Health Information for the Elderly and Their Caregivers: A Training Toolkit for Public Libraries

As the proportion of elderly in the population grows, so does the demand for health information. Public libraries are perfectly poised as institutions to help with information needs, but public library staff may not always be comfortable responding to specialized health information requests. This article describes a year-long, grant-funded collaboration between librarians from public, academic, and hospital libraries to create a training toolkit for public library staff working with health information for the elderly and their caregivers. The toolkit includes a series of workshops, handouts, and a collection of web links and is openly available to all.