COLUMN / CHRONIQUE

Consumer health information

Compiled by Susan Murray

Canadian Health Network (CHN)

The Canadian Health Network (www.canadian-health-
network.ca) is an excellent source of reliable, primarily Ca-
nadian e-health information from nonprofit organizations. It
cannot be recommended more highly as a quality informa-
tion resource for personal (yourself, family, and friends) or
professional (your organization and users) use.

CHN continues to grow and improve. Three new disease prevention areas have been added: diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and respiratory diseases. A Health Promotion Affiliate has also joined CHN, so you will be seeing substantial changes to that topic area, as well as a reflection of health promotion principles on the other health centres on CHN.

The design of the *Healthlink* newsletter has also been im-
proved. To sign up for biweekly updates on what is being
featured on CHN, click “subscribe to our *Healthlink* news-
letter”.

If you would like to promote CHN to your organization and your users, please contact me at smurray@torontopubliclibrary.ca. I would be happy to provide more information about CHN and arrange for promotional materials to be sent to you. The materials include CHN brochures, bookmarks, fact sheets, calendar strips, and pens, and all materials are bilingual.

Consumer Health Information Service
(CHIS) – Updated guides

Several CHIS guides have been updated recently:

* Consumer Health Information – Selected Bibliography of Readings

* Core Collection of Recommended Titles or Consumer Health Books – If You Have $1700

The CHIS periodicals list and *Consumer Health Collection* Guide should be updated later this year. We also have been updating and adding new “healthnavigators”, our annotated resource guides.

Please note that the URL for the Toronto Public Library and CHIS Web sites has changed. The new CHIS URL is http://www.tpl.toronto.on.ca/uni_chi_index.jsp.

Collection development

Just a reminder that Alan Rees, author of the *Consumer Health Source Book*, publishes a column in *A Majors Scientific Books Report for Medical Librarians*, which is available at https://www.majors.com/libraries/majrep.htm. Similar to

the entries in the *Consumer Health Source Book*, Rees pro-
vides extensive annotations that are arranged by subject.

New Web sites

NIH Word on Health, a new consumer health information
source from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is avail-
able at http://www.nih.gov/news/WordonHealth. The site con-
tains health information based on research conducted or
supported by NIH. The information is not copyrighted and
may be freely used.

Public Libraries and Community Partners: Working Together to Provide Health Information, a new Web site from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), is available at http://nnlm.gov/libinfo/community. The site is intended to serve as a guide to encourage health information partnerships among public libraries, members of the NN/LM, and local health or community-based organizations. It includes background information about consumer health, suggestions for providing health information services, and six guides with extensive information for organizations that are interested in preparing health outreach projects in their local communities.

MedlinePlus

MedlinePlus has a new page for librarians and trainers: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/training/trainers.html. It includes links to training materials from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), NN/LM, and a zipped sample Interactive Health Tutorial for use in demos when there is no Internet connection available. A downloadable version of the MedlinePlus tour will be coming soon.

Medical Library Association (MLA)
Conference 2005

"Futuro Magnifico! Celebrating our Diversity" is the theme of this year's MLA conference in San Antonio, Texas, 14-19 May 2005. In addition to invited and contributed papers, role-playing skits will also be featured. There are several programmes on CHI and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) topics:

* Diversity in collection development (I will be addressing CAM).

* Medical diversity — What are integrative practices and how are CAM practitioners trained?

* Reaching out magnificently to all at all points of care or
need — Explores innovative methods and unique experi-
ences in delivering information to diverse constituencies.

* Challenging patrons/challenging questions — How do we conduct a reference interview with an emotionally distracted, mentally ill, or mentally challenged patron? How do we handle our own emotions with patrons whose questions we find offensive? Experts from the counselling field will provide insights about the psychology of handling difficult customers through acted-out contributed scenarios.

Mentoring

The MLA has updated the mentoring site, and it now includes
consumer health libraries as both a sign-up and a search option.
You can sign up as a new mentor at http://www.mlanet.org/
mentor/mentor_add.php.

Consumer health bibliography

The MLA recently published the second edition of *Consumer Health: A Guide to Internet Information Resources* (MLA BibKit #7), compiled by Jana Liebermann. This 213-page consumer health bibliography includes disease-specific Web sites, special populations, drug information sources, quality filters, medical news sites, and much more. Print versions of the kit come with a disk with hyperlinked URLs. The kit can also be purchased as a PDF file with embedded links. For table of contents, prices, and order information, see http://www.mlanet.org/order/store/cat/default.php.

CHI readings

Check the quarterly publication *Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet* for recent articles on consumer health. You can request a sample issue and view the table of contents at http://www.haworthpress.com/web/JCHI/. Issue 9/1(2005) will include articles such as "Growing a Virtual Consumer Health

Library: A Decade of Experience" and "The National Net-
work of Libraries of Medicine and Consumer Health Out-
reach 1998 – Present".

* Coming soon are two issues of *Library Trends* focusing on consumer health:

* Consumer Health Issues, Trends, and Research, Part I: Strategic Strides Toward a Better Future, Edited by Tammy Mays, Fall 2004;53(2).

* Consumer Health Issues, Trends, and Research, Part 2: Actionable Research in the 21st Century, Edited by Tammy Mays, Winter 2005;53(3).

Getting health information into communities: Diana Grimwood-Jones on models for bringing health information to the general public. *Library + Information Update*. December 2004;3(12). Available from http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine/archive/archive2004/december/grimwood.htm.

British consultant Diana Grimwood reports on these four
models of CHI services:

(1) The branded health information service

(2) The “department store franchise”

(3) The medical prescription service

(4) The supermarket concession

Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences
(DCT)

With the discontinuation of the Brandon/Hill core lists, the first edition of *Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences* (DCT) became available in December 2004. It is a listing of selected titles for small medical, nursing, and allied health libraries and covers 119 specialties. DCT is available by subscription to individual libraries for US$49.50, and new editions will be issued annually with frequent bibliographic and pricing updates. Access is available from Doody Enterprises or through medical book distributors. Matthews, Majors, Rittenhouse, and Login Brothers Canada offer direct access from their Web sites.