Fall Conferences Update

Posted in: #CC/Academic List, #Health Interest List, #Health Sciences List, #Public/K-12 List, Blog

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Your Region 4 team has been busy traveling to various conferences this fall, so one of our engagement specialists, David Brown, wanted to share his experience. Over the past few months, David attended Public Health in the Rockies, the South Dakota Library Association conference, the Wyoming Library Association conference, and the Wyoming Computing Symposium.

Each of these events allowed David the opportunity to network with individuals interested in public health, libraries, and those interested in using data to make a difference in their world. By attending these events, Region 4 hopes to continue to strengthen our partnerships with researchers and librarian as well as their home institutions.

Here are some of David’s takeaways from each conference:

Public Health in the Rockies – This conference was co-sponsored by the Colorado and Wyoming Public Health Associations. Some of the sessions related to health information included: bilingual storytelling in the library to have individuals engage with health information; school-based peer health mentors to help students learn about health issues and health information; and using the library as a harm reduction center. David presented two sessions: one on the Moby Bookmobile and one on censorship and its impact on public health.

South Dakota Library Association – There were multiple sessions related to health librarianship, including emotional intelligence and how to use it in your life and library; how to honor Native American culture in your library; how the state library has been distributing citizen science kits to engage children and young adults with their surroundings; possibilities of mobile STEM labs; issues of mental health in the state of South Dakota; and issues in artificial intelligence. One special session was presented by a Region 4 funded project awardees, Fran Rice, on how to use Medline Plus in libraries. Each of these presentations showcased opportunities and issues facing the state of South Dakota in the areas of health science librarianship.

Wyoming Library Association – One specific session related to health librarianship sponsored by the Wyoming State Library was creative aging, which utilizes art to engage senior patrons. This program brings in local art instructors to interact with senior communities. It is hoped the NNLM will be a partner in this program to provide health information to this group. Region 4 had two presentations at this meeting: Libraries and Telehealth: An Opportunity for Service (pictured) and The Moby Bookmobile: Bringing Library Materials to the Wind River Reservation, the latter of which David was a copresenter.

Wyoming Computing Symposium – The first annual interdisciplinary computing symposium sponsored by the University of Wyoming’s School of Computing focused on computers and how they can improve society through advances in technology. Some of the specific sessions related to health and medicine included: Articulating a Genome-based Collective Representation of Complex Biological Dynamics and Assessing the Casual Structure of Disease Processes; Individual Time-step Classification for Improved Automated Control Systems in Medicine; Neuro-Expert System for Diagnosing and Predicting Risk Management of Heart Diseases. Many of the projects presented are aimed at improving health literacy and public health prevention programs to ideally enhance the quality of life for our constituencies in the Mountain West.

Interested in meeting one of our engagement specialists in person or virtually at a conference? We will be sharing our upcoming 2024 travel plans in the near future, so be sure to periodically check our blog for details. If you would like to connect with any of our engagement specialist in the meantime, please feel free to reach out.

• Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico – Dana Abbey
• Idaho, Montana, Utah – George Strawley
• North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming – David Brown
• All states – John Bramble