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In 1998 The Lamar
Soutter Library at the University
of Massachusetts Medical School received $39,997 in funding
from The National Library
of Medicine to provide hardware, software, Internet connections
and training to 6 community based organizations and clinics in the
Worcester area whose primary mission is to treat AIDS patients.
Since
that time we made arrangements with three additional sites. Two
of the sites, at community health centers in Lowell and Lawrence were
connected to WAHAIN through a collaboration with Dr. John Sullivan, the UMass Pediatric HIV Program,
and Mario Stevenson, the Director of The Center for AIDS Research
at UMass. The third site, Planned Parenthood will receive only the
training component of this project.
In
September 2000 the library received continuation funding to include
several more sites. The project also is being expanded to include direct
access by patients to HIV/AIDS resources.
The
primary goal is to provide access to health care information to
HIV/AIDS patients and their caregivers.
The
objectives of these projects are to:
| 1.
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Provide
electronic access to HIV/AIDS information. |
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Each
participating site receives a computer, modem, printer, and
Internet access for one year. |
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| 2. |
Train
staff at each participating community-based clinic/agency to
access HIV/AIDS related information. |
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Each
site will receive a minimum of 5 training classes: |
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Internet
Basics, Health Resources on the Internet, Introduction to Internet
Grateful Med and PubMed, Advanced Internet Grateful Med and PubMed, and
Introduction to Webpage Design. (for more information see the class descriptions) |
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| 3.
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Provide
access to state of the art Internet resources. |
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Each
site will have access to the Internet through Galaxy, our selected Internet Service Provider for one year. |
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| 4.
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Provide
document delivery of articles from the National Library of Medicine's
MEDLINE and AIDS databases. |
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The
Lamar Soutter Library will provide photocopies of articles requested
through Lonesome Doc by the sites for no charge (when the library
owns the material) for the length of the project. |
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| 5.
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Link
members of the WAHAIN through the Internet to bibliographic
and non-bibliographic HIV/AIDS information to improve the public
health of Worcester area residents. |
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The
library will develop a WAHAIN website which link to the library's
page, The National Library of Medicine, other participating
site's pages, as well as links to valuable HIV/AIDS Internet
Resources. |
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