With the vast amount of health information available online, it can be difficult to know what resources are credible.
To help area schools address this issue, the Bernard Becker Medical Library will provide free health-information training sessions for St. Louis-area elementary, middle- and high-school librarians. The sessions are made possible by a Continuity of Health Information Award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.
The program, called Project MoSHI (the Mobile School Health Information Initiative), is based on a pilot course the library offered last fall in partnership with the BJC School Outreach & Youth Development and Gateway Media Literacy Partners.
The class is designed to connect K-12 librarians with credible online health resources that they can share with teachers and students at their schools. For example, the school librarians learn about Medline Plus, the National Library of Medicine’s Web site, and KidsHealth.org, so they can direct students to those sites for credible health information. The librarians will also learn curriculum integration techniques and practice evaluating health Web sites using principles of media literacy, a concept required in Missouri Grade-Level expectations for schools.
The class is the brainchild of Will Olmstadt, a librarian at Becker and one of the class’ teachers. He designed the class after he heard from two area librarians that they needed to learn about credible health Web sites. In the fall, Olmstadt and Judy Hansen, a part-time librarian at Becker Library and a former Kirkwood School District librarian, taught a pilot course at Becker Library. The pilot was such a success that Olmstadt, Hansen and Bob Engeszer, senior librarian, decided to continue it and pursue grant funding.
The one-year, $10,000 grant provides funds to allow Olmstadt and Hansen to teach the class to librarians and teachers at area schools and at the Missouri Association of School Librarians’ spring conference.
Olmstadt said the program includes a formal evaluation onsite and a follow-up survey with the teachers and librarians to determine sustained benefit.