E4GDH webinar: Librarians are Essential – Advocating for a Seat at the Table

This third webinar in our series, which took place on 8 August 2019, was faciltiated by Blessing Mawire. We heard from two presenters.

Siobhan Champ-Blackwell drew on resources available through the U.S. National Library of Medicine to present ways in which librarians can advocate for themselves by initiating and developing relationships with relevant local, state, and federal officials and agencies, as well as with emergency responders.

Dr. Lenny Rhine then presenting on his experience with the Research4Life Advocacy Toolkit and associated marketing resources, discussing their application in different scenarios.

The webinar is 50 minutes long.
Subtitles / closed captions are available – click on Settings then Subtitles/CC and select ‘English’ (Not ‘English (Automatic)’).

Featured resources

Siobhan’s presentation focused on the NLM Disaster Information Specialist Resource section, where she highlighted some relevant resources:

• Bibliography: Librarians and Libraries Respond to Disasters
  – examples of those who already have a seat at the table: articles about librarians working in diaster response.
   
• Latin American Network for Disaster Health and Information (LANDHI)
  – an NLM initiative to assist health professionals, government agencies, and non-government organizations in this region to quickly access vital information that was previously unavailable.
   
• Training Courses for the Disaster Information Specialist Program
  – free training & education resources for professionals interested in disaster health information.
   
• This includes under Additional CE Options:
  A Seat at the Table: Working with the Disaster Workforce
  – in particular Section 4: Practical Steps to Get a Seat at the Table
  Key steps including developing a list of contacts, preparing a letter of introduction and crafting your elevator speech are clearly laid out with examples and Word templates to adapt.
   
• Emergency Access Initiative
  – NLM Library workS alongside publishers to give free local access to information at times of disaster. This link shows one example of when this was activated.

Lenny’s presentation focused on transferable learning from the Research4Life toolkit and marketing materials. Under Other Resources:

• Research4Life Advocacy Toolkit
• Marketing Strategies for Research4Life Resources:
  Marketing Strategy Module ¦ Marketing Strategy Exercise

Additional resources were shared by participants during the webinar, via the chatbox:

• IFLA’s blog thread – the 10-minute Library Advocate – things any librarian could do #everylibrariananadvocate!
• HIFA’s current thematic discussion Open Access: Perceptions and misconceptions

Further Information

• Siobhan Champ-Blackwell: Presentation slides [PDF]
• Lenny Rhine: Presentation slides [PDF]

Presenter Biographies

Siobhan Champ-Blackwell works in the National Library of Medicine Public Services Division. She is responsible for managing the Disaster Information Specialist Training Program, and coordinates with the Medical Library Association to maintain the MLA Disaster Information Specialization Certificate. In addition, she is the content editor for the Disaster Lit® Database for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, and manages digital communication tools for the Disaster Information Management Research Center.

Dr. Lenny Rhine is the coordinator of the ‘E-Library Training Initiative’.  This Librarians Without Borders® / Medical Library Association project has been funded by the Elsevier Foundation (EF) since 2007. The project’s principal activities are conducting workshops and the developing/updating training material for Hinari and Research4Life programs – a group of collaborative United Nations Agencies and Partner Publishers projects for access to over 100,000 e-journals and books plus over 20 other resources for institutions in low-income countries. 

Since 2007, Lenny has conducted 70+ HINARI and Research4Life (R4L) workshops in 41 countries and developed/updated more than 20 training modules for the various programs.  Lenny also coordinates the LWB/EF Research4Life Grant awards.  Since 2016, 15 ($4-6,000) proposals have been funded.  The projects range from R4L workshops to the development of videos and courses including Developing Systematic Reviews in Resource-poor Environments.