General Session 1 - Saturday, October 22

Public Health in History: A Personal View

Dr. Ángel Román-Franco • Biography

School of Medicine, Medical Sciences Campus

University of Puerto Rico

A broad view of the history of public health takes one into humanity’s distant past as much as it does into the contemporary scene.  From the time of hunter gatherers and their insufficient numbers to sustain epidemics, through the origins of settlements and their obligatory wall to protect themselves from theft of surpluses through the great construction in history, all have been signposts in the development of public health.  The impacts of various social and cultural upheavals:  expansion and exploration, commerce and trade, war and its congeners, all have left their mark in the public health arena.  Indeed, from the great waterworks of the hydraulic civilizations to the squalor of the England of the Industrial Revolution and the present explosion of humans over the Earth; from the epoch of Shamans, through the cinnabar mines of Augustus Caesar, to the present-church emporia all have had their impact on public health; e.g., epidemics, healing practices, research endeavors and health ideologies. It is the objective of this presentation to visit some of the historical events that have, unwittingly perhaps, left their imprint in the lengthy history of the broader view of public health.

General Session 2 - Sunday, October 23

Public Access to NIH Research Results Through Archiving in PubMed Central

David Gillikin • Biography

Head, MEDLARS Management Section

National Library of Medicine

A new NIH policy that improves access to the results of its funded research, requests that grantees submit a copy of their final manuscript, accepted for publication, to NLM's PubMed Central (PMC) archive. The purpose is to create a permanent respository of peer-reviewed NIH-funded research publications in order to enhance the ability of scientists and the public to access scientific and health-related information more effectively.  Using the existing PMC archive enables linking to a number of resources in other NLM databases and provides cost-effective implementation, as it builds on existing information infrastructure.  This presentation will describe the NIH Public Access Policy, share progress to date on implementation, and discuss how PMC improves access to NIH research results and facilitates scientific discovery.

General Session 3 - Monday, October 24

Skating to Where the Puck Will Be in 2015:

Health and Medicine Library Leadership Requirements for the Next Decade

Roger Guard • Biography

Chief Information Officer, Academic Health Center

and Assistant Senior Vice President, Academic Information Technology & Libraries

University of Cincinnati 

What will be the health and medicine library leadership needs in 2015?  This question was posed to the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) Future Leadership Task Force.  The task force response to that question will be presented and compared to a book, published in 2003, titled "The Next Library Leadership: Attributes of Academic and Public Library Directors."  (Peter Hernon, Ronald R. Powell, and Arthur P. Young: Libraries Unlimited, Westport, CT).  Ample time will be provided for audience

participation as this core topic will remain a work in progress.