Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Dual language library technology instruction

Transcript: http://bit.ly/1zjKLmN

Medical Librarianship & Technology for an International Audience
Thursday, January 29 2015
9:00pm Eastern/6:00 Pacific
Hosts Myriam Martinez-Banuelos and Michele Whitehead (@whiteheadml)

Join us on the Twitter #medlibs chat on Thursday at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern time for a 1 hour discussion. Never participated in a Twitter hashtag chat before? Check out this overview and come on in, we are a supportive community and welcome all newcomers.

Medical librarians have much to offer to international audiences when it comes to disseminating information about the profession, technology, and the evolving landscape of librarianship and medicine. The literature on diversity specifically in educational settings and professional practice can be a great starting point, but part of the learning and preparation can come from experience. The hosts developed and offered a course to library school students in Costa Rica on medical librarianship and technology. There were a number of challenges, both anticipated and surprising, but a few considerations for “best practices” emerged from this experience.

We will tackle some of the following questions:
  1. What are some relationship building approaches with an international group that assist in making connections early on to even get an opportunity to offer a class? 
  2. Once a class is scheduled, what are barriers to being able to offer instruction to a non-English speaking audience (some things to consider: time, resource availability and content, translation and interpretation, culture, medical knowledge, etc.) 
  3. Are there valuable lessons to be learned with this type of audience, as instructors, that can translate into other types of teaching?

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Meaningful Use and EHRs

Edit: Transcript http://bit.ly/1Bj7S1B 

Meaningful Use/Electronic Health Records Chat
Thursday, January 22 2015
9:00pm Eastern/6:00 Pacific
Host Robert Johnson (@re_johns)

Join us on the Twitter #medlibs chat on Thursday at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern time for a 1 hour discussion. Never participated in a Twitter hashtag chat before? Check out this overview and come on in, we are a supportive community and welcome all newcomers.

Continuing some of our previous week's discussion of what the medical library will be dealing with on the horizon over the next 5 years, Meaningful Use Stage 2 is here and Stage 3 is around the corner. Are you involved with your hospital or clinical entity's efforts to disseminate information to patients, or just wondering what Meaningful Use means? Join us and share your stories of helping patients become involved in their care!

Have information and links to share? Tweet on the #medlibs hashtag and we'll update the post to include them! 

Friday, January 9, 2015

Journal Club: Vital pathways for hospital librarians

Edit: Transcript http://bit.ly/1x845jD & Michelle Kraft's addendum http://bit.ly/1u9wMBc

#medlibs Journal Club Chat
Thursday, January 15, 2015
9:00 pm Eastern / 6:00 pm Pacific
Led by Tony Nguyen 

We're having a Journal Club discussion Thursday! #medlibs will have a chat related to the following article:

Holst R, Funk CJ, Adams HS, Bandy M, Boss CM, Hill B, Joseph CB, Lett RK. Vital pathways for hospital librarians: present and future roles. J Med Libr Assoc. 2009 Oct;97(4):285-92. doi: 10.3163/1536-5050.97.4.013. PubMed PMID: 19851493; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2759170. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19851493.

This article is older than I would like, but it’s a good way to reflect what the authors considered/envisioned then and consider what you think will occur in five years. The focus of the article is related to hospital librarians, but it’s possible to consider parts applicable to your institution.

Topic 1: In the six years since publication of this article, have you implemented or considered implementing anything the authors mentioned? Were there problems getting something off the ground?

Topic 2: What new trends came up that were unknown entities that your library tackled over the past six years that weren't mentioned?

Topic 3: Are there new things on the horizon that your library will need to address in five years?

Last year, one of our journal club topics touched upon this: http://medlibschat.blogspot.com/2014/02/journal-club-library-and-information.html. Please feel free to refer to that as well as the MLA Vital Pathways https://www.mlanet.org/resources/vital/index.html. This would benefit you in thinking about changes and relevance in medical, hospital, and health sciences libraries.

Join me Thursday as we discuss this article and think about sustainability, new ideas, and the future of hospital and medical libraries.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Sexual Education & Social Media Chat

Edit: Transcript http://bit.ly/1wzRqWm

Sex Ed On Social Media: Quirky or Quality?
Thursday, January 8 2015
9:00pm Eastern/6:00 Pacific
Host P.F. Anderson (@pfanderson)

Join us on the Twitter #medlibs chat on Thursday at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern time for a 1 hour discussion. Never participated in a Twitter hashtag chat before? Check out this overview and come on in, we are a supportive community and welcome all newcomers.

Librarians have a mixed reputation when it comes to sex. There is the whole meme of the "sexy librarian" contrasted with "shhhhh" and the "sarcastic librarian." As medical librarians, though, we need to be able and willing to research and discuss sexual expression related medical topics with accuracy, openness, and compassion. We have information resources, databases, strategies, and standards that may not be readily accessible to the general public.

Sexual health and sexual education is of critical importance in public health. Issues range from sexually transmitted diseases to sex abuse, gender equality to gender identity, family planning to sex worker support. In our work, we support individuals of all ages and genders, some with diagnoses that impact on their sexual expression or health. We also support professionals working with individuals, families, and communities. We all want to give people the best information to support the best personal decisions.

Then social media enters the information equation. People educate each other about matters of importance, media stars express opinions or tell stories that influence public attitudes and behaviors, and sex positive advocates such as Laci Green (probably the most prominent name of the sex positive movement) become a different type of media star. Public health professionals and medical librarians work so hard to create authoritative information resources, but then sometimes it seems as if that work misses the target audience, while non-professional messages reach them.

For medical librarians to work effectively in this realm, we need to ask ourselves several questions.

  1. What are some of the most popular sexual education and advocacy channels in social media? Are we aware of the most influential ones, and their messages? 
  2. Do popular sex ed resources promote helpful or hurtful messages? Are there sex ed social media channels we could share, or ones we should avoid recommending? 
  3. Do popular sex ed resources reach the audience we want to reach? Why? What can we learn from them? 

Links:

CDC. A Public Health Approach for Advancing Sexual Health in the United States: Rationale and Options for Implementation, 2011:http://www.health.state.mn.us/topics/sexualhealth/SexualHealthReport2011.pdf

Public Health Reports 2013 128 Suppl 1: Understanding Sexual Health http://www.publichealthreports.org/issuecontents.cfm?volume=128&issue=7

Laci Green:
- Web http://lacigreen.tv/
- Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/lacigreen
- Facebook https://www.facebook.com/officiallacigreen
- Tumblr http://lacigreen.tumblr.com/
- Twitter https://twitter.com/gogreen18
- Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/pub/laci-green/62/97a/72a