24/7 Getting a Healthy Start in the Region
In March, Kay Deeney, Education and Exhibit Coordinator, invited Network librarians to participate in a pilot of the 24/7 Reference project. The goal of the pilot is to provide live online digital health reference services for questions referred from public librarians. Kay, an experienced user of the 24/7 software (through the Biomedical Library at UCLA), is coordinating the pilot effort at PSRML. Using this software, the librarian and the patron can interact via chat, share web pages, and lead each other through a search, for example, using MEDLINEplus.
Eighteen Network librarians accepted Kay's invitation and attended training sessions conducted over the summer at UCLA and at San Francisco Public Library. Susan McGlamery, 24/7 Project Director, provided the instruction; she anticipates offering a third session in the near future in Arizona. Trained Network librarians began testing the 24/7 software tools with each other in August; they anticipate taking questions from public librarians in the fall.
Attendees at the Southern California training session included: William Akiyama, Carol Bondurant, Pam Corley, Deborah A. Fleming, Terry Green, Marsha Kmec, Andrea Lynch, Heidi Sandstrom, and Dominique Turnbow. Attendees at the Northern California session included: M. L. Phoebe Adams, Barbara Bibel, Nancy Dickenson, Howard Fuller, Rikke Greenwald, Julie Haugen, Shirley Maccabee, Sumedha Shende, Marilyn Tinsley, Mary Beth Train, and Doug Varner.
24/7 Reference is a project of the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System (MCLS), and is supported by Federal LSTA funding. More information about MCLS and the 24/7 Reference is at http://www.247ref.org. From this site you can take a tour of the 24/7 service, and then try it out yourself! Please contact Kay at kdeeney@library.ucla.edu if you have questions or are interested in participating in the pilot. - HS & KD
Ask a Librarian - a Medical Librarian!
24/7 Reference Project Training Session at UCLA