International Cooperation Section

Research4Life Distance Learning Short Courses now Online

2011-09-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, FMLA, Gainesville, FL

Short Courses for HINARI, AGORA and OARE are available on the ITOCA server -http://moodle.itoca.org/

Each course uses the Moodle software – a free, open-sourceweb application for producing modular internet-based courses. Thesecourses highlight the skills necessary for effectively accessing the full-textmaterial of the programs (background, searching skills, website access,searching databases and access problems and solutions). They will beuseful for users and staff at your institution. Contact the ITOCA staffat moodle@itoca.org to register for theonline course.

We are translating the HINARI Short Course into several languages and planto have these available in late 2011. Please send this information toyour colleagues in all three disciplines.

Note: the initial Portuguese version of the HINARI Short Course isonline as of 15 September – see the ITOCA Moodle server.

HINARI Program User Training Videos now Available

2011-09-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, FMLA, Gainesville, FL

Based on the HINARI Short Course, the new training material contains fivevideos: What the HINARI Programme is, How to find full text of an articlein HINARI, How to search PubMed through HINARI, How to conduct advanced PubMedsearching and How to resolve resource access problems. For each video andaccompanying audio file, there is a text transcription and quiz.

If a user only watches the videos, the material can be completed in 30minutes (although we also recommend doing the self-assessmentquizzes). From http://hinaritraining.org/, individuals can go directly to the training material or, due to bandwidthlimitations, order a free CD and or download the training package.
This material is quite useful for training users and staff – to obtain thebaseline skills necessary for using HINARI to access full-text documents. It can be done either by retrieving the material online or on a localworkstation (CD or downloaded files).

The modules were developed and will be updated by Megan von Isenburg, DukeMedical Center Library and Marc Sperber, Duke Global Health Institute, USA

MLA Librarians without Borders® Activities: Update on the E-library Training Initiative

2011-09-20T06:00:00.001-07:00

Submitted by Lenny Rhine, FMLA, Gainesville, FL

Since 2007, the Elsevier Foundation has generously funded the E-libraryTraining Initiative of the MLA Librarians without Borders® program. Theactivities of this initiative primarily focus on conducting training forthe HINARI Access to Research inHealth Programme and developing and updating training material forthis program. Coordinated by Lenny Rhine, FMLA, more than forty-five workshopsin twenty-five countries have been conducted. More than twenty new trainingmodules and support tools have been developed.

Recent developments include an online “train the trainers” course for individualsfrom industrialized countries whose institutions have linkages withHINARI-eligible organizations. This and the basic HINARI short course areaccessible via the MLA Mrooms site.Some of the HINARI-related activities conducted by MLA members who havecompleted the “train the trainers” course include training visitors andgraduate students from eligible countries, conducting workshops at the sites ofeligible institutions, translating the short course into Spanish, and creatinga video of the short course.

Other recent activities of the initiative include the development of the“Evidence-based Resources for HINARI Users” and “E-book Resources for HINARIUsers” modules and short courses for two partner programs in agriculture(Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture [AGORA]) and environmentalresearch (Online Access to Research in the Environment [OARE]). All the shortcourses are available via the Moodleserver of the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA).

In early July, the Elsevier Foundation released a new video on YouTube, “Building a Global ResearchCulture,” which features a recent workshop for librarians, doctors, andlecturers at the University of Swaziland. This workshop was a collaborationbetween the MLA Librarians without Borders® program and ITOCA.
The MLA Librarians without Borders® program looks forward to continued supportfrom the Elsevier Foundation.

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

2011-09-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Brian P. Bunnett

One of the benefits of being chair is theunique perspective it gives you on the activities going on in our section. That is to say, as chair you are aware of allthe important projects, clever ideas, and sustained effort and hard work of ourmembers. I hope this newsletter succeedsin giving you the same perspective I have and that after you finish reading ityou will be impressed, as I am, by the variety of these projects and theingenuity of our section colleagues.

When reading this newsletter I ask you to keepin mind one other thing. And that isthat the work we contribute to our section is often done outside of our regularjobs. It is volunteer work that we do inthe evenings or on the weekends. Ourmembers give freely of their time so that the goal of our section – to promoteinternational cooperation – is further advanced. This sacrifice of our free time should beseen as evidence of our dedication and commitment to that goal.

That is the best part of being chair of oursection. Yes I’m always impressed by allthe important projects and clever ideas that I hear of but it’s even moregratifying to witness the willingness of our members to give so readily oftheir time and energy.

Brian P. Bunnett
Universityof New Mexico
Health Sciences Library andInformatics Center
Email: bbunnett@salud.unm.edu

Colleague Connection with International Colleagues at MLA Annual Meeting

2011-09-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Jie Li

ICS members have always been interested inconnecting with International colleagues. During the MLA Annual Meeting, ICSmembers are eager to assist our international librarians, especially the firsttime MLA attendees. In the part, ICS members went to International VisitorsReception and other events, such as Librarians without Borders Open Forum tomeet and communicate with librarians from other countries. At the AnnualMeeting in Minneapolis, MN, ICS Chair Rick Ralston arranged ICS members tospend sometime with the Local Hospitality Table to meet international visitorsand he himself spent quite a lot of his free time at the hospitalitytable. At the 2011 ICS Business meeting,members discussed how we may better connect to the international librarians.One idea at the meeting was to ask MLA Headquarters to provide a list ofinternational MLA Annual Meeting registrants before the meeting, so ICSmembership may connect with them before they arrive in United States. At theInternational Visitors Reception, when having a conversation with Carla Funk,MLA Executive Director, who is also MLA's International Affairs Officer, I briefed Carlaabout this idea. Carla informed us that MLA Headquarter will be happy toprovide ICS with a list of international participants. So in the future MLAAnnual Meetings, especially the 2013 joint MLA/IFLA/ICML meeting in Boston, ICSmembers will have a great opportunity connecting to our internationalcolleagues.

Jie Li

Biomedical Library

University of South Alabama

Email: jli@jaguar1.usouthal.edu

MLA 2011 Annual Meeting Report: an Account from an International Attendee

2011-09-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Rolf Schafer

RolfSchafer from Sydney, Australia reports on his attendance at the 2011 MLA AnnualMeeting, held May 13-18, 2011 at the Minneapolis Convention Center,Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Minneapoliswas the venue for this year’s annual meeting and the National Library ofMedicine’s 175^th anniversary celebration. The last time the annualmeeting was convened in Minneapolis was 25 years ago, where celebrations forthe NLM sesquicentennial were also held.

Registrationsfor the annual meeting totalled 1886, with 87 of these from outside the UnitedStates, Canada and Mexico. I was the only delegate who travelled from Australiato attend the convention. E-Conference registrations were taken up by 101members who could not travel to the meeting, yet were still able to be part ofthe meeting community via online access. This online access included videostreaming of keynote and other select plenary sessions; access to audiosessions with electronic presentations and online access to posters before,during, and after the meeting.

Atotal of 129 contributed and invited papers combined with 176 poster paperswere presented over the four days of the conference. Continuing educationcourses offered during the conference numbered twenty-six and covered a rangeof professional competency areas. [1]

Thetheme for this year’s meeting was designed to help librarians rethink existing and emerging areas inhealth librarianship: rethink service, rethink technology, rethink space,

rethinkleadership, rethink engagement, rethink research, and rethink outcomes. With so manyinformation channels requiring our attention today, we need to allow time to rethink what we need to do in order toremain relevant to our institutional contexts and those we serve.

Toenable more meeting attendees to connect and engage, MLA has embraced and promotedpopular social networking tools through a concept known as “ConferenceCommunity.” At MLA’11, we were offeredTwitter, CrowdVine, CoverltLive, FriendFeed, foursquare, quick response codesand the MLA’11 Blog site. These services are designed to facilitate interactionwith attendees and exhibitors at the meeting on a whole new level. The centrepiece of the Conference Community services at MLA’11 was“ReThink Conversations.” After each plenary session, attendees were asked todiscuss a related question via Twitter. Display monitors were strategicallyplaced around the convention centre so that attendees can watch and respond tothe live conversations. Tweets can be made using a mobile device, laptop, orcomputers in the Internet

Café. [2] To my knowledge, I am not aware of all thesenetworking tools being offered and utilised at a library conference inAustralia.

Thefollowing is an account of my MLA’11 experience and the sessions I attended.

Saturday

TheWelcome Reception and opening of the Hall of Exhibits was held on Saturdaynight. Here a gathering of some 516 companies and vendors displayed theirproducts and wares. The exhibit hall also contained an area for the posterssessions, the Internet Café, Technology Showcase centre, and some electronicdisplays.

Sunday

Anearly morning started as I attended the International Cooperation SectionBusiness meeting. Following this the 2011 annual meeting commenced with awelcome session at which President Ruth Holst greeted delegates on behalf ofthe Association. Welcoming remarks and salutations followed from Clare T.Leibfarth, President of the Midwest Chapter, and from Gabriel R. Rios, Cochairof the 2011 National Program Committee. Ruth Holst then delivered her PresidentialAddress which emphasized the themes of rethinking our value and roles. Ahighlight of her presentation was the sharing of snapshots of the various MLAChapter meetings that she attended throughout the year.

Aftera coffee break, delegates reassembled for Plenary Session II - The John P.McGovern Award Lecture. The speaker, Clay Shirky - writer, consultant, and teacheron new technology and social media shared his thoughts on rethinking social media and how it relates to our profession. Shirkyexamined the way network technologies provide for groups to get things done,including collaboration tools, social networks, peer-to-peer sharing,collaborative filtering, and open source development. A very thought provokinglecture and pragmatic view of what is occurring now and what is to come withsocial media and emerging technologies were presented.

Followinglunch, members attended Business Meeting I where the treasurer’s report andother annual reports of the Association were formally adopted. Recently electedoffice-bearers were also announced. Contributed Paper sessions sponsoredby different sections of MLA filled the remainder of the afternoon. I attendeda session with the title of Next Steps:The Future. The papers covered topics that included the21^st Century Health Information Professional, leveraging socialmedia tools to engage library users and the next generation of auto alerts.

AfterwardsI joined other international librarians at the International Visitors Receptionhosted by the International Cooperation Section.

Monday

Themorning began with Plenary Session III- Janet Doe Lecture. T. Scott Plutchak, Director of the Lister Hill Library ofthe Health Sciences Library at the University of Alabama-Birmingham deliveredthis year’s lecture. His lecture was titled, “Breaking the Barriers of Time andSpace: The Dawning of the Great Age of Librarians.”

Thesecond session of section programming commenced after the mid-morning breakwith eight concurrent sessions to choose from. My choice was Top Tech Trends.Here a panel of six librarians shared the latest offerings in technology,websites and social media tools. Topics included meeting schedules, projectmanagement tools and data visualisation.

Atthe conclusion of this session I attended the MLA Awards Ceremony and Luncheonwhere MLA members were recognised with various awards, honours andscholarships.

Theafternoon was devoted to Section sponsored programs and to Section Businessmeetings. I attended a session sponsored by the Leadership and ManagementSection on rethinking libraries in hard times.

Tuesday

At7:00 am I joined several other colleagues for breakfast at a ‘sunrise seminar’hosted by

Wiley-Blackwellto hear about the latest concepts in evidence-based healthcare and clinicaldecision support tools that help clinicians and nurses find quick answers tothe latest evidence. By 9:00 am we were ready for the second MLA BusinessMeeting comprising the Presidential Inaugural Address and MLA’12 invitation.

GaryD. Byrd (left) SUNY at Buffalo Health Sciences Library, Buffalo,NY and Rolf Schafer(right) Walter McGrath Library, St Vincent's Hospital Sydney
with Dr. Donald A.B. Lindberg,Director, National Library of Medicine at the 175th Anniversarycelebrations for NLM.

Theannual National Library of Medicine (NLM) update was held after morning coffeeand was well attended. Dr Donald Lindberg, Director of the NLM assisted by twoassociate directors delivered the update. The highlight of their presentationwas an overview of the services, programs and accomplishments that NLM haddelivered over the past 175 years. The fourth session of concurrent sectionprograms occupied the remainder of the day.

Thatevening, meeting attendees and Friends of the National Library of Medicinejoined together to celebrate NLM’s 175^th anniversary. The uniquebirthday cake clearly stole the show at the celebration.

NLM Birthday cake - a sweet rendition of the NLMbuilding in Bethesda, MD.

Wednesday

Themorning began with the Joseph Leiter NLM/MLA Lecture delivered by Dr Peter J.Hotez. Dr Hotez is the distinguished research professor, Walter G.Ross Professor, and chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, andTropical Medicine, The George Washington University. His research focuses onvaccine development for parasitic diseases, particularly hookworm andschistosomiasis. Hotez also has a strong policy interest to promote the controlof neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The 2011 Leiter Lecture was titled, Open access and control of the NeglectedTropical Diseases, “The NTDs.”

PlenarySession IV followed and featured Geoffrey Bilder, Director of StrategicInitiatives at CrossRef with more than sixteen years of experience as atechnical leader in scholarly technology. Bilder titled his presentation, What color is your paratext? His wackyand lively delivery style, complete with 251 PowerPoint slides, helped us torethink scholarly communication and understand some of the challenges facingresearchers with emerging technologies and scholarly publishing.

Nextyear’s annual meeting will be held in Seattle, Washington, May 18-23, 2012.

Ifyou are not able to attend in person, consider taking up the e-conferenceregistration where you will have online access to videos of the plenaryspeakers and all conference presentations with audio recordings.

References

1. Ray Naegele, Medical Library Association. [Personal communication]

2. MLA Annual Meeting and Exhibition, May 13-18, 2011; Minneapolis, MN –Official Program

Rolf Schafer

WalterMcGrath Library
St Vincent's Hospital Sydney
Australia

Email: rschafer@stvincents.com.au

The Medical Library Association Librarians Without Borders “E-Library Training Initiative”

2011-09-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Lenny Rhine

The initiative:

• was begun by the Medical Library Association in 2007 with thesupport of the Elsevier Foundation;

• has subsequently received funding from the Elsevier Foundation,allowing the program to continue through 2012; and

• is coordinated by MLA member Lenny Rhine, FMLA, emerituslibrarian, University of Florida.

Since 2007:

• Forty-one workshops have been conducted in twenty-threecountries about HINARI (www.who.int/ hinari/) and other Research4Life programs(http:// www.research4life.org/).

• Programs have ranged from four-day “train the trainers”workshops to one-day “updates,” authorship skills courses, and four-hour shortcourses.

• The courses have been conducted in collaboration with the WorldHealth Organization (WHO) HINARI Access to Research in Health Programme, WHOregional offices, and the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa(ITOCA).

•Participants have included information professionals, clinicians and otherhealth professionals, researchers, lecturers, and ministry of health staffmembers.

In addition to theworkshops:

• Training modules have been updated, and more than twenty new moduleshave been created, including ones to highlight HINARI resources, informationliteracy, WHO resources, and authorship skills.

• Numerous training tools and presentations have been developed ontopics that include access problems and solutions, the basics of HINARI, “do’sand don’ts,” and a HINARI overview for registered institutions.

• Distance learning short courses have been developed for HINARIand Research4Life Partner programs Access to Global Online Research inAgriculture (AGORA) and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE),using Moodle software. The HINARI short course is being translated intoseveral languages. See mla.mrooms.org and moodle.itoca.org.

• Forlibrarians from industrialized countries, a “train the trainers” course hasbeen developed. Participants train visitors and students from HINARI-eligiblecountries. This course has been taught at the Medical Library Association,European Association of Health Information and Libraries, and InternationalCongress on Medical Librarianship meetings and is available online atmla.mrooms.org

Lenny Rhine

E-LibraryTraining Initiative Coordinator

E-mail:rhinel@ufl.edu

Job Exchange Program with the Korean Medical Library Association

2011-09-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Brian P. Bunnett

TheICS Job Exchange Task Force – comprised of Preet Rana, Beth Whipple, Fred Pond,Charlie Greenberg, and Brian Bunnett – is in the final stages of its project todesign an exchange program between the Medical Library Association and theKorean Medical Library Association (KMLA). There is considerable interest in such an exchange among Korean medicallibrarians. The MLA Board, for its part,has also given its provisional approval. Final approval is expected at the next MLA Board meeting, which willtake place in October. Before that canhappen, however, Task Force members must create the criteria that will be usedto select individual participants in the program as well the libraries ourKorean colleagues will visit. It ishoped that, once these selection criteria are completed, the program can beginsoon thereafter.

Exchangeprograms of this type can play an important role in promoting internationalcooperation, sharing expertise, and learning from colleagues whose librariesare sometimes quite different from our own. Although the Task Force is concerned, at present, only with an exchangeprogram between the MLA and KMLA, it is not too much to imagine that it mightserve as a model that programs with other countries or library associationsmight follow.

Brian P. Bunnett
Universityof New Mexico
Health Sciences Library andInformatics Center
Email: bbunnett@salud.unm.edu

Partnership with Latvia

2011-09-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Donna Flake

MySEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington, NC has a new partnership with theLibrary of the University of Latvia, located in Riga, Latvia. Diane

Darrowfrom my library works with me in this great endeavor. Themain work of this partnership is to gather current print medical books andjournals, and send them to Latvia. We work closely with the Auxiliary of theLatvian Welfare Group in the US who does the actual shipping of the books toLatvia. The Auxiliary is a group of Latvian-Americans who take onprojects to help their beloved Latvia, and they have been sending medical booksand journals to Latvia for me for over 13 years. This method of shippingbooks to another country has been TREMENDOUSLY successful. If any of youhave current medical books or journals you would like to send to Latvia, pleaseemail me the titles. It is great to fill up landfills with these valuablematerials.

Priorto this partnership with Latvia, I worked with another Latvian library-TheNational Medical Library of Latvia, directed by Velta Poznaka. Many ofyou will recall Velta when she attended MLA in 2004 in Washington, DC. From1999 till 2001, MLA and ICS had a pilot project to have two sisterlibraries- one was in Antigua, and one was The National Medical Library ofLatvia. We accomplished great things during this time, including sendingover 20,000 current medical books and journals to Latvia. At the end of thepilot in 2001, my SEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington continued the work bysetting up a formal partnership between my library and the LatvianLibrary. I went to Latvia three times during thepartnership, and the Executive Director of my institution and Diane Darrow wentwith me to Latvia one time! But in late 2009, a terrible thinghappened. The economy got so bad in Latvia that the National MedicalLibrary was closed. (Can you image what would happen if our ownNLM closed due to the economy?) I felt so very sadabout this, and the only consolation was to know that great workwe all did with the National Medical Library of Latvia assisted physicians andimproved Latvian healthcare for the period the partnership lasted. I stillfeel terrible for the many librarians I met at the library.

Butwe all must go on. I was pleased to learn that the Library at the University ofLatvia wanted to enter into a partnership with my SEAHEC Library. A partof my heart is in Latvia, I must admit. (My interest in Latvia comes froma childhood friend who father was born in Latvia, and relocated to the US in1945. I spent many hours hearing my friend’s father’s storiesof Latvia.) I am enjoying working with Gita Rozenberga, Librarianand also Library Director, Iveta Gudakovska.

Gita Rozenberga, Librarian and Library Director, Iveta Gudakovska.

I encourageICS members to consider international medical library partnerships. Itcan greatly enrich your life and help you to look at life in a different way.

Donna Flake

RobertM. Fales Health Sciences Library

SEAHEC/ South East Area Health Education Center

Email: Donna.Flake@seahec.net

New Informatist Model Based-Services: Spanish Hospital Librarian Experience at Welch Medical Library

2011-09-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Maria Luisa Maquedano

Whateverwe call them -- medical librarian, clinical librarian, informationist,ISIC or information specialist—the librarians who render their services inhospitals are active agents in the development and application of the new rolesdemanded by their patrons. However, the different education and training, aswell as the budget allocated to the library and the vision of the managementteam makes the difference in the delivery of services.

Thevirtual network services of medical libraries, both academic andhospital-based, have been developed effectively throughout the Spanishterritory during the last decade, nevertheless the financial and managerial independenceof the libraries have discouraged the integration of management and alltheir material and human resources -- something that would have been extremelydesirable in these times of budget cuts.

EachMinistry of Health of the 17 Spanish Regional Administrations has a Virtual Library Portal which includes allits resources and centralized services and provides online access to all thestaff public Health Centers. The Ministry of Health of the Comunidad de Madridalso has its own, Biblioteca VirtualAgencia Lain Entralgo,inaugurated in 2004 but with some particular characteristics: the consortialpurchase of electronic resources is only partial, the services provided are notcentralized and the library management is independent. These factors, amongothers, have favored the implementation of new computer software in some of thelarger hospitals. For example HospitalUniversitario 12 de Octubre, HospitalUniversitario Puerta de Hierro, and also Hospital Universitario La Paz where I develop myprofessional activity recently which brought up a newsystem to centralize their users’ access to resources and services.

Ingeneral, all the Health Sciences virtual library portals share a list of linksto free and contracted resources, as well as to traditional services:reference, document delivery, bibliographic searching and continuous training.Not all the libraries have provided the new shared services of Web 2.0 toolsthat allow communication between different types of patrons, and very few havea team of informationists with the capacity to provide their users with all theavailable information for the development of their daily clinical, teaching andresearch activities. DeMuro’s editorial recently publishedin AAP Library Newsletter on non-traditional roles of librarians is highlyillustrative.

My interest in this topic began in1997, when I defended my doctoral thesis "Health Sciences Virtual Library". A lot of water has passed under the bridge sincethen, but the working hypothesis is still valid: users can access all types ofresources via any Internet platform. Today only difference could be theaddition of the new variables, sharing and interacting. In the 12 European Congressof Medical LibrariesI had the opportunity to hear thepresentation “The Welch EmbeddedInformationist Service Model” givenby Blair Anton(Associate Director, Clinical Informationist Services, Welch Medical Library), and I found an interesting example of the implementationof this idea. Therefore, I requested permission for further studies from theManaging Director of my hospital and I wrote to the Director of the Welch Medical Library asking to observe in situ the Informationist team to learnabout the variety of their work. My immediate goal is to develop a pilotproject “Embedded Informationist-Based Model” in the Internal Medicine Service, whose Head has supported me in carrying out this new lineof research for the Hospital Library.

Unfortunately, my stay at the WelchMedical Library is nearing the end, but my program has helped me learn in depthhow Welch works, and I’ve had the opportunity to visit the other librarieslocated in different campuses that make up Johns Hopkins University.

Obviously, the organization of resourcesand services of a private institution such as the Welch Medical Library cannotbe compared to a hospital library of a public Health System because thehospital library´s budget is significantly lower, the scope is more limited andfinally, and theaudience is more specific. However, I would like to emphasize some of itsrelevant features, which should becommon to all libraries: the specialized education in Health Sciences of thestaff, a multidisciplinary team, a good work schedule and overall, a leader ofthe library with a strong, clear vision of future with the strength toimplement that vision.

Hopefully, this visit as an observerwill help to promote the participation of Spanish Librarians in some of theinternational projects led by Library Institutions around the world and also, to foster communication between informationists so that others canenjoy an experience as enriching as mine has been.

Maria Luisa Maquedano

Hospital Universitario la Paz

BibliotecaVirtual de Ciencias de la

E-mail: maquedanoml@gmail.com

Ghanaian Scholars Address Global Health Challenges with Library Resources

2011-09-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Gurpreet K. Rana

InFebruary 2011, under the auspices of the Ghana-Michigan PARTNER ProgramFellowship, University of Michigan welcomed 14 scholars from Kwame NkrumahUniversity of Science and Technology for a four-month study and research stay. Theobjective of the fellowship program is to strengthen the interdisciplinaryresearch capacity in Ghana to address global health challenges and include“long-term, comprehensive training of post-doctoral scientists who will becomefuture leaders of interdisciplinary global health research in Ghana”. (Source: Global REACH, University ofMichigan Medical School)

A major component of the PARTNER fellows’research activities was based upon the successful use of library services andresearch databases. To provide a foundation in research methods andinformation skills and to address the scholars’ goals in developing creativesolutions for global health, I had the chance to create an integratedinstruction program, focusing on literature searching and subject-specificinformation resources. It was a privilege to provide hands-on computerclassroom sessions and lectures, small groups instruction for subject-specificteams, and individual consultations. The four subject-specific research teams that the scholars were dividedinto were: Gender and Health; Innovative Technologies in GlobalHealth; Genetic and Epidemiological Study of Breast Cancer; and Occupationaland Environmental Health. Iparticularly appreciated the scholars’ subject knowledgebase and eagerness tofurther their information-seeking skills.

TheGhanaian scholars’ arrival was marked by “the” snowstorm of Winter 2011. These intrepid scholars, most of whom hadnever seen snow, put any possible culture shock aside to deal with temperatureshock! On their first day of instruction at the Taubman HealthSciences Library, most did not remove coats, gloves or scarves. My statement: “Would you believe me if Itold you it gets up to 35 degrees Celsius in the summer?” was met with disbelievinglaughter. (It was 14 degrees F thatday).

Oneof the fellows exclaimed: “Don’t sayanything funny because if you do, I’ll get tears in my eyes and they willfreeze on my face!” And so began awonderful relationship with 14 remarkable individuals…..

Members of the Ghana-Michigan PARTNER Program Fellowship program with instructors and mentors.

Myexperience with the PARTNER fellows is one I am not soon to forget. I cannot fully express in a few sentences howthe PARTNER fellows, for whom I created instruction sessions, left afteractually teaching me. Theirexcitement and gratitude in learning information-seeking skills and finding newresearch materials to investigate made me consider once again how veryfortunate we are in our own information environments and the degree ofinformation inequity that scholars in developing countries experience everydayas they conduct vital research. ThePARTNER fellows’ generosity of spirit, openness, and intentions to change“their world” through education is inspiring and provides another reminder of“why we do what we do” as information professionals.

Gurpreet K. Rana

TaubmanHealth Sciences Library

Universityof Michigan

Email: preet@umich.edu

Batter Up and Get Ready to Hit a Home Run at MLA 2012 with ICS!

2011-09-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Alicia Livinski

AtMLA 2012, the International Cooperation Section (ICS) is the leading sponsorfor a great session on librarians working outside of the library or box. Wewill also co-sponsor with the Public Health/Health Administration (PH/HA) andRelevant Issues Sections another interesting and timely session on thesustainability of global health library projects. http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2012/index.html

ICSwill lead the session - Stepping out of the Box: Librarians Workingin Unconventional Roles and Places in Support of Global Health. Thiswill be a contributed papers session. The main focus willbe to highlight the various roles that librarians are fulfilling on globalhealth–focused programs and projects. The focus is global health; however, thisencompasses anything international (e.g., collaboration, programs, partnershipsetc.) that may not be focused on global health per se. Please consider the workyou are doing, and if it is global health, public health or health-relatedsubmit an abstract for review!

Theother session ICS will be co-leading is Goingthe Distance: Keeping Your Global Health Projects Alive. This will also be a contributed paperssession. We hope to during this session to focus on the sustainabilityof global health library projects. More and more institutions are developingglobal health programs and including libraries. But in today's budget climate,continuing to find funding for expensive global projects can sometimes provedifficult. This session could include personal success stories as well asdetailed strategies from libraries that have developed, maintained, andcontinued to grow their global health library presence.

Thedeadline for submission is November 2,2011.

Instructionsfor submitting an abstract are online at - http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2012/sect_prog/index.html.

Ifyou have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Alicia Livinski(Alicia.Livinski@nih.gov).

Ihope many ICS members will consider submitting abstracts for 2012!

Alicia Livinski
LibraryBethesda
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Email: livinska@mail.nih.gov

Project DINE

2011-09-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Brian P. Bunnett

Whatare the distinguishing characteristics of a librarian? I’ve often ruminated on this topic and havecome up with a preliminary list. First,they like to read. Although theythemselves are not always well organized they are good organizers, viz., ofmeetings, conferences, or of data. And speaking of conferences, they, like their scientist colleagues, areavid attendees at professional meetings and conferences, which accounts, by theway, for the canvas reg bags they are always seen carrying. They are likely to be more introverted thanotherwise, although there are notable exceptions. They incline naturally towards sharing andcooperation. And, of course, they loveto eat. These characteristics are mostoften seen in combination rather than isolation. This accounts, for example, for their desirenot just to consume but to also read about food, not just to organize a meetingbut to organize one in which food plays a prominent role.

Theabove helps explain the enthusiasm for Project DINE (Dinner In NewEngland). At the MLA in Minneapolis lastMay, it came to light that another chapter holds its business meeting at arestaurant. This news, this revelation,spread quickly through the ICS. Soon wewere all asking ourselves the same question – why don’t we do something likethat? I talked the situation over with ourChair-Elect, Alicia Livinski, and we decided to stage a sort of rehearsal ofthis dinner at the MLA in Seattle in 2012. This would lead up to the real thing - a full-fledged dinner businessmeeting at a restaurant with actual waiters, menus, and adult beverages – atour 2013 meeting in Boston, thus Dinner In New England.

Weneed some volunteers to serve on the Project DINE Task Force. These members will be entrusted with amission that is unprecedented in the history of the section – I know this istrue because I just finished reading this history (see my blurb, elsewhere inthis newsletter, entitled “Volunteer Sought to Update Section History”). Thismission is to find an appropriate restaurant in Seattle in which to hold ourrehearsal dinner and then, based on this experience, explore what will be involvedin holding the real thing in Boston in 2013.

Inan informal poll I conducted in late August a slight majority of therespondents favored having our 2012 business meeting at its usual time(indecently early in the morning) and usual place (the conference hotel). Ourrehearsal dinner will be an occasion for us to socialize and otherwise whoop itup but no section business will take place. Our 2013 business meeting, it is hoped, will be held in the evening at aprivate room in a restaurant, perhaps with corporatesponsors subsidizing the wingding.

Contactme if you are interested in serving on the Project DINE Task Force (bbunnett@salud.unm.edu).

Brian P. Bunnett
Universityof New Mexico
Health Sciences Library andInformatics Center
Email: bbunnett@salud.unm.edu

MLA 2013 Conference Theme

2011-09-19T07:14:00.001-07:00

Submitted by Alicia Livinski

MLA2013 will be a joint meeting with the 11th International Congress on MedicalLibrarianship (ICML), the 7th International Conference of Animal HealthInformation Specialists (ICAHIS), and the 6^th International ClinicalLibrarian Conference (ICLC).

Thegeneral meeting theme for 2013 is: "OneHealth: Information in an Interdependent World". One Healthencompasses human, animal, public and environmental health, climate change,food safety/production, and international health policy.
The National Program Committee (NPC) is also working with 4 general meetingtopics:

1. "One Health:Trustworthy and Authoritative Publicly Available Information",

2."New Methods of Publishing",

3."Global Data Sharing to Advance Science", and

4. "Environmental Aspects of GlobalHealth".

Alicia Livinski
LibraryBethesda
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Email: livinska@mail.nih.gov

Volunteer Sought to Update Section History

2011-09-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Brian P. Bunnett

Thefollowing link will take you to a brief history of the InternationalCooperation Section written by T. Mark Hodges for the MLA Centennial in1999: http://www.mlanet.org/archive/history/unit-history/international.html.

Iencourage section members to read this history and am certain they will find itto be well written and entertaining. Thedescription of the pre-history of the section and of its slow evolution into theICS is especially revealing. The ICS did not become an official MLA sectionuntil 1991. This year marks our 20^th anniversary and theoccasion should be commemorated by an updating of our section history. I amasking an enterprising member to take on this task, which will win for him or herthe gratitude of his or her sectioncolleagues. Contact me if you areinterested (bbunnett@salud.unm.edu).

Brian P. Bunnett

ICS Chair
Universityof New Mexico
Health Sciences Library andInformatics Center
Email: bbunnett@salud.unm.edu

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

2010-04-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Daniel Dollar

I received from Grace Ajuwon the report on the first MLA Librarians Without Borders Grant awarded to E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library, College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Grace also included photographs and a DVD of a dedication ceremony held at the library on December 18, 2009 for the 2 computer workstations and 78 new reference and textbook editions purchased using the $5,000 provided by the grant.

The dedication ceremony is moving to watch, attended by more than seventy people, including the Provost of the College of Medicine along with students and lectures from the College and University College Hospital. I was first struck by the fact that most of the library’s existing book collections are 10 to 20 years old; these textbooks and reference works that my library picks up regularly on standing order are a major acquisition for Grace’s library. But moving past thoughts about how “poor” is Grace’s library was the support shown by administrators, faculty and students at the ceremony. It is support that comes from a library and its staff working to meet their users' information needs in furtherance of research, education and clinical practice. Support that shows the worth and wealth medical librarians bring to the health care profession—and an inspiration for us all.

Another source of inspiration for me is you, the members of the International Cooperation Section. Although we may be one of the smaller sections, what we might lack in numbers we make up for in passion and devotion. I have seen that passion and devotion in our discussions over the length of the Cunningham Fellowship, the fostering of partnership efforts, and the responsiveness to sudden events, such as the Haitian earthquake. (Remember, you can always make a donation to the MLA Medical Library Disaster Relief Fund.)

It becomes clearer every day just how interconnected our planet is, and I see the ICS well-positioned as we move pass our 20th Anniversary into a third decade of continuing to provide leadership to and launching pad for international cooperation efforts with medical librarians worldwide.

I wish to end this final message as Section Chair by thanking you all for your work, and especially to thank the ICS Officers who have given so generously of their time in service to the section. Circumstances conspired for me to have an extended two-year stay as Chair (same is true for Marcus Banks as Immediate Past Chair and Section Council Representative), still it has been an honor to serve you and do my small part in furthering our mission.

Daniel Dollar
Yale University
Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
Email:daniel.dollar@yale.edu

MLA/LWB Grant: New Health Science Textbooks and Computers commissioned for use at the E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library

2010-04-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Grace A. Ajuwon

The first Medical Library Association (MLA) Librarians Without Border (LWB) Grant (2009) was awarded to E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The LWB grant award was meant for the purchase of health science books and computers for the E-learning laboratory.
On Friday December 18th 2009, seventy-eight (78) new health science textbooks including reference resources and two (2) branded computers were commissioned for use at the E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library (ELOML), College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, by Dr Benedict Adekunle Oladele, the University Librarian. The occasion was attended by 78 persons including the Provost College of Medicine, Professor Akinyinka Omigbodun and his deputy, Professor Aderonke Baiyeroju, lecturers and students of both the College of Medicine and the University College Hospital (UCH). The text books cover disciplines such as Anatomy, Anesthesia, Dentistry/Oral health, Hematology, Immunology, Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Nursing and Midwifery , Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ophthalmology, Otorhinoringology, Pathology, Pediatrics, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Physical Therapy (Physiotherapy), Public Health and Surgery.

The procurement of the books and computers were made possible through a $5000 grant from the Medical Library Association (MLA), USA, Librarians Without Borders (LWB), won by Mrs. Grace Ajuwon, the Reference and Information Services Librarian at ELOML. The title of Mrs. Ajuwon’s winning proposal was “Resource needs and capacity development for E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library, University of Ibadan, Nigeria”. The MLA Librarians Without Borders® Grant supports health science librarianship in Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) eligible countries, by funding training opportunities and/or the purchase of materials that further the use of biomedical resources for education, research or clinical practice. The grant was made possible by a donation from the FlySheet Med-Informatics Company of Taipei, Taiwan and administered by the International Cooperation Section of MLA.

Speaking at the occasion, both Dr Oladele and Professor Omigbodun commended the efforts of the grantee in writing a competitive proposal. Professor Omigbodun also observed that the books are the latest editions and would be of immense benefit to the students, Faculty and health care practitioners. The significance of the purchase of the books is that it will solve the problem of non-availability of current textbooks which has been a major challenge at ELOML for many years. It is hoped that the availability of the books in the Library will help to meet the information needs of students and Faculty in the College of Medicine and health care providers in UCH. A participatory method including direct solicitation from Deans of Faculties, Heads of Departments and students was used in the identification and selection of the books.

The two branded Dell computers will add to the number of computers donated to the Library’s E-Learning Laboratory by Alumni of the College of Medicine (Class of 1984 and 1987) and the Faculty of Clinical Sciences.

Grace A. Ajuwon
E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library
College of Medicine
University of Ibadan
Email: agajuwon@yahoo.com; gajuwon@comui.edu.ng

Librarians without Borders Open Forum: Health Library Outreach to Africa

2010-04-29T10:52:00.002-07:00

This year at MLA ’10, Librarians Without Borders is hosting an open forum focused on the role of health sciences libraries in global health information. The goal of the forum is for librarians that are interested in health science library outreach to Africa to come together and hear about various initiatives and approaches that are taking place, which will in turn generate discussion and new ideas about outreach that will continue beyond the forum and MLA. There will be short presentations on the E-Library Training Initiative Project (Hinari) and an update on the LWB grant. The bulk of the forum will be dedicated to a panel of speakers from a variety of institutions who are involved in outreach to Africa and will discuss their initiatives and experiences. Presenting on the panel will be:

Julia Royall, Chief of International Programs, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD

Anne Seymour, Associate Director, Biomedical Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Presenting along with Anne Seymour will be Dineo Ketshogileng, a librarian from the University of Botswana who is currently interning at the University Pennsylvania Libraries.

Mellanye Lackey, Global Health Information Officer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

After the panel there will be time for questions and discussion. This forum is intended to be more about interactive dialog and discussion than just presentations. We encourage your questions, ideas and participation!

The forum will take place on Sunday, May 23 from 1:30pm – 2:30pm in Lincoln West, Concourse Level.

Agenda Overview:
Brief presentations on LWB initiatives
-E-Library Training Initiative Project – HINARI (Lenny Rhine)
-LWB Grant update (Min-Lin Fang)
Panel presentations
Julia Royall – Chief of International Programs at the NLM
Anne Seymour – Upenn (NLM and Elsevier grant in Botswana)
- Dineo Ketshogileng, intern librarian from University of Botswana,
Melanye Lackey – UNC Chapel Hill (library global health information effort and vision)
Open time for questions and discussion

Medical Library Association International Cooperation Section Activities at MLA 2010 Conference

2010-04-29T10:52:00.001-07:00

MLA’10 is near the corner. International Cooperation Section will be offering a variety of activities for our members. Following is a list of schedule of the program related.

*Librarians without Borders Open Forum, Sunday, May 23 from 1:30 to 2:30 pm in the Lincoln West room.

*International Visitors Reception, Sunday, May 23 from 6:00 to 7:00 pm, 1919 East/West, Lobby Level

* The ICS Business Meeting, Sunday, May 23 from 7:30 – 9:00 AM in room 1919 East, Lobby Level at the Washington Hilton. (Breakfast will be provided).

*Awards Ceremony and Luncheon, Monday, May 24 from Noon to 1:30 pm, International Ballroom Center, Concourse Level (Lenny Rhine to receive the T. Mark Hodges International Service Award)

* Section Program: Diseases without Borders: Information for Global Epidemiology, Tuesday, May 25 from 2:00-3:30 in Cabinet, Concourse Level

*Section Shuffle, Tuesday, May 25 from 5:00 to 6:00 pm, Georgetown, Concourse Level
*HINARI Train the Trainers CE (Free for members), Wednesday, May 26 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm

*HINARI Train the Trainers CE (Free for members), Wednesday, May 26 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm

Traditional Chinese Medicine in Post-Quake Qinghai

2010-04-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

Submitted by LaVerne Poussaint

Photo credit: Xinhua, re-produced with expressed permission of the Xinhua News Agency

Dispatched under the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine of the People's Republic of China (a bureau under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health) and in conjunction with the Red Cross Society of China, medical teams were sent by the Public Security Border Troops of the Yunnan Province to provide emergency relief to residents of Qinghai Province who suffer from critical injuries resulting from the recent earthquake. Shown above is a Yunnan TCM medical staffer administering acupuncture to a patient from the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu County (ཡུལ་ཤུལ་་བོད་རིགས་རང་སྐྱོང་ཁུལ།, 玉树藏族自治州).

These medic troopers rendering care are from one of China's most bio-diversified regions, an environment which supports thousands of species of plants. From among Yunnan's ecological survivors are derived many of the components of TCM pharmaceutical formulae, including Yunnan Baiyao (aka Yunnan Paiyao, 云南白药, 雲南白藥), a haemostatic medicament whose composition is used to (among other things) normalize blood flow, stop hemorrhaging, enhance immune function, improve circulation, promote healing of internal bleeding sustained in injuries, and -in combination with astringent herbs-absorb excessive bleeding.

TCM staffers were deployed as an integrative, interim measure to treat patients in mobile medical units and field hospitals. Those whose critical conditions required more and prolonged intensive care were transported to 38 different medical facilities outside of the quake zone.

TCM as a medical science encompasses a system of practices including (but not limited to) Chinese medication, pharmacology, acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, dietary intervention, Qigong exercises, cupping, and Gua Sha.
TCM's healing approaches for pain, shock, acute DIC, and myocardial infarction; its diagnostic indices, and treatment modalities of acupuncture anaesthesia, acupuncture analgesia have been implemented in other emergency medical events. Particularly efficacious is Tieh Ta (跌打) – a wound and trauma orthopedic discipline for those afflicted with simple and compound bone fractures, sprains, dislocations, and bruises.

Dr. Waseed Saeed (University of Leeds Medical School, UK) has performed surgical relief during post-quake missions in Pakistan, China, Indonesia, and Haiti
http://www.waseemsaeed.com/charity/china-bbc.html. On his Sichuan mission with the same team of doctors and nurses who had served on the Pakistan rota, they encountered a young patient who had endured a guillotine amputation as a result of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. "Her stump had been treated with a traditional herbal remedy, and was showing no signs of infection." He was "astounded by her condition." The "brown material" wrapping that earthquake victim's limb was a TCM non-bacterial herbal compound remedy. Said he, "We have probably got a lot to learn from this type of medicine."

The World Health Organization is of the same mind, having established more than 15 Collaborating Centres (http://www.who.int/collaboratingcentres/networks/networksdetails/en/index2.html) of traditional medicine and pharmacology to aid in the examination of evidence-based, data-driven implementations of indigenous information. Added to that global knowledge-base should be traditional therapies observed being practiced in post-quake Haiti, Chile, and China. Conditions of the planet are impelling nations toward incorporation of TMS logistics framework.

LaVerne Poussaint
Former UNSO/UNDP worker and volunteer with several NGOs, including the ICRC
Email: laverne.poussaint@deepmed.net

A Trip to Santana Hospital Dominican Republic

2010-04-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Carole Gall

Indiana University medical librarian, Carole Gall, made her sixth visit on February 4-12, 2010, to the Elias Santana Center, a hospital facility in Los Alcarrizos, Dominican Republic. The Santana eye center has an accredited ophthalmology residency program, and a medical library is needed to fulfill the accreditation criteria. More on Santana at http://www.mmint.org/Countries/CentralAmericaandtheCaribbean/DominicanRepublic/EliasSantanaCenter/tabid/89/Default.aspx .

The goals of the trip were to do literature search training on the newly redesigned PubMed, provide awareness of quality, free resources on the internet, and build relationships. New books were needed and the library had had few donation since Carole's last trip in 2005. Carole took a donation to the Santana hospital library of the 13-volume 2008-2009 Basic and Clinical Science Course (BCSC). She ported the books in her luggage. Taking the books through customs at Santo Domingo was no problem, unlike a decade ago.

The residents and attendees have access to two current journal subscriptions. One morning hour of class was turned over to Carole to present online access to resources available to the Dominican residents.

In 2008 the hospital acquired WI-FI, which Carole used in the mornings by the classroom where the residents come and go to help them with research and information needs. Half (12) of the residents were from the Dominican Republic and mostly on scholarship. The other half (11) were from India, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Georgia (the country, not the state) and Venezuela. English is the second or third language for some of them. To be admitted to the residency program, they must have English proficiency. They use the terms PDF, WI-FI, wireless, and texto completo. No "full text" comprenda. The tech staff were four men, and very good.

Carole Gall
Indiana University School of Medicine Libraries
Email: cfgall@iupui.edu

Reports on International Trips

2010-04-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Lenny Rhine

Moldova Trip Report

Particulars of Workshops:

During early November 2009, three workshops were conducted in Moldova:

1) 3 1/2 day comprehensive HINARI workshop (09-12 November) conducted at the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University ‘Nicolae Testemitanu’ Scientific Medical Library, Chisinau, Moldova. All components of a comprehensive HINARI workshop were taught - Searching Skills, Health Resources on the Internet, HINARI and Partner Publishers’ Websites, PubMed (including the redesigned format), MY NCBI and strategies for marketing HINARI resources, repackaging information and conducting workshops. The workshop consisted of 50% lectures and 50% hands on activities.

The workshop was conducted with Irina Ibragimova and with the assistance of Silvia Cubrei (translator and fellow instructor) and Elena Barbos (translator). A total of 21 individuals attended the workshop. The participants were split between the library staff from the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University and librarians from several research institutes, medical college, and regional hospitals. Five individuals registered their institutions for HINARI.

This is the first workshop that was in three languages. Irina spoke in Russian, I spoke in English and this was translated into Romanian. This means that, for many of the discussions, I only received a brief summary. By paying attention to non-verbal clues, I often could tell how the discussion was going.

Initially, we did not know how this would work as this was Irina’s first HINARI workshop and Silvia’s first as a translator. After two modules, I realized that we had two other enthusiastic and knowledgeable trainers. We all had the same perspective about the importance of the hands-on activities and establishing an inclusive and positive environment.

Since the exercises had been translated into Romanian, the participants in the HINARI workshops were able to complete them in a timely and accurate fashion. With three instructors and assistance from some of the host University’s librarians, we were able to give a lot of attention to those participants that need more help. After each module, we reviewed the content with 4-6 questions and this also was quite useful.

Also, the computer training room was very nice with up-to-date hardware and the Internet access was as good as any other workshop I have conducted. The speed might have been enhanced by the fact that no students were at the University. They had been sent home for a week because of the H1N1 flu outbreak.

2) 3 hour ‘short course’ (12 November) conducted at the Free International University of Moldova. 35 individuals attended this workshop that covered the basics of HINARI. It was a mixture of faculty, students and library staff from that University. The course also was a blend of lectures and hands on activities.

This was conducted in a large computer laboratory. The Internet access was very adequate and the audiovisual equipment was excellent. While a short course can ‘feel’ rushed, we were able to give the participants the baseline skills for using HINARI.

At the end of this workshop, we viewed the Health Sciences Online website (http:://hso.info) as a source of information for instructors to use. What intrigued us was the option of using Google Translator to have the keyword search and resulting documents translated into another language. The faculty and students felt this was quite useful as they could translate material into either Romanian or Russian.

3) 1 day authorship skills workshop conducted at the Free International University of Moldova. 45 professional librarians from Chisinau and throughout the country attended this workshop. Most were from academic institutions although a few public library staff attended.

Material covered included How to Write a Scientific Paper, Intellectual Property – Copyright and Plagiarism, Web-Bibliography and Frequently Asked Questions. Besides the Q&A discussion, hands-on ‘group’ activities were writing structured abstracts and assigning keywords from full-text articles and, after reading an abstract of an article and the scope of four journals, deciding which journal to submit the article to. Several of the PowerPoint presentations had been translated into Romanian and the ‘hands on’ exercises were a combination of Romanian and Russian. This made the completion of the assignments much easier.

Despite the size of this group, the discussions were quite lively as a number of the participants had different opinions on how to write the structured abstracts and which journal the articles should be submitted to. For the questions and answers session, the responses also were lively but not as many strong opinions.

The workshop was conducted in a lecture room with excellent audiovisual equipment. Similarly to the longer workshop, the food at the breaks and lunch was quite nice.

Other comments:

Thanks to Zina Sochirca for her assistance, the Director of the Free International University of Moldova Library. She was the initial contact in this country and worked quite hard to make sure that all three workshops were successful.

The State Medical and Pharmaceutical University Library has an informatics group that is headed by Silvia Ciubrei (the translator/instructor). This is the first institution that I have encountered with such a group. It is devoted to teaching computer and information literacy to the students and faculty. As of this academic year, instruction has been incorporated into the academic coursework – including use of HINARI and other electronic resources.

Several of these individuals assisted with the hands-on activities (and also served as translators). For this group, the workshop was partially a review, somewhat an update on material (redesigned PubMed) and also an introduction to other tools for using the resources (LIMITS, MY NCBI). I know that what has been learned will be incorporated into their searching and teaching.

I cannot emphasize more the importance of having the exercises translated to the local language. This was done at the Mongolia and Moldova workshops and was invaluable. As previously mentioned, this enabled the participants to complete the assignments in a timely and accurate fashion.

Finally, two of the workshops were with only librarians and all female. Both of these things were firsts. Apparently, the only male librarian in the country is the Director of the National Library.

On a personal note, I spent the week eating food that my grandmother cooked – blintzes, cabbage leaves stuffed with rice, pickled tomatoes, potato knishes, cooked beets, pastries, and what I called ‘vegetarian chicken soup.’ I suspect it was the same soup everyone got except mine did not have chicken in it. In 1910, my wife’s paternal grandparents emigrated from a city that was 150 miles north of Chisinau.

Mongolia Trip Report

Particulars of Workshops:

From October 3rd to October 10th 2009, three distinct workshops were conducted in Mongolia:

4) 3 hour ‘short course’ (October 5th ) conducted during the WHO/Country Office retreat – emphasized searching strategies, evaluation of health information on the Internet, searching PubMed using the redesigned website and ‘free full text’ options, MY NCBI and strategies for managing change. An overview of WHO information resources also was conducted by Julius Dizon, Administrative Officer from the Library, WHO/Western Pacific Region.

The course primarily was lecture format and the content was modified after talking with the participants. Many of them were physicians who manage WHO programs in Mongolia. These individuals were quite appreciative of the practical skills that we discussed particularly searching in PubMed and MY NCBI.

5) 4 day comprehensive HINARI workshop (October 6th - 9th) conducted at the Dornogobi Medical College, Sainshand, Mongolia. All components of a comprehensive HINARI workshop were taught - Searching Skills, Health Resources on the Internet, HINARI and Partner Publishers’ Websites, PubMed (including the redesigned format), MY NCBI and strategies for marketing HINARI resources and conducting workshops.

The workshop was conducted with Julius Dizon and with the assistance of Gan-Erdene Gantumur, a.k.a. Gana, as translator. A total of 25 individuals attended the workshop including academic and library staff from the Dornogobi College of Medicine and physicians from several regional hospitals and a Medical College from adjoining provinces. At least six individuals registered their institutions for HINARI.

We also conducted a one hour overview of HINARI that 50+ faculty and students of the Dornogobi Medical College attended.

The most difficult task was the limited English language skills of the participants although there may be some who understood and read more than initially acknowledged. Without the assistance of Gana, the workshop would not have been as successful. His computer literacy and excellent knowledge of English were invaluable. Note – the Mongolian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet.

Three other factors helped significantly in making this a successful workshop. The Internet access probably was the best from all the workshops I have conducted in HINARI eligible institutions (the satellite dish was right outside the window of the computer lab) and the IT staff was very helpful.

The participants also had very good baseline computer skills. This perhaps is a function of the Internet access at this College although the participants from other institutions also seemed to be knowledgeable.

The other key factor was that several essential documents and all the exercises had been translated into Mongolian. This enabled the participants to complete the assignments efficiently and effectively.

Julius and I also visited the College’s Library that definitely needs automation. We are in the process of writing a report assessing the current situation and outlining the ways to go forward.

6) A 2 ½ hour 'short course' was conducted (October 10th) for 8 Ministry of Health physicians who are students in a WHO-sponsored Field Epidemiology program. The course covered the basics of searching strategies, evaluating health information on the Internet, HINARI and the redesigned PubMed site plus MY NCBI.

The timing of this course was excellent as this was at the beginning of their program and the information access skills will be of use throughout the year-long curriculum. All the participants have their own laptop and the training facility has an excellent Internet link.

Other comments:

There is a possibility of further training in Mongolia using funds from the WHO Country office. The training would be for the Field Epidemiology program and would focus on the ‘authorship skills’ material, a 4-day HINARI workshop at a Medical College in the north and a ‘short course’ for Ministry of Health staff.

The WHO retreat was held in the Terelj National Forest that is a striking mountain district, about an hour-drive from Ulaanbaatar. The Dornogobi Medical College is located at the outskirts of the Gobi Desert and is 10 hours by train (a 1970’s Russian-built train) from Ulaanbaatar. It is to the southeast of the capitol and somewhat warmer. Mongolia is a meat-centric country but, for the vegetarian, the staff at the Medical College made potato and carrot dumplings and mushroom soup. Being near the border of China, lots of fresh vegetables are imported. We did encounter snow flurries once but it was the day of our departure from Ulaanbaatar.

Jamaica Workshop Report

Particulars of Workshop:

From February 22nd to February25th 2010, the E-Library Training Initiative conducted a ‘National Health Information/HINARI’ workshop at the University of West Indies/Mona Hopwood Computer Laboratory. The workshop was a collaborative effort of HINARI, University of West Indies/Mona, Librarians Without Borders® and PAHO.

Over 40 individuals attended all or part of the four day workshop. This included 10 librarians, 5 Ministry of Health staff members and 25+ physicians, lecturers and researchers primarily from UWI. Besides UWI, participants came from clinical settings and research institutes in the Kingston area and a regional hospital located in Montego Bay. This is the largest number to attend a workshop that I have conducted. The average attendance per session ranged from 27 to 38 as some of the physicians, lecturers and researchers had to attend to other responsibilities.

The Hopwood Computer Laboratory had ample computers and seating for the large number of participants. Also, the Internet access/bandwidth was reliable and sufficiently robust to quickly download PDF files. All the breaks and lunches were served in an adjacent meeting room - in a well done manner. The planning and instructing at this workshop was a collaborative effort between Lenny Rhine and Swarna Bandera, the Director of the UWI Medical Library.

Uniqueness of this Workshop:

Jamaica is a Band 2 country and the publishers have sizeable limits on what material is available. The University of West Indies/Mona is the institution that subscribes to HINARI by paying the $1000 annual cost. Also, this University has access to approximately 550 e-journals via a Science Direct consortia agreement plus EBSCO HOST and other subscriptions. The University also has access to titles from HighWire Press - which defines Jamaica as a middle income country – and various open access sources. Due to this arrangement, the instructional material was tweaked - as the participants needed to understand how to access the whole range of available resources. Consequently, HINARI and PubMed were taught somewhat differently than would be done in a workshop at a Band 1 country.

Several new modules were developed for this workshop – Information Literacy and WHO Resources – plus the Evidence-based Practice module was taught for the first time. Also, Mrs. Bandera conducted an overview of Publishing Trends and how this has impacted on the UWI environment plus a discussion of Research Ethics that was added to the Authorship Skills material.

Observations:

The participants had excellent computer/searching skills and consequently their needs were on a higher level. Many of the nuances of PubMed (e.g. MY NCBI, Limits) and HINARI were stressed. At times, the participants commented on what they preferred and contributed to the discussion of the instructional material.

The ‘Authorship Skills’ material was of particular interest to the participants as many of them are in an institution that ‘encourages’ publishing. Several participants commented how they would use the material for their post-graduate students or share it with their colleagues. Ditto for the ‘Evidence-based Practice’ module.

The participants also were quite interested in the ‘Health Information on the Internet’ and ‘Evaluating Internet Information/Searching Strategies’ modules. They became aware of gateways and portals that link to ‘gray literature’ from numerous inter-governmental and non-governmental agencies. This material would be of use in their teaching and clinical activities.

One of the byproducts of the workshop was considerable networking by the participants. Several academic departments became aware of the UWI DSpace project (http://dspace.mona.uwi.edu/) and plan to participate. Also, the Ministry of Health staff learned about using Moodle (open source course management system) for continuing education. They have begun to communicate with staff from the Pacific Open Learning Health Network, an organization that has a Moodle server for this purpose.

The overall evaluations were very favorable (averaging 4.54 out of 5). This is quite positive with the number of participants and the range of their skills. Many found the hands-on activities, information gained and support material to be the strengths of the sessions. Several did note that some of the presentations and exercises were somewhat elementary for their skill level.

Lenny Rhine
E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator
E-mail: rhinel@ufl.edu

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Opens Global Office

2010-04-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Jill Byerly Mayer

The Health Sciences Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is proud to announce the opening of a global office at the library. HSL Global will promote and develop the library’s capacity to serve as a global health information leader. The office will assure that the library’s collections and services evolve to meet expanding information needs created by the greater University’s commitment to global health education and growing involvement in health research around the globe. The office will seek partners to help explore creative ways to assure that health knowledge becomes more universally available. Mellanye Lackey, MSI, will be the founding director of the new office. Mellanye, a member of the International Cooperation Section of MLA, will speak about the library’s new office at the Librarians Without Borders panel discussion at MLA'10

Jill Byerly Mayer
Health Sciences Library
UNC Chapel Hill
Email: jbmayer@email.unc.edu

Patricia A Auflick New Position

2010-04-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Patricia has accepted a position as Library Director for the Casper College library in Casper, WY beginning July 1. Casper College is a community college with about 4,000 students. It also offers some four year programs in conjunction with the University of Wyoming. Casper is her home town so she is pleased to be going back to her roots.

Patricia A. Auflick
Arizona Health Sciences Library
Email: pauflick@ahsl.arizona.edu

Presentations of Mindy Robin-Paquette

2010-04-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

Mindy Robinson-Paquette (ICS Membership Chair and Convener, Library Marketing SIG) presented a poster at the MLA Tri-Chapter Meeting “3 By the Sea” in Atlantic City, NJ October 2009. http://3bythesea.pbworks.com/FrontPage

Entitled “Successful Outreach: Collaboration through creative services, resulting in the development of a satellite library”, the poster and abstract was one of several that described new and ongoing outreach services in hospital, academic and this corporate library.

An article describing this portion of the tri-chapter meeting also appears in National Network, a publication of the Hospital Libraries Section/MLA (p.15) http://www.hls.mlanet.org/newsletter/NN34(2)E.pdf

Ongoing interest in the topic has led to being asked to write a full-length article for Medical Reference Services Quarterly , explaining the process of identifying the customer group, initiation of the outreach and how it evolved into a full-fledged satellite library in 1.5 years.

Mindy also served as panel moderator and presenter for "Best Practices: Internal Marketing and Outreach" at the Spring meeting of the Pharmacy & Health Technology Division/SLA in Philadelphia, PA on April 13, 2010. The presentations, including a High vs. Low ROI Activities (Return On Investment) will be posted on the Division's webpage at http://units.sla.org/division/dpht/meetings/spring2010/spring2010main.shtml. If you are unable to access the documents, please contact Mindy directly at mindy.robinson-paquette@sanofi-aventis.com .

Mindy Robinson-Paquette
sanofi-aventis US, Inc.
Email: Mindy.Robinson-Paquette@sanofi-aventis.com

Message from the Chair

2010-02-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

We have been shocked by the Haitian earthquake. The disaster has been compounded by the effects of poverty to create a terrible tragedy. The outpouring of donations, and the mobilization of health care professionals at many of our institutions, is heartening in addressing the immediate needs. Long term infrastructure will have to be rebuilt stronger than before, and the MLA will be a part of that response in helping to rebuild libraries and provide quality health information through the MLA Medical Library Disaster Relief Fund.
ICS has already made a donation to the fund for Haitian relief, and I encourage you to consider making a donation to the fund, especially as the news out of Haiti begins to recede in the press.
I am glad ICS members, immediately in the wake of the news out of Haiti, began asking how we could respond as a section. Clearly, much more will be needed in the months and years to come, and through cooperation with our international colleagues I know we will continue to contribute to solutions and respond to tragedies.

Best regards,

Daniel Dollar

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

2009-10-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

Moving Forward

How can we strengthen the section? What are the projects and initiatives needed to fulfill the opening sentence found on our website? It reads:

ICS provides opportunities for participation in international cooperation projects, promotes awareness of international issues, provides a mechanism for addressing and responding to the needs of international members, and fosters communication in the international library area.

Although these are good questions, as someone working in a library with reduced budgets and staffing, as many of us are, I have to wonder where there is time for additional professional activities.

Yet we are still well off, especially when we consider the work environment of Grace Ajuwon, recipient of the 2009 MLA Librarians Without Borders (LWB) Grant. Grace’s library, the E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, used the grant, in part, to increase the number of computers with Internet access to seven, in support of a medical student body of more than 400. There is much we can learn from Grace and her colleagues, who work under difficult financial circumstances and strive to provide the best library services possible. I am also grateful to Min-Lin Fang from the UCSF Library who secured the donation from the FlySheet Med-Informatics Company that made the LWB Grant possible.

We have a lot to be proud of as a section. Even so, in this time of the Great Recession, what are the ideas you have to help build and further work of our section? And what can you contribute to give life to those ideas?

2010 LWB Grant

The International Cooperation Section is pleased to announce the 2010 MLA Librarians Without Borders® Grant. The grant supports health science librarianship in HINARI Access to Research Initiative eligible countries, by funding training opportunities and/or the purchase of materials that further the use of biomedical resources for education, research or clinical practice.

Completed applications must be received in the Medical Library Association office on or before December 1, 2009. Maximum funding under the grant is $5,000 (USD). For complete information and application instructions, http://www.mlanet.org/resources/global/lwb_mla_grant.html

Questions: please contact Daniel Dollar

Daniel Dollar
Yale University
Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
Email:daniel.dollar@yale.edu
Voice: (203) 785-2883

Report on International Partnership

2009-10-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

The Beginning of a Medical Library Partnership with Ukraine

Donna Flake and Diane Darrow of the SEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington are providing help and consultation to the Danylo Halytskyi Scientific Medical Library of the National Medical University in Lviv, Ukraine.

They traveled to Lviv, Ukraine in June 2009 to work with medical librarians. They visited the two locations of a Medical Library and met with the Deputy Director (Ludmilla Lutsky) along with Medical University officials. Furthermore, they provided training to the medical librarians, doctors, and medical residents.

(Photo: Donna Flake (middle) with Diane Darrow (far right) and the librarians from the Scientific Medical Library, Lviv, Ukraine)

Before the trip they requested and were very generously provided with STAT!Ref and Anatomy TV, as well as EBSCO’s Dynamed for this library for one year period. In addition, three other U.S. medical libraries, plus SEAHEC Medical Library, agreed to supply the Ukrainian medical library with 30 free electronic interlibrary loans. The four U.S. medical libraries are listed as below:
• Hirsh Health Sciences Library at Tufts University in Boston
• Houston Academy of Medicine Texas Medical Center Library in Houston
• Louisiana State University – Health Sciences Center – Shreveport Medical Library in Shreveport, LA
• Fales SEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington, NC

During Lenny Rhine’s excellent (and free) HINARI training at MLA in Honolulu in May 2009, Donna Flake met Triza Crittle from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. After each of the HINARI participants provided an overview of his/her work with international medical libraries, Triza told Donna that she wanted to help with their new partnership in Ukraine. Triza contacted Ukrainian Associations based in the U.S. to try to find one that would help to ship current medical books and journals to Lviv, Ukraine. The librarians from SEAHEC Medical Library are excited about Triza’s help with Ukraine.

(Photo: Donna Flake and Diane Darrow with the
librarians from the Scientific Medical Library, Lviv, Ukraine)

Donna and Diane also have contacted two other medical libraries in Ukraine for cooperation. The two Libraries include
the National Scientific Medical Library of Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine and Dnepropetrovsk State Medical Academy in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. They also arranged for these databases to be available to these two libraries:
• STAT!Ref
• Anatomy TV (through STAT!Ref)
• Dynamed (through EBSCO)

The medical librarians from Lviv certainly want them to return to Lviv for further cooperation. This partnership with the Medical Library in Lviv is really a “hybrid” partnership. This medical library partnership contains U.S. librarian leaders from NC and Nevada; Interlibrary loan support from Boston, Houston, Shreveport, and Wilmington; and database support from STAT!Ref and EBSCO.

Third visit to Moldova - The NC-Moldova Medical Library Partnership update on activities.

Donna Flake and Diane Darrow lead the NC-Moldova partnership. All the NC Academic Medical Libraries and some of the NC AHEC Libraries participate in the partnership.

Donna and Diane visited the Scientific Medical Library of the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University of Moldova in Chisinau, Moldova for ten days in June 2009. This was their third visit in four years.

They taught HINARI at the library to 23 health professionals including physicians, residents, medical students, medical school faculty members, medical librarians, and representatives from the Ministry of Health. Benefited from Lenny Rhine’s excellent “Train the Trainer” HINARI class at MLA in May 2009, Donna taught a HINARI class in Moldova, which was the first HINARI class of this magnitude taught in Europe. Silvia Ciubrei, Deputy Director of the Scientific Medical Library, advertised the class, registered participants, and created certificates of completion. Other classes were taught during their time in Moldova.
• Dynamed
• STAT!Ref
• Anatomy TV
• Evaluating Medical websites
• Friends of the Library Program
• The Reference Interview
• Marketing the Medical Library
• Integrating the Library’s Electronic Resources into the Electronic Medical Record

(Photo: Donna Flake with librarians and physicians from the Scientific Medical Library, Chisinau, Moldova. Donna taught HINARI to this group.)

While in Moldova they had several meetings with the Medical University’s President and several faculty members. They brainstormed how to improve the medical library and how to expand their partnership. One big accomplishment is that a course will be developed which integrates HINARI and medical database instruction into the curriculum of the Medical University. Prior to their visit, the librarians in Moldova advertised their databases but did not offer classes to the doctors, residents, medical students, and medical faculty members. Also the President of the Medical University has mandated that the medical library develop a marketing plan. This appears to be a direct result of the course they taught on marketing the Medical Library. Other accomplishments of the partnership include sending 20,000 current medical books and journals to this library. These were delivered in three shipments over a four year period. The books and journals were donated by the NC libraries, but the vast majority of the donations came from two medical libraries: the Laupus Health Sciences Library at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, and the SEAHEC Medical Library in Wilmington, NC. In addition, all the NC medical school libraries and all the AHEC libraries furnish electronic document delivery to the Moldova medical library.

During the visit, Donna Flake was invited to a dinner at the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Moldova. Unfortunately, Diane Darrow had to return to the U.S. before this dinner. In attendance at the Ambassador’s home was also the Minister of Health, the President of the Medical University, and others who had helped our Medical Libraries partnership.

The partnership has been very successful – more successful than they ever anticipated.

Partnership with the Medical Library of Latvia

From 1999-2003 International Cooperation Section had an international medical library partnership with the Medical Library of Latvia in Riga. As this MLA pilot project ended, SEAHEC Medical Library became the permanent sister library to the Medical Library of Latvia. They still are partners and communicate regularly. Latvian Welfare Society, based in Illinois, U.S., is so gracious and generous that they are willing to ships current medical books and journals to the Medical Library of Latvia with free of charge. These donations are from SEAHEC Library in Wilmington, Diane Olson from Loyola Health Sciences Library in Chicago, and several other U.S. libraries. In 2003 when the MLA sister libraries pilot project ended, forty U.S. and Canadian medical libraries were providing free interlibrary loans to the Medical Library of Latvia. Today, thirty of the original forty libraries continue to provide free electronic interlibrary loans.

Velta Poznaka, a longtime friend of Donna Flake and tremendously capable Director of the Medical Library of Latvia, expressed that economic problems were mounting for her library, just as it is happening in many libraries worldwide. Velta has had to decrease hours and staff and buy much less. “Fortunately,” she says,” it is a great comfort and support to have a sister library with much assistance from other U.S. medical libraries for interlibrary loans and gifts of current medical books and journals.”

Donna Flake
Robert M. Fales Health Sciences Library
SEAHEC / South East Area Health Education Center
Email: Donna.Flake@seahec.net

Flahiff Returns to Liberia to Teach Nursing Faculty and Students

2009-10-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

Thirty years ago I left Liberia after two satisfying years of Peace Corps service teaching math and science in a rural junior high school. This past May I returned for a much shorter stay of three and a half weeks to again share knowledge and learn more about Liberia first hand. This time I traveled with a group sponsored by the Friends of Liberia.

The Friends of Liberia is largely made of "returned" Peace Corps volunteers across the United States. Our group of 27 was divided into 3 teams: health/medical, teacher training and environmental. I was on board as the sole medical librarian with nine other team members including a physician, several nurses, mental health professionals, social workers and a laboratory technologist.

Our team worked at two different upcountry mission hospitals for a week each as guest lecturers in their nursing programs and consultants to the faculty and staff. My goal was to teach basic computer skills and how to find free, relevant reputable health/medical websites.

Both hospitals had Internet connections via satellite; however, electricity is only available for about nine hours each day at both hospitals. Fuel costs for the generators are high, and publicly available electricity is limited to only about ten square blocks in the capital.
Before traveling to Liberia, I collected more than 100 websites (in about 10 categories) and posted them on Delicious for the two hospital sites GantaHospital's Bookmarks and CurranHospital's Bookmarks.

I was hoping to refine them after consulting with faculty and staff at both sites.
Ganta Hospital had 2 computers in a small room that could seat 6 people and no means to show the Web live or through screen shots in a classroom. I presented an hour and half lecture to a nursing class of 30 students and separately to a group of 7 faculty. I focused on the rudiments of searching, Web site evaluation and Web based heath/medical information directories. Most of the students seemed alert and interested and took notes. Two sessions were planned for each class.

A nursing instructor, Professor Andrew Mambu, approached me at the start of the second session of the class for students and proposed that I use his laptop so that students (in groups of five) could view the basics of Web searching. I showed them the Delicious sites and a Web directory, stressing Web evaluation, links and navigation. Many were able to apply what they had learned in lecture and were extremely interested in the website content (disease information). They read as much as they could before their ten minutes was up. The Internet connection was slow but workable.  

Curran Hospital had a library (about the size of a reading room) with seven computers. The Internet connection at this site was very similar to what I experience at work. Teaching (similar in content to that at Ganta Hospital) was limited to 2 interested faculty members, a Peace Corps education volunteer on site who showed interest, and the hospital's librarian who had recently completed a 3-month library certificate.

One faculty member was having challenges with using a mouse while the other faculty member seemed adept at navigating a website. I was seated between them and did the best I could strike a balance between their learning levels. The Peace Corps volunteer asked for another meeting. I was happy to oblige, and we went over questions she had about good websites for specific classes the students were taking.
The level and length of training at both sites was limited for several reasons. Teaching schedules by members of our group were not made until on site and were entirely at the discretion of the hospital administration. Faculty, staff and students spend long days at the hospitals so Internet sessions were worked into their existing schedules and the classes conducted by other members of the health/medical team.

A few things probably would have made the experience more relevant for the staff and students. I could have made email contact with hospital administrators ahead of time and gauged expectations and Internet knowledge and experience among the students and staff.

Most staff and many students seemed to own cell phones. Not only could I have "advertised" office hours, but I could have made myself available for consultations by providing my cell phone number. That being said, those who were able to attend the presentations were given basic information on the Internet and, I hope, a good starting point for relevant websites.

Janice Flahiff
Mulford Library
University of Toledo/Health Science Campus
Email: Janice.Flahiff@utoledo.edu

Librarians Without Borders® Activities at the International Congress of Medical Librarianship

2009-10-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

Two ICML courses were provided at the International Congress of Medical Librarianship, Brisbane, Australia, from August 30 to September 4, 2009.

ICML Course – 'HINARI Training the Trainers'

Particulars of Workshop:

The 6-hour course was held on September 1, 2009. Eight individuals participated equally split between health librarians from the Australia and the USA and those from HINARI eligible institutions.

The industrialized countries participants primarily were from institutions that have linkages with HINARI eligible organization. For this group, the objectives were to train these individuals to teach graduate students or visitors from HINARI eligible institutions, conduct workshops at partner institutions and/or become facilitators for HINARI distance learning courses.

For those from HINARI eligible countries, the objectives were to increase their baseline skills and introduce new tools that would be of use – MY NCBI, MY Collections, EndNoteWeb, PubMed Limits, etc.

The course material emphasized on HINARI overview – general environment, background, eligibility/registration process, do's and don'ts, HINARI, which includes the Basics using the 'Short Course' (searching skills, HINARI website, Partner Publishers' websites, HINARI/PubMed, MY NCBI), training materials overview, funding options and a Questions and Answers session (teaching environment, potential participants, logistics of workshops, travel considerations, etc.).

Uniqueness of the Workshop:

The 'hands on' activities of this course focused on the unique details of
HINARI and HINARI/PubMed. (e.g. HINARI and Free Full Text tabs, MY NCBI with filters for saved searches). The Internet access was industrialized country level and, consequently, there were no bandwidth or electricity issues. The training room at the University of Queensland was the best facility that I have taught in.

The participants' skill level was high as many of these individuals who have experience teaching in health libraries (although different material) or were active users of HINARI. Regarding the instruction, the most difficult aspect was knowing the level of detail necessary for the participants. At times, more detail and hands on activities were requested.

The interaction between the HINARI users and those from organizations with linkages was excellent. The participants from industrialized countries got insight into the users’ environment and, in one case, two participants plan to develop a partnership.

Several of the participants from Australia already had groups that they plan to train. For example, Monash University has a M.A. Nursing program for individuals from Papa New Guinea.

The turnout was somewhat lower than expected perhaps because the location was quite a distance from the hotels and Congress venue. At the Congress itself, I was able to talk with several individuals interested in working with HINARI eligible institutions; hopefully, some of these individuals will follow up on what we discussed.

ICML Course – ‘Authorship Skills'

Particulars of Workshop:

The 6-hour course was held on August 31, 2009. Ten individuals participated split between health librarians from the Australia and the USA and those from HINARI eligible institutions.

The material is a supplemental HINARI course with the objective to facilitate publishing from HINARI eligible countries. The modules are relevant for participants from industrialized countries. For both groups, the objectives were to increase the participants’ skills for publishing and to give them resources to use in training at their institutions.

The course material included How to Publish a Scientific Paper, Frequently Asked Questions – discussion, Web-bibliography, Intellectual Property: Copyright/Plagiarism and Strategies for Effective Writing.

The course also contained numerous ‘hands on’ exercises including
developing structured abstracts, assigning keywords, reviewing Web-bibliography links, from abstracts and scope of journals, selecting journal to submit the article to and multiple choice, true false and open-ended questions for the Intellectual Property and Effective Writing modules.

Uniqueness of the Workshop:

This was the first day long-course devoted to the authorship skills material and two new modules were introduced (Intellectual Property: Copyright and Plagiarism and Strategies for Effective Writing). With the group being split between those from industrialized countries and HINARI eligible institutions, the course participants had a broad perspective and this enhanced the discussions.

Both groups felt that the material was relevant and useful for their own interests in publishing and also as training material. These comments were noted in the evaluations. Since two new modules were piloted, I received ‘feedback’ from the students that resulted in several corrections on the slides and revisions to the exercises.

This teaching experience reinforced that the modules are valuable and that time should be devoted to this material during the four-day HINARI workshops or as a one day additional course.

I also presented a paper titled ‘HINARI Access to Research Initiative:
Overview, Training and Impact’. As previously mentioned, several industrialized country participants who attended this presentation spoke to me about working with institutions in HINARI eligible countries.

Lenny Rhine
E-Library Training Initiative Coordinator
E-mail: rhinel@ufl.edu

As Old As Tomorrow

2009-10-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

Modern Buddhist monastics and healing arts practitioners of Tibet are increasingly engaging in a syncretism of sorts with interdisciplinary, foreign medical and scientific scholars and institutions- not unlike that which took place almost 1,400 years ago in central and upper Asia. By official invite of Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo (Chi: Qizonglongzan), physicians from China, India, Nepal, and Persia (Tagzig, Tajikistan) convened on the "Roof of the World" in a 7th century CE Pan-Asian symposia ('The Old Medical School') which produced the first collation of their collective medical knowledge translated into the Old Tibetan language: mijigpei-tsoncha (Fearless Weapon).

The 8th century CE Tibetan King Trisong Detsen hosted an international medical conference at the Sam-Ye Gompa (Tib: བསམ་ཡས, Samye Monastery) where he gathered together native Tibetan masters of secular and non-secular sciences, lotsawa (discipled translators), along with scholars and skilled practitioners of the medical systems of China, Dol-po, Greece, Guge, India, Kashmir, Mi-nyag, Mongolia, Nepal, Persia (Sogdiana), and East Turkistan. Post-conference proceedings resulted in a translated synthesization of the differing foreign medical traditions of Indian Ayurveda and Siddha, Græco/trans-Arabic/Persian Unani Tibbia, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), native curative therapies of Iron Age elders of the Qingzang Plateau, mi chos family folk medicine, and indigenous, pre-Buddhist root culture of Bönpo healers of the Himalayas.

[At its genesis, systematization of traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) was informed and influenced by earlier Bön belief systems, including those observed by Yungdrung, hermits, ascetics, and shamanic invokers existing outside of the monastic construct. Born from this mystifying matrix were medical and veterinary teachings (gSo rig mdo dgu 'bum bzhi, among others) attributed to founder Tönpa Shenrab Miwo, said to be transmissions transcribed in the Zhang Zhung sMar-yig script and transliterated into Tibetan. Scholarly disputation remains unresolved regarding recension and reconstruction of the earliest Bön tantric texts (otherwise known as the Four Volumes of the Healing Sciences) and the protohistory and epistemiology of Bön medicine vis-à-vis evolution of TTM as understood and acknowledged by mainstream Buddhists. Certain botanic medicaments denoted in Tibetan Materia Medica do bear archaic BCE names of Bön origin].

The amalgamated conference compilation of 156 chapters presented to King Detsen reconciled the foreign medical methodologies with Vairotsana's translated Four Medical Tantras said to be originally transmitted by Shakyamuni Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). Known as Gyud-Shi (Tib: rGyud-bZhi ,Chi: Sibu Yi Dian) – redacted by Tibetan royal court physician Yuthok Yonten Gonpo the Elder, supplemented later in the 12th century CE with revisions and the Yuthok Nyingthig Root Text and Commentary composition of Gongpo the Younger and his disciple Sumton Yeshe zung – these formed the classic, fundamental medical treatise of the Tibetan healing sciences system (gso ba rgba) upon which Gonpo the Elder's 'New Medical School' (Tanadug Institute) was founded in 762 CE.

Forward-thinking bhikkhuni, bhikkus, lamas, and geshes of this era are similarly engaged in scientific and medical knowledge exchange efforts with pre-meds, other undergrads, and faculty teams in fully- formalized East/West collaborations such as those between the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA) and Emory University.

Envisioned as a bridge of discourse between the "inner and outer sciences" by Emory College's Dean Robert Paul and the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), the Emory-Tibet Partnership (ETP) has yielded significant contributions to interdisciplinary scholarly communications, not the least of which is the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives' Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). Administered via the College's Program in Science and Society and by the Emory NeuroScience and Behavioral Biology Program, ETSI oversees curriculum development, training materials creation, and instructional model design in the implementation of comprehensive, standardized, sustainable coursework for monastics. Coalescing scientists, science educators, philosophers, physicians, scholars, and Buddhist practitioners from cross-disciplinary fields of biology, religion, physics, neuroscience, behavioral biology, psychiatry, and philosophy, ETSI's pedagogical approach is grounded in principles of problem-based, collaborative, experiential learning, with opportunities for discourse and discovery anchored by field work. The Science Curriculum for Tibetan Monastics introduce advanced-level concepts of cosmology, life sciences, and neuro/cognitive sciences, augmented by mathematics.

This summer, in a new ETSI collaboration, Emory faculty and students undertook an intensive Tibetan Mind/Body Sciences program in Dharamsala, India (residence of the Dalai Lama and location of LTWA). While devotees were lectured in math, philosophy, cosmology, biology, physics, and neuroscience, University students simultaneously explored Buddhist contemplative ethos of mind/body medicine, subtle anatomy, and science of the spirit. Several pre-meds were introduced to aspects of ethnobotany and medical anthropology while collecting botanical samples during their Himalayan field trips – just as the ancients sought out pharmaceuticals and adapted uses and laws of the Materia Medica (Menze-rigpa) based upon regional resources provided by the landscape of the Land of Snow.

(Photo: © Ajay Pillarisetti. Courtesy of Emory-Tibet Partnership, Emory)

LTWA and ETSI expanded the Sager Science for Monks Program (which included introductory biophysics, math, computer workshops) and now offers the Sager Science Leadership for Tibetan Monastics (SSLTM) program. This June past, LTWA organized the 1st Science Exhibition by Monastics, presenting interactive projects of ETSI and SSLTM participants. Students from Drepung Monastery presented distinctions and correlations between Buddhist texts (San: Abhidharma-kosha, Tib: chos mngon pa mdzod) which expound on sense power and perception of manifested phenomena in relation to sound source, vibrations, waves, and the mechanism of hearing. Fellow truth-seekers from the same Drepung Monastery discerned dialectical challenges to prevailing "big bang" and quantum fluctuation theory within the cosmologic precepts as taught in the Kala-chakra (དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ, time-wheel, time-cycles) texts - yet discovered agreement with lesser-established modern scientific theories of multiple universes and space particles within the same tantric texts. The Zhang-Zhung group from Menri Monastery demonstrated scientific properties and nature of light in accordance with Dzogchen teachings and tantric texts within the Bön tradition. Inspired by Mendeleev's periodic table of chemical elements reduced to quantum particles, exhibitors from Saakya Dhongag Choeling Monastery generated a comparative Buddhist table of elements of subtle consciousness as constituent factors in the experienced world in keeping with the Abhidharmasamuchaya (Compendium of Higher Knowledge).

(Photo: ©Theresia Hofer. Courtesy of Wellcome Trust Images Collection.
Tibetan doctor with an old copy of a Gyu Shi ("Four Tantras") and a book on compounding medicines, which was composed by the previous generations of his medical family lineage and takes into account the locally available materia medica, Tibet Autonomous Region, China, 2003.
Released under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial No-Derivatives version 2.0 licence, England & Wales.)

Further contributing to cross-continental medical and scientific knowledge transfer, L TWA maintains world-wide manuscript exchange projects such as with the Gorky Scientific Library in Leningrad. It disseminates information on doctors and medical practitioners, medical history, and medicinal plants in its annual Tibetan Medicine publication. Under Directorship of LTWA's Geshe Lhakdor, its Research and Translation Department conducts intensive 3-months-long translation training sessions year-round (its current cycle ends this October). Its Seminar on Science Terminology (ཚན་རིག་གི་ཐ་སྙད་ཕབ་སྒྱུར་ཚོགས་འདུ) has generated a science textbook (produced by Emory University professors and Buddhist translators who hold degrees in life sciences, engineering and philosophy) in the Tibetan and English languages and a contemporary science glossary introducing into contemporary Tibetan lexicon concepts such as electromagnetism, climate change, cloning. LTWA produces Science Journal, a bi-annual Tibetan/English publication of translations of in-depth articles on neuro-biology, foundations of science, solar system, and meterology. Published quarterly, its Science Newsletter presents short articles, stories, and facts about science and science-related subjects. Section features include news, cosmology, physics, biology, scientists' biographies, and articles along the science/Buddhism paradigm. ETSI and ETP organized the 1st International Conference on Science Translation into Tibetan (ICSTT) at Emory this past March, expecting to further extend discourse while developing translational techniques in this developing field.

(Provided here is a list of LTWA desiderata in an appeal for donated titles for its Foreign Language Reference (in- and out-of-print), University Dissertations/Theses, and Journals collections. http://www.ltwa.net/Support_edited.html. Many medical and sciences works are denoted).

Driven by forces internal and external to Tibet (political exigencies," biomedicalization", medical tourism, epidemiological vicissitudes, insurance approval for complementary/alternative therapeutics, and health market globalization), momentum is rapidly accelerating in the worldwide adoption and adaptation of TTM. TTM formulae have been manufactured for years in Switzerland (covered by health insurance), Denmark, Lithuania, and Latvia. Evidence-based clinical studies, formalized coursework, controlled experiments in cancer, hepatitis, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular function, hypertension and other afflictions have been conducted by universities, medical schools, and hospitals of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Virginia, Texas, Miami, Toronto, Austria, Scotland, Italy, China, Russia, Japan, and elsewhere. As of this month, India's Medicine Central Council has accorded legal status to the TTM system. China has issued an international call for paper presentations at its March 2010 TTM conference. "Biomedicization" and modernization of TTM is not welcomed by all, won't be a cure-all, nor necessarily will it be cohesive or even comprehensive, and vigilance should be maintained with a view towards mutual benefit. But as ailing, aging populations face the frontiers of tomorrow, we'll all be drawing from the waters of very ancient wells. Ostensibly, the way forward is back.

LaVerne Poussaint
Plutonic Research & Knowledge Teams Intl (PRAKTI)
Email: laverne.poussaint@deepmed.net

Medical Spanish Programs and Courses

2009-10-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

In the 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” Butch and Sundance and Etta moved to Bolivia and were unsuccessful in robbing a bank because they couldn’t give instructions in Spanish. For example, “Raise your hands” and Back against the wall” and Give me the money” and Where’s the safe? Open it.” Etta teaches them phonetic Spanish so they could give the instructions during their next bank robbery, but they didn’t practice saying the phrases aloud. And, Etta reminds them that their “line of work requires a specialized vocabulary”.

There are many occupational Spanish programs and courses in the U.S.. The most common are legal, medical, and business. This article will describe several programs and courses of medical Spanish which I have connections with. They are offered by college departments of Spanish, schools of nursing, and the private companies that offer community education courses on college campuses.

Command Spanish provides occupational Spanish language training materials and programs for the workplace. These classes require no prior knowledge of Spanish. They try to eliminate grammar instruction. Beginners use a phonetic system to allow immediate control of Spanish pronunciation. One-way communication techniques are used in order to give commands and statements that require only a “yes” or “no’ response or a “screen question” that requires only a plausible response.

At Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas Command Spanish is offered as continuing education. This CE program is called “Survival Spanish in the Workplace.” The instructor lived and was educated in the United States and Mexico and trained by Command Spanish. Classes can be offered on campus or any location that has necessary facilities, such as a computer, a projector, a white board, chairs and tables. Students need only a pencil or pen to make notations in a manual which includes 2 CDs. The instruction includes a medical vocabulary and controlled situations and choral response and modeling and role-playing and situation response. You can read more about the CE program at TWU at www.twu.edu/ce/Survival-Spanish.asp and Command Spanish at www.commandspanish.com.

The University of Texas at Austin was the first university to require medical Spanish in the nursing program. This required course instituted by the UT School of Nursing is titled “Spanish for Health Care Professional.” This course also focuses on conversational Spanish. All class activities and course materials are linked to nursing practice. This course will help nurse to communicate with Spanish-speaking patients. Nursing students will learn to converse in Spanish using medically related expressions. This approach will enable students to articulate and respond to patient concerns and be able to conduct basic interviews in Spanish. Students will also learn cultural and social factors that influence practitioner-patient communication with Latinos.

The textbook used in the UT School of Nursing program is titled “An Introduction to Spanish for Health Care Workers: Communication and Culture.” This textbook is designed for students with little or no formal background in Spanish. It uses readings, exercises, interactive activities, Spanish medical vocabulary, and colloquial terms needed most by health care professionals. And, the textbook contains cultural notes that explain customs and communicative styles of Latinos. In the new third edition there is a DVD video featuring interactions between a family and health care providers. There is a companion Web site at yalebooks.com/medicalspanish which provides self-correcting quizzes and links to medical and language sites.

Along with the textbook the other course materials consist of children’s books, articles about Latinos and health care, a Web site, and dialogs. The chapters of the textbook are based on health and medical themes and these themes are linked to the children’s books such as “My body mi cuerpo” by Rosa-Mendoza because of its illustrations and repetitive use of the language. Each chapter has dialogs related to tasks that nurses typically perform. You can read more about the text at http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300124262

The School of Nursing at the University of Texas at Austin also offers a study abroad course in Guadalajara, Mexico titled “Spanish for Health Care Professionals.” This program offers students the opportunity to practice Spanish in clinical settings. The first of the two courses is Independent Study of Nursing along with a Spanish language course. Students will take placement test to be registered in one of ten levels of Spanish instruction. In addition to the Spanish language instruction students will do research and make tours of clinics and hospitals. In the second course, “Spanish for Health Care Professionals”, students will learn vocabulary and phrases for health care settings. Although the students will not perform nursing procedures, they will observe patients in clinical settings, explore and research community resources for health, learn about Mexico’s system for health care, and examine social and cultural beliefs of Latinos.

The department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin offers a course for pre-medicine students. The title of the course is “Spanish for Health Care Professionals/Pre-Med.” This course is designed to build fluency in both written and spoken Spanish so that the future health care professional can communicate effectively with the Spanish-speaking patient who doesn’t speak English. The primary goal of this course is advanced oral proficiency. The prime objectives of the course are efficiency and clear diction. All assignments will involve translation, scholarly reading and writing in order to build vocabulary and improve reading comprehension and above all improve grammar usage. In order to develop professional speaking and writing skills the students will be given assignments that are in line with patient care. To learn more about oral proficiency take a look at http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/ These Spanish proficiency exercises were developed by Dr Orlando Kelm who also developed the medical Spanish program, the first in the nation, for the School of Nursing at the University Of Texas at Austin.

The textbook for this Spanish for Pre-meds course is titled “A Su Salud: Spanish for Health professionals.” The textbook is part of a multimedia package that includes the textbook and 2 DVDs and a CD-ROM and video clips to work with vocabulary and grammar and speaking and understanding and reading and writing skills. The DVDs contain a 96 minute telenovela drama so students can hear authentic Spanish spoken by native speakers in a variety of accents and learn more about the culture of their Hispanic patients.

In addition to improving and practicing the four language skills using the multimedia package, students will listen to medical tutorials and read medical literature and acquire a select medical vocabulary and construct phrases and design questions to ask patients. Students will use this medical vocabulary and phrases and questions to write an original script of a dialogue between doctor and patient. Students will also use academic Spanish to write essays relevant to medical topics and short book and movie reviews of prominent medical issues and current events that affect the medical community. This program is compatible with Blackboard and WebCT. Ancilliary materials are available at yalepress.yale.edu/salud. This multimedia package was developed by health science professionals and Spanish professors at the University of North Carolina (http://salud.unc.edu ).
The University of Texas Pan-American in Edinburg, Texas has created the first academic minor in Medical Spanish designed specifically for heritage language learners of Spanish. The instructional program aims to develop the skill sets of medical interpreting and translation and medical terminology and patient interviewing skills that future health care providers can use to improve communication with Spanish speaking patients. The curriculum is designed to raise awareness about the language issues that intersect with access to health care among Spanish speaking patients. These students will experience evidence-based learning experiences at two local community health centers. The aim is to develop a leadership for the health care professions that will increase access to health care services for Latino patients and engender excellence in the quality of services and make a positive impact on the health outcomes Latino populations.

The course Intermediate Spanish for Health professions students will improve their language skills in two different ways. They will practice the art of medical interpreting and study medical terminology in Spanish. Their general proficiency in conversational Spanish will improve with a systematic study of Spanish words and grammar. By reading cultural and scientific texts students will gain an awareness of the profound impact that language barriers play in the health of the Spanish-speaking linguistic minority in the United States. The course bibliography includes the Merck manual, a family medical encyclopedia and the PAHO’s Health in the Americas. By the end of the semester students will have at least an advanced low proficiency in conversational Spanish, be able to interpret clinical encounters, understand the basic terminology of anatomy, physiology and the structure of words including tense, mood and aspect, and have an understanding of the primary public health concerns related to language barriers and limited English proficiency. This course is also a multi-platform course that uses online instructional tools. UTPA uses the Blackboard interface for its online courses. For more information about this course and the powerpoint presentations, please go to the webpage http://portal.utpa.edu/utpa_main/daa_home/coah_home/mod_lalit/medspan_home/teachers_home/SPAN2317_home.

The Spanish department of the University of Texas Pan-American also offers a senior seminar Spanish 4348 Sociolinguistics and Latino Health. This seminar examines the relationship between language, health care, and health among Spanish speakers in the United States. Since limited English proficiency affects the access to health information this course examines measures in place to improve the transmission of health information across language boundaries. You can read about this course and view the powerpoint presentations at http://portal.utpa.edu/utpa_main/daa_home/coah_home/mod_lalit/medspan_home/teachers_home/SPAN4348_home. By the end of the semester students of the senior seminar Spanish 4348 will be required to understand the major language issues that arise in health service delivery and the impact of language diversity on the health status of the Spanish speaking minority in the United States. Students must also understand the protections and entitlements afforded to minority language speakers in the U.S. and understand the major initiatives to improve health services for LEP (limited English proficient) patients.

This course is a combined lecture and study group format and it will use online instructional technologies. Each group will explore one illness or condition that affects the Latino community. They will provide a synopsis of the biology and etiology of the illness or condition in Spanish, the epidemiology of the illness or condition, the availability of information on the illness or condition in Spanish, a survey of bilingual providers in the area that treat the illness or condition, and an assessment of the impact of information availability in Spanish on the prevalence of the illness or condition within the Spanish speaking community in the Rio Grande Valley.

The two textbooks used in this course are part of the Mexican American Experience cluster of modular texts that deal with a single topic concerning the Mexican American population. The titles used in this course are “Mexican Americans and Health: !Sana, Sana!” by Adela de la Torre and Antonio Estrada and “Mexican Americans and Language: Del dicho al hecho” by Glenn Martinez. Dr Martinez is the project manager of the Medical Spanish for Heritage Learners program at the University of Texas Pan-American located in Edinburg, Texas. For more information about this program and contact information about Dr Glenn Martinez, click the link
http://portal.utpa.edu/utpa_main/daa_home/coah_home/mod_lalit/medspan_home/contactus.

These medical Spanish programs and courses help the future health care professional to offer better service to patients. In addition to a textbook or workbook they all use today’s technology. Some courses emphasize grammar. Others require no previous knowledge of Spanish and little emphasis on grammar. One course teaches the learner how to get a one or two word response from the patient. Some of the courses teach grammar and the four language skills in order to have a conversation with the patient. And, all the programs and courses teach the specialized vocabulary of medical Spanish.

James Phillips
South Texas College
Email: phillips@southtexascollege.edu

Report on IFLA Annual Meeting

2009-10-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

The IFLA held their annual meeting, August 22-27, 2009 in Milan Italy. It was a very successful conference. The IFLA web page (http://www.ifla.org) states: The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession.

My primary role has been to represent MLA on the IFLA Science and Technology Libraries Section of IFLA which has been extremely interesting during my five years. I have been Chair of the Section’s Standing Committee for the past two years but did not renew for another four years. Our new chair is Janet Webster from the Oregon State University.

The Science and Technology Libraries Section meets one day prior to the IFLA conference and once again during the meeting. Our primary activity is selecting the speakers for our open session at the annual meeting. This year the theme was “Open access to science and technology research worldwide: strategies and best practices”. We selected four fabulous speakers who were very compelling.
You may view the papers presented at: http://www.ifla.org/annual-conference/ifla75/programme2009-en.php#tuesday and go to #142.

The Agricultural Libraries is sponsored by the Science and Technology Section and their program was “Worldwide trends in open access to agricultural information”. Their program can be view at http://www.ifla.org/annual-conference/ifla75/programme2009-en.php#tuesday, #101.

This year we were asked to co-sponsor the Geography and Map Libraries along with the Division of Special Libraries. Their excellent program was “Cultural heritage preserved: the role of digital maps” and can be viewed at #121.
To our wonderful surprise, LaScale prepared a special program for the IFLA attendees. The opera house was breathtaking and the opera was lovely and will remain a wonderful memory.

The Science & Technology Libraries Section enjoyed a study tour to Museo Nazionale della Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (http://www.museoscienza.org/). Our tour guides showed us may facets of this enormous museum and everyone enjoyed our visit.

Jill Byerly Mayer
Health Sciences Library
UNC Chapel Hill
Email: jbmayer@email.unc.edu

ICS Task Force Formed to Investigate Job Exchange Program with the Korean Medical Library Association

2009-10-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

ICS Chair Daniel Dollar has created a special task force charged with conducting a thorough feasibility study of a possible job exchange program with the Korean Medical Library Association. Members of the ICS Job Exchange Task Force are:

Beth Whipple, Research Informationist/Assistant Librarian, Ruth Lily Medical Library, Indianapolis
Charles Greenberg, Coordinator, Curriculum and Research Support, Program Development and Research, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale

Dav Robertson, Library Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park

Fred Pond, Biomedical Librarian, Department of Community and Family Medicine, Dartmouth College
Brian Bunnett, Director of Library and Education Services, Health Sciences Center, University of New Mexico

The task force will complete its work in December of this year and present its recommendation to the MLA Board immediately thereafter.

Brian Bunnett
Chair, ISC Job Exchange Task Force
Email: bbunnett@salud.unm.edu

Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Library “Reorganized”

2009-10-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Library, Piscataway, New Jersey, will be "reorganized" under the Information Technology Department. All library staff are being laid off as of Oct. 9, 2009. The library will not be staffed by library professionals and will not support a print collection.

The library director, Zana Etter, is the librarian who has been dedicated to furthering medical information service to the faculty and students for twenty two years. Once her membership to MLA ends, unless she finds a position as a medical librarian, she will no longer be involved with MLA or ICS. She has enjoyed working with and knowing all of the ICS members, especially Donna Flake.

Her email after Oct. 9 will be zanaett77@yahoo.com.

‘Professional Development for Librarians’ Presentation at MLA 2009 conference

2009-05-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Pam White will be speaking on 'Professional Development for Librarians in Kenya: Planning a Workshop' at the Emerging Issues in Global Health session at 1:00 on Tuesday, May 19 at the MLA 2009 conference. The talk is intended to inspire librarians who are interested in assisting with professional development in developing countries. Unfortunately, this talk is scheduled at the same time as the ICS-sponsored session, Issues in Japanese Health Sciences Librarianship. How often do you have the opportunity to learn about Japanese Health Sciences Librarianship?! You are therefore encouraged to attend the ICS-sponsored session and chat with Pam informally at the conference if you are interested in the topic of her presentation.

HINARI/Internet Resources Course at MLA 2009 Conference

2009-05-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

Course Title: HINARI/Internet Resource for Health Information Professionals: Training the Trainers.
Date/Time: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 11:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.
Credit: 4 MLA Contact Hours/No
Registration Fee
Instructor: Lenny Rhine, coordinator - MLA//Librarians without Borders ® ‘E-Library Training Initiative’

HINARI (http://www.who.int/hinari/), a collaborative World Health Organization/Participating Publishers’ project, enables researchers, practitioners and students in low-income countries to gain access to over 6,200 biomedical and health journals. Many MLA institutions have linkages with organizations that are eligible for this program (http://www.who.int/hinari/eligibility/en/).

This workshop will be geared toward MLA 2009 participants with linkages to eligible institutions – to facilitate the training of trainers and ultimately further the use of HINARI and other Internet based resources at the partners’ organizations. Also eligible would be any individuals from HINARI qualified countries who are attending the conference.

The course structure will be approximately 50% lectures and 50% hands on/computer-based activities. It will highlight the key features of HINARI and related training material so that the participants are able to instruct individuals from HINARI eligible institutions. Also reviewed will be potential sources for funding of training activities.

After completion of the course, participants would be able train graduate students from HINARI eligible countries, those visiting their home institutions, or during instructional sessions at the partners’ sites.

Mexican Folk Medicine Programs

2009-05-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

Submitted by James Phillips

are 254 counties in the state of Texas. 500,000 out of 3,000,000 of the migrants and seasonal farm workers who live in the United States reside in Texas. And, 200,000 of the 500,000 migrants and seasonal farm workers who live in Texas reside here in Hidalgo county which is located in tropical deep south Texas on the Texas/Mexico border.

The migrant health care program of South Texas College is now called “The Center of Excellence for Health Professions Development”. All the courses offer continuing education (CE) credits. The Texas Nurses Association has approved all the courses for Continuing Nursing Education (CNE). And, the Center was certified by the Texas Department of State Health Services to provide continuing education to licensed professional. You can read more about the Center at http://nah.southtexascollege.edu. Scroll down toward the bottom of the page and on the left click on “Milagros: Center of Excellence Health Professionals.”

The Center also offers several activities that include: onsite workshops, an annual conference, presentations at state and national conferences, and a web site containing a virtual library of resources (nah.southtexascollege.edu/Milagros).

The continuing education online courses are offered to healthcare and social services providers. The instruction is provided by expert professionals. The courses are delivered using Blackboard and Horizon Wimba. These are the delivery methods used by the South Texas College Distant Education Department. The curriculum in migrant health is available to all individuals or organizations using web-based online platforms.

The curriculum are adapted to a self-paced format. The course titles are 1) Culturally Competent Healthcare 2)Ethical and legal Issues in Health Care of Migrant Populations 3) Grassroots Approach to Migrants’ Health Issues 4) Health Care Alternatives Used by Special Populations 5) Introduction to Migrant Health 6) Health of the Migrant Child 7) Mental Health and the Migrant Family.

The course “Health Care Alternatives Used by Special Populations” is offered online by Loretta Ortiz y Pino, MD and Elena Avila, RN,MSN/Curandera. Loretta has her own private practice in pediatrics in rural northern New Mexico. Elena is a Psychiatric Nurse and specializes in psychotherapy. She is the author of “Woman who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health.” In this course the Loretta and Elena introduce the healthcare provider to the unique health issues of migrant adults and children growing up along the US-Mexico border that use Curanderismo along side modern medicine. This courses covers the tools used in spiritual ceremonies called “limpias”, folk diseases, ways to include Curanderismo with modern medicine, and the careful investigation and analysis of the cultural practices found in Hispanic communities in order to interact with clients of Hispanic/Native American ancestry.

One of my pages is titled “El consultorio.” This is a glossary of expressions and words in Spanish pertaining to health and medicine. They were collected from recent interviews in deep south Texas and northeastern Mexico. Many are home remedies and cultural beliefs. This page can be found in the “Virtual Library” section of the Milagros Center of Excellence in Migrant Health at http://www.southtexascollege.edu/milagros/virtual_library.html
When migrants and seasonal farmworkers and other living along the border don’t have access to modern medicine they resort to remedies of curanderos.

I’ve received many responses from hospital librarians stating that the collection of expressions and words found in “el consultorio” have been very useful because often someone from this area will seek medical help at the hospitals and they will use some of the expressions and words. For example, a common expression is “sangre de change” or “monkey blood” to refer to “iodine.” Two common expressions I didn’t include yet in “El consultorio” are “ajo” or garlic and “teleraña” or cobweb. After an insect sting it’s common to rub a slice of garlic on the insect sting area to relieve the pain. And, for cuts it common to rub cobweb on the cut to stop the bleeding.

A medical librarian wrote a few years ago and asked why I was suggesting this list of remedies and why the ones who use them don’t just go to a doctor’s office or clinic to seek medical help. If migrants and seasonal farm workers and others who don’t have health insurance could afford medical care and modern medicine, they wouldn’t have to use these home remedies and folk beliefs and visits to curanderos.

There is a summer program pertaining to curanderismo at the University of New Mexico. The title of the program is “Traditional Medicine Without Borders: Curanderismo in the Southwest and Mexico.” The instructor is Dr Eliseo “Cheo” Torres. Dr Torres is the Vice President of Student Affairs at the University of New Mexico. This summer course provides information on the history, traditions, rituals, herbs, and remedies of a folk healing tradition called Curanderismo that is used in the Southwest United Sates and Mexico. The required texts are “Curandero: A life in Mexican Folk Healing” and “Healing with Herbs and Rituals: A Mexican Tradition” which were written by Dr Eliseo Torres and “Woman Who Glows in the Dark” which was written by same Elena Avila who is one of the instructors of the online course offered by the Center of excellence at South Texas College.

This two week course allows students to share knowledge about the art and science of healing. The students include traditional healers of all backgrounds, western medicine practitioners and members of the public. At the 7th UNM summer Curanderismo Progam about 20 of the students are curanderos who come from Mexico. They also share their skills and knowledge. Elena Avila, RN, who lives in Albuquerque conducted a class in psychic healing. Other classes demonstrated energetic healing methods. A physician made a presentation on healing through ceremony. Local healers demonstrated holistic, traditional and integrative medicine. And, a Bolivian botanist gave a presentation on growing medicinal plants. You can read more about this summer program of curanderismo online at http://www.unm.edu/~market/cgi-bin/archives/003068.html and http://www.unm.edu/~ovpsa/curanderismo.html.

A note from the author: Dr Eliseo “Cheo” Torres is a friend and former college classmate. I invited him to the Nursing and Allied Health campus of South Texas College at the end of March. The title of his presentation was “Mexican Folk Medicine and Folk Beliefs: Curanderismo y yerbas medicinales”. The presentation begins with a definition of curanderismo along with its history and historical and geographic influences. He elaborates on the three levels of curanderismo: material and spiritual and mental. Eliseo mentioned several herbs and popular plants and showed examples and explained their uses. Then, he covered candle rituals and massage therapy and different folk beliefs. A few of the common folk beliefs mentioned were “mal de ojo” and “susto”. In addition to giving details of the UNM summer Curanderismo Program Eliseo finishes his presentation by metioning the three great curanderos: Dom Pedrito Jaramillo and Teresita and Niño Fidencio; and several modern curanderos. And, at the end of his presentation he asked students to come on stage and look at the examples he displayed for the presentation.

He gave permission to place his power point presentation on our school’s web page so that students and faculty could make handout copies of the power point presentation. You can view the short power point presentation by going to http://nah.southtexascollege.edu/ and scroll down to the bottom left hand side and click on “Mexican folk medicine and folk beliefs presentation.”

James Phillips
South Texas College
Email: phillips@southtexascollege.edu