| Summer/Fall 1999 | Kristine Markovich, Editor |
From the Editor
This is the first issue of the newsletter to appear on the new home of the Section web site at MLANET. The new home page address is http://www.phha.mlanet.org. Bookmark it and visit us often!
Section members are involved in many activities and these should be promoted via the section newsletter. One new venture is a column on grey literature edited by Laurie Isenberg of the California HealthCare Foundation. If anyone has ideas for other columns or submissions, please let me know. I welcome your comments and suggestions and look forward to working with you all.
Kris Markovich
Editor
The programs are on two different and yet related issues. The first looks at the grey literature -- non commercially published literature, such as government reports that give demographics and health statistics, and foundation reports that treat a topic from a more in-depth perspective than you might find in a journal article. It is the grey literature that often proves elusive and yet essential for the information needs of public health and health policy professionals,
The second program is on outreach to public health professionals. The Section will showcase the efforts of librarians to reach out to public health people and demonstrate the different strategies used to effectively meet the needs of this group of health professionals.
The call for papers for these programs -- and for all programs for MLA 2000 -- will be in the August MLA News. I encourage Section members to submit abstracts for the programs and to attend them in Vancouver next May.
Kathel Dunn
Chair
This column will explore trends, innovations and challenges in the publishing and management of grey literature. Here is the inaugural column, introducing the mysteries and migraines of this nebulous topic.
Send your comments, questions and success stories to Laurie Isenberg (lisenberg@chcf.org) at California HealthCare Foundation.
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Grey Literature. Is that when you print with low toner? Or reports published in overcast climates? How about published information that falls into that grey zone, that ill-defined, seldom-cataloged zone where critical thinking shines in the spotlight ever-briefly then fades quietly into oblivion?
It's easier to say what grey literature is not: journal articles, books, patents, news articles, stock quotes -- bibliographic information in these sources is accessible through common commercial databases. Grey literature is usually not indexed and tends to be ephemeral. Were the authors trying to place their work into the collective cultural archive, they would publish it in one of the conventional formats which has a corresponding index.
Often grey literature embodies the first stage of the publishing cycle, before peer review, before the scrutiny of an editorial board: preprints, reports, essays and electronic columns (like this one). As for the web, much of what's out there is as grey as it gets, posted and taken down at the discretion of one person, with no record of its ever having existed. Grey literature is often ground-breaking conceptually, the first platform for new ideas, an immediate response to current events. Time, peer opinion, turning events and the author's motivation will determine whether the information within will be reborn into a more stable medium.
In healthcare, grey literature abounds. Health associations, policy institutes, and non-profits release reports frequently. Web sites from these groups, as well as government agencies and university programs, post news and data as well as their reports. Conclusions from this literature make the nightly news, inform policy-makers and influence the direction of health funding and public opinion.
As librarians, it is our challenge to make information from the grey literature available to our constituencies. That means identifying it when it's first published and cataloging or tracking it over time. Europe has SIGLE, the System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe, (http://www.konbib.nl/sigle/), but the U.S. has no collective index to grey lit, health-related or otherwise.
Do you work with the grey lit in your information center? Have you experienced any challenges or successes with grey lit? Send your comments, questions and success stories to Laurie Isenberg (lisenberg@chcf.org) at California HealthCare Foundation.
And watch for program information from MLA regarding the year 2000 annual meeting. The PH/HA section is hosting a program on grey literature and will be looking for your input.
At the time of the poster session, our list of goals contained those that had been established over the years with a column in which Stephanie and I made suggestions for future purposes or goals. In that column, suggestion 1 is: “Work actively with major organizations such as those of hospital associations, state health agencies, and schools of public health to bring their information personnel into our ranks.”
By the time that we summarized the history for the web page, I had realized that the American Public Health Association had no information-type group within its structure, even though some of the best public health librarians I know have been very active within it. In effect, we expanded that goal in the history to say: “Particularly we should work actively and formally with the Partners in Information Access for Public Health Professionals, with the American Public Health Association, and with other major public health organizations, especially through electronic means, to accomplish public health goals dependent on libraries and information technology.”
It was the above goal and the ease with which we can accomplish tasks through the Internet that gave me the idea that we could strengthen the section by working actively with the American Public Health Association and its related groups. I am a firm believer that the ultimate purpose of our section along with MLA and all other health-related groups is to improve the health of the American people. Groups such as ours can accomplish that end only through assistance to those in direct contact with the affected people. Thus we must work closely with those on the front lines and get to know them in all aspects of their activities. One such activity is through the professional association where goals are established and projects, organized. While this can be done formally through official alliances, sometimes it is better to start with an informal connection. Thus I corresponded with Laura Larsson and she made the proposal that most of you have seen for librarians from PH/HA to assist the American Public Health Association with its Technology Center at its November meeting.
This letter is to make you aware that the proposal originated from our consideration of the future of the Public Health/Health Administration Section of the Medical Library Association rather than from an initial request by APHA. We deliberately made it independent of formal cooperation of the two organizations so that we could see how it worked and whether a different approach was needed. However, it seems to me that it is time to consider the relative priority of such an activity for the group and for all health sciences librarians who support public health programs.
There are two other reasons for writing about it now:
1) To ask if it is time for the Section to reconsider its goals in light of the suggestions Stephanie and I made. Are we way off base or are our suggestions ideas that could be adopted by the Section, either as parts of its strategic plan or separately?
2) To add this further information to your thinking about volunteering to help with the APHA proposal. Remember that there is a $500 stipend for each volunteer up to four. If you decide to do so, please contact me directly before September 15. I’d appreciate knowing in advance whether you are considering it.
To make it easy for you to review the proposal, we are attaching it to this letter. [Editor's Note -- the proposal is available on a separate page, linked above.]
Best wishes to the whole Section,
Win Sewell
Winifred Sewell, winswll@erols.com
Phone: 301-229-5008
Fax: 301-229-3788
Mail: 6513 76th Place, Cabin John, MD 20818
Abstracts from the program are available online. Approximately 25 people attended this excellent program.
Abstracts from the program are available online.
The killings at Columbine and other schools have riveted our attention and emotions on violence, and generated much discussion in health education circles. Several anti-violence resolutions will be presented at the APHA Annual Meeting this year. One of the more controversial resolutions calls for research on the social causes of violence, opposing research on biological or genetic causes and interventions. The examination of violence weaves together many issues:
To hear more about these ideas, attend the APHA session [Ed. note: Link no longer active] on "violence research, racism, and biology" with Ruth Hubbard, Michael Blakey, Bonnie Blustein and others to debate the social vs. biological basis of violence, tentatively scheduled for the Tuesday, 8:30 AM session. And advocate the proposed resolution, Support for Research on the Socioeconomic Causes of Violence, to your fellow APHA members and friends.
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