The Cleveland Public Library in conjunction with The MetroHealth Medical Center, developed a section of the Know It Now website for patients where they can discuss ask about medical matters. Users can remail completely anonymous and can interact live with a nurse, 24-7. Those living in Ohio may be more familiar with Know It Now as a free chat reference service to the citizens of Ohio by the State Library of Ohio and local public libraries.

I applaud the idea of adding medical professionals to help answer medical questions, I think it is a great service. However, I feel a little out of the loop. If you look at the list of Know it Now participating libraries you will notice that they are all public libraries, not one of them is a hospital, medical, or consumer health library. So where are the nurses who are answering the medical questions getting their answers and resources?

According to the Know it Now medical information article, "Metrohealth has developed a collaboration with the Cleveland Public Library in which the on-line information can be screened so it's good reliable information for the consumer." I know Cleveland Public is a B-I-G library system and they probably have a consumer health librarian, but I feel there is a lot that we medical/health librarians might have been and still might be able to contribute. I have been in medical libraries in Cleveland and a member of the Cleveland Area Metropolitan Library System (known as CAMLS now the newly formed NEO-RLS) for over 8 years and I was completely unaware of this until I read Next Generation in On-line Medical Information. Was I totally asleep to the Cleveland library world?!! Perhaps I am/was. Perhaps the librarian at Metrohealth is involved and it just isn't mentioned in the article because it isn't as "cool" to the public to have medical librarian answering your questions as it is to have a medical professiona doing itl.

What would be interesting to know is if there are other public online chat refs that combine medical professionals and health/medical librarians to help answer questions.