If you are thinking about putting your library or organization’s own Web site on Web-capable mobile devices like iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Treo, or Motorola’s RAZR, etc., here is a project you should look at: MIT Mobile Web (http://mobi.mit.edu/about/).

This project gives you a great sense of how to present the Web on mobile devices with a sleek and clean interface. It provides access to several categories including Events Calendar, Emergency Information, and latest news on classes.

It’s a free service and you just simply type in “m.mit.edu” in your device’s browser. If you don’t have a mobile device, no problem. Use http://mobi.mit.edu/about/preview.html to preview it on your desktop or laptop. I just tried it with an iPhone. Results? “Cool!”.

In the Nov./Dec. 2008 issue of Marketing Library Services, Aaron Schmidt and Sarah Houghton-Jan wrote about how to bring traffic to your library’s Website. It provides useful tips and ideas such as offering relevant services or interesting content on your site, participating in community conversations such as commenting on local blogs, providing services to attract and interact with current or potential library members, listing your site on directories where people are searching, etc.

To read the whole article, click http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml.

The Maternal and Child Health Bureau is awarding grants to address significant disparities in perinatal health indicators in communities within 62 miles of the U.S. Mexico border or in Alaska and Hawaii. Eligible organizations include: state, county, city, township, or special district governments; independent school districts; state controlled institutions of higher education; public housing/Indian housing authorities; federally-recognized Native American tribal governments; Native American tribal organizations other than federally recognized tribal governments; nonprofits with or without a 501 (C)(3) IRS status other than institutions of higher education; and private institutions of higher education.

Grant applicants must provide a scope of project services that will cover pregnancy and interconceptional phases for women and infants residing in the proposed project area. Services are to be given to both mother and infant for two years following delivery to promote longer interconceptional periods and prevent relapses of unhealthy risk behaviors.

Applicants for this funding opportunity are required to submit an electronic application through the Grants.gov website. The deadline for applications is December 5th, 2008. For more information, contact Beverly Wright at 301-443-5691.

A new version of NLM’s Drug Information Portal was released in October. The portal now covers over 16,000 drugs.

http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov

The update includes:

1. Direct searching of drug categories, which are derived from the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH®) Pharmacological Action field http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/mesh/paterms.html

2. Name and category suggestions, to eliminate common spelling errors

3. Phrase parser that assists users in finding drug names within phrases

4. The addition of the MeSH notes, when available, to spell checker results to make selection of a possible answer easier

5. Searches retrieving multiple results now sorted by frequency of citation in PubMed®, from highest to lowest. This tends to show the most commonly used drugs first.

The Drug Information Portal is a free Web resource from the NLM that provides an informative, user friendly entry-way to current drug information for over 16,000 drugs. Links to sources span the breadth of NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies. Current information regarding consumer health, clinical trials, AIDS–related drug information, MeSH pharmacological actions, PubMed biomedical literature, and physical properties and structure is easily retrieved by searching on a drug name. A varied selection of focused topics in medicine and drug–related information is also available from displayed subject headings.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has a new online tutorial, Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Basics, now available at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/online%20learning/index.htm.

The course offers an online introduction to the UMLS and should take users approximately two hours to complete. It is designed for novice UMLS users who have some knowledge of controlled vocabularies and related topics.  It covers some of the material presented in the UMLS Basics one day course taught at the NLM.

To register for the eight hour instructor lead course, go to: http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/classes/register.html.

The 2009 MeSH is now available for searching on the MeSH Browser.  It is also available for download in XML and ASCII at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/filelist.html.

For more information, see: 2009 MeSH® Now Available. NLM Tech Bull. 2008 Sep-Oct; (364):e16.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now requires basic results data for certain clinical trials to be submitted to ClinicalTrials.gov. Information about the “Basic Results” Database and the submission process is available at: http://prsinfo.clinicaltrials.gov/fdaaa.html.

See: Tse T, Williams RJ. ClinicalTrials.gov to Include Basic Results Data. NLM Tech Bull. 2008 Sep-Oct; (364):e15 for additional information.

Beginning in November, the NN/LM SCR will be offering a monthly web conference entitled “SCR CONNECTions.”    The conference will take place the third Wednesday of each month from 10:30 am - 11:30 am Central Time.   Each month we will cover a different topic. Topics will include: National Library of Medicine database training, NN/LM SCR updates, proposal writing and new technology trends.

The web conferences are conducted via the Adobe Connect web meeting system, and no special software needs to be installed on your computer.

Our first session will take place on November 19, 2008.

Date: November 19, 2008
Time: 10:30 - 11:30 AM Central Time
Topic: My NCBI Update

More information is available at: http://nnlm.gov/scr/training/webmeeting.html

The South Central Regional Medical Library is extending an invitation for all network members to provide feedback about the strengths of its program and future directions it should take.  This project will help us prepare for an upcoming site visit from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) on November 18, 2008.  The goal of the site visit is to help SCR and NLM understand how the RML is serving its network membership, learn how SCR can strengthen its program to meet current and emerging needs in the region, and gather ideas for how NLM can support the national network. Read the rest of this entry »

The PubMed Special Queries link provides access to a directory of topic-specific PubMed queries, including the following queries related to public health:

Health Literacy - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/health_literacy.html

Health Disparities - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/health_disparities.html

Health Services Research - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/hedges/search.html

Healthy People 2010 - http://phpartners.org/hp/