GRATEFUL MED and the need for outreach programs.

I would like to add my thoughts and comments to the continuing discussion about librarians, our work, and GRATEFUL MED. Last year, I administered one of the National Library of Medicine's GRATEFUL MED outreach demonstration grants in South Carolina. At three different annual meetings, Area Health Education Center librarians demonstrated GRATEFUL MED. The attendees included students, nurses, hospital pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, physicians, dentists, educators, and other allied health professionals. As we reviewed each demonstration, we learned that hundreds of health care professionals in our state do not use and are not aware of library and information services. Most of the people who saw the demonstrations were impressed by GRATEFUL MED's usefulness; however, for someone who has little computer experience or few information-seeking skills, GRATEFUL MED is not easy to use. As I read the continuing letters and comments in the Bulletin about GRATEFUL MED outreach threatening our jobs [1-4], my thoughts are, "Let's consider what we are saying!" Some of the observations may be true in the distant future when computers are as easy to use as the telephone and access to information is as easy as getting a soda from a machine. In the meantime, there is much work to do. Many health professionals don't know there are libraries to serve them. Once we reach them, there is still much teaching to do. To congratulate ourselves for our good work is premature; to criticize oth-