Mar
04
Posted by NNLM Region 7 on March 4th, 2024
Posted in: All of Us, Announcements, Blog, Communities of Interest
Tags: community engagement, Community of Interest, Focused Outreach, Member Spotlight
Photo of NNLM’s Jessica Kilham (Associate Director), Mary Piorun (Director), and Cate D’Angelo on their recent Site Visit to Brown University in Providence RI.
On Thursday 2/29/2024 I experienced my first Site Visit since joining the NNLM in January. It was an early morning, but I was excited, especially because we were going to one of my favorite places, Providence, Rhode Island.
In the realm of healthcare, access to accurate and reliable information is crucial. Medical and data librarians play a pivotal role in facilitating this access, serving as stewards to a wealth of resources that inform healthcare decisions and practices. The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) stands at the forefront of promoting health literacy, particularly focusing on underserved communities and addressing pressing issues such as rural health and substance use disorder. The purpose of our visit was to engage with the medical and data librarians at Brown around the NNLM priorities of providing health information to underserved communities, resources for substance use disorder, and rural health.
Medical and data librarians serve as essential allies in advancing NNLM priorities. Through their expertise in information management and retrieval, they play a critical role in ensuring that healthcare professionals and the public have access to up-to-date, evidence-based information. Together, we explored innovative strategies to enhance our outreach efforts with them in the beautiful state of RI. We discussed graphic medicine (which is an emerging field that uses comics and graphic novels to convey healthcare information) traveling exhibits and our plans to center on Providence as part of our Focused Outreach this May. You can follow this link to see more of our upcoming priority areas R7 Priortity Outreach Areas
Keep your eyes out for us at this year’s Rhode Island Library Association (RILA) conference, we’ll be there, and I already can’t wait!