

Library workers of the NNLM-GMR can receive funding to ensure access to biomedical information and improve access to online health information for the public health workforce

Listening to Cliff Stoll was quite entertaining and enjoyable. What he has to say is what many librarians already eschew: understanding is more important than the right answer. Once of his statements that stuck with me was, “Answers have something to do with, but is not the same as understanding.”

Stoll spoke of the value of doing it yourself, learning from that process too. He even gave Marlene Porter and Bette Sydelko a jar of his own homemade plum jam. Of course, doing it yourself takes time, something that our current society doesn’t seem to highly value. There are good, fast and cheap for nearly all aspects of life. We can usually have two of these, but we cannot usually have all three at once, and yet, that’s what everyone wants each and every day.

As one attendee asked about, our users don’t think our services are expensive. They think they are cheap because they don’t see the costs associated with it. Stoll stated that we need to explicitly state to folks that these resources are expensive and we are lucky that our institution provides them.

How to reach hospital leaders/administrators:

1. Utilize the MLA Vital Pathways tool. (Margaret Bandy)
2. Stand out from the crowd: (Karen Heiser)
• "Produce useful improvement."
• "Align people."
• "Convey the culture and values."
3. Approach systematically: basically, know your stuff, and be able to communicate what you need (tell a good story! and be able to tell it in 3 minutes).
4. "You know are ready when:" (Rebecca Phillips)
• you can align key components (missions, values, goals, people)
• you measure your progress against targets.
5. Margaret Bandy also discussed the strategies of alignment. "Alignment" seems to be the key word, and it's a good one. My thought: we should combine it with Clifford Stoll's key word of "understanding" rather than finding the right answer and really get administrators' attention, as the excellent panelists have.
6. Using tools to create "best teams" for knowledge management.
7. Mentioned Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital's membership in a hospital library consortium (ie, hospital has to have a library to get this purchasing power, and they actually let a hospital go when it let its librarian go).
8. Also discussed using the NN/LM calculators when promoting library.
9. "Tell a story, tie it to data, ask for something."
10. Rebecca Phillips polled the audience to see who has gotten new funding from grants, philanthropic funds, etc. A majority had not, and here lies another opportunity for conversation with administrators.
11. Panel also polled audience to see the first thing we'll do when we return from this conference. We answered, honestly, perhaps, check e-mail! :) But we'll also develop our elevator speeches, etc.

I'm also going to note there's a lot of good stuff on the twitter feed right now on this panel; there were a lot of little gems of advice that were captured there!

‘”Why is it that drug addicts and computer aficionados are called users?”

Clifford Stoll is an extremely energetic and passionate man who rarely stayed in one spot for more than a few moments. And while in the introduction it was said that Stoll was deeply ambivalent about computer culture, I found that he bluntly understood the trials and tribulations to quickly finding answers.

Stoll discussed several conversations he had with librarians and had many portions at hand—literally, he wrote notes of these conversations on his palm. Even after taking a shower last night, there were still ghostly traces of ink on his hand.

He kept returning to one particular conversation about why M (the initial of the librarian he talked with, which he proved by showing his palm) was a librarian: “innovation, curiosity and a real yearning to find out what’s going on and a wish to help.” This is something that all librarians can all relate to, and I understand his “jealousy” with our profession. He has the same desires, which he expressed was why he became an astronomer and is a stay-at home dad.

Stoll referred to an old clique “they always taste better when you roll them yourself” when describing canning plums. I enjoyed this unusual analogy, which continued throughout the lecture. Essentially, there is an information trilemma (trilemma is my terminology, just imagine a triangle) that librarians face: Information that is Good, Cheap, and Fast. However, information cannot be all three, thus making is a trilemma (a similar analogy is a common theologcal triadic relationship—how can God be all knowing, all good, and all powerful?). Information cannot be retrieved quickly, cheaply, and still have quality. With regards to canning plums, he grows his own plums and his kids pick and then boil those plums. So, he has quality plums that were cheaply obtained, but the process was not fast.

Google, however, one can retrieve results quickly without any cost. But, those results are not necessarily useful quality information. The fast answer is not necessarily the best answer. To Stoll, this is a fraud, worse that a lie, and it is simply a myth that one can type any question and get the “right” answer.

If you want good information fast, it will not necessarily be cheap. In reference to the vendors, Stoll related the quality in information to editing. He said that he is willing to pay an editor to filter out the “stupidity.” What’s missing from the internet is the lack of quality editing; so, one is willing to pay a vendor to increase the quality information.

Inevitably, answers have something to do with, but not necessarily, understanding. Health science patrons want answers, not understanding. Understanding takes time to process and is expensive. Stoll stressed that what we should be searching for is understanding.

I agree

Ultimately, there isn't a resolution to the information trilemma. But as librarians, we share this common problem and we are seeking what Stoll is seeking: understanding in a galaxy of questions

Currently, I am sipping hot tea and eagerly waiting for our speaker, Clifford Stoll. Most, if not all, librarians acknowledge the Google competition for providing easy and quick answers. Even when I circulated last night’s welcome ceremony and the vendor breakfast this morning, every person I talked with had a story about problem patrons who refused to search with anything that isn’t Google. In fact, I have often joked that hypochondriacs will force doctor’s to become better researchers; after all, the doctor is assumed to know more than patients. But how can a doctor convince a hypochondriac that their fears are unwarranted when the doctor is using the same tool that the hypochondriac had used?

After a long day at two excellent classes taught by Ann McKibbon, I had a chance to enjoy catching up with some other Midwest Chapter MLA colleagues who I don't often get to see.

The reception was highlighted by some excellent food. Kudos to the Facilities Committee and anyone else who planned it. There was cocktail shrimp, little crab tarts, chicken and beef skewers with sauce, fruit with white and dark chocolate dipping sauce, plus desserts. The chocolates were especially tasty. I didn't partake in the adult beverages that were available but they looked fabulous.

Many vendors were there to welcome us as well. Mary Piper talked about the wonderful financial support they provided this year, quite unexpected but very welcomed!

Last but not least, carribean music was playing, with a live reggae musician.

The Midwest MLA opening reception is always a nice time to catch up with friends, enjoy some food, and just relax. This year did not disappoint.

Today is your intrepid blog editor's birthday. I found out that I share the special day with Ruey. Here we are -- the Birthday Girls!

The talented staff at the Hyatt made me a special birthday cake, too!

Ann McKibbon's CE course on evidence-based health care principles was excellent! An awful lot was fit into the 4 hours this morning, and it seemed that everyone learned something and enjoyed it despite the cold of the room. :) I think Anne's great presentation skills, along with wonderful anecdotes and random information (did you know that librarians have a higher incidence of breast cancer?), were the secret. Some highlights:

• Where to identify the question an article is answering: best place is actually in the paragraph just before the methods section. The abstract will often also have a version, but the abstract is also often advertising...Just be aware that the question often changes throughout an article!
• Other things to find/identify/evaluate in order to use EBHC literature: what's being compared, patients/participants, setting (e.g., primary care, hospital, outpatient clinic...), interventions/exposures, outcomes, statistics, culture/healthcare system, funding source, conflict of interest
• Incidence vs. prevalence (test your residents!):
  • Incidence is the measure of the number of new diagnoses.
  • Prevalence is how common a diagnosis is right now.
  • High incidence, low prevalence disease: H1N1!
  • Low incidence, high prevalence disease: chronic condition, like diabetes.
• When looking at and trying to understand statistics, be cynical! have gambling tendencies! and remember, small is beautiful!
• Definition for p-value: the measure of the probability that the difference between treatments/interventions/exposures is from chance alone. (Small is beautiful!)
• Difference between 2-tier (i.e. Canada) and 3-tier (i.e. US) health care systems: basically, 2 tier has family doctors and specialists; 3-tier includes the generalist level (our pediatricians, for example).
• Countries with socialized medicine can produce great studies with huge amount of data (for example, in Israel, everyone serves in the army and that data can be used). Under the U.S. system, great studies can be done for individual treatments (there's funding/trial structure in place).

Ann also shared a couple of great resources:

• Rod Jackson's GATE: Graphic Approach to Teaching EBP (it also stands for other names) model
• The equator network, which provides a library of reporting guidelines.

Last night we kicked off our conference as usual with the evening meeting of the Midwest Chapter Executive Board. For part of the meeting, we experimented with using the DimDim webinar service. We were joined online by our webmaster Allan. That's him in the lower left part of the screen.

The entire board will be meeting on the web in early 2010 to see if web meetings can be useful for chapter business.