Our current mission statement is:
PlaneTree Health Library guides the public to accurate, trustworthy, and free information.
We believe that informed patients are able to partner more effectively with their healthcare professionals. Being informed and aware also empowers people to take better care of their own health, the health of their loved ones, and the health of their communities.
Target audience region:
We aim to serve the health information needs of people in Silicon Valley, defined as primarily Santa Clara County but also stretching into neighboring counties in the south Bay Area, Peninsula, and (when the issue warrants) Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties.
(In effect, though, as many of the issues PHL covers are shared by other areas of California and the rest of the U.S., much of our information would be relevant outside our geographic scope. We embrace that universality; however, PHL’s work should reflect the health care priorities of the communities in our geographic area.)
Target audience - demographics:
In 2017, the Board of Directors decided that PHL would focus its online collections, program, and outreach on Later Life, which includes the areas of healthy aging and common issues in aging; caring for older adults and caregiver support; and end of life care and advance care planning.
In addition we have 2 resource guides that address emergencies that greatly impact older adults and their caregivers (as well as people of all ages in Santa Clara County): on Coronavirus & COVID-19 pandemic and one Emergency preparedness for man-made and natural / climate disasters.
This document has more demographic details about the older adult population in Santa Clara County.
There are two separate domains for PHL:
https://www.planetree-sv.org = historically our main website. This is currently hosted on InMotion's servers, and maintained by our webmaster / contractor, Jamie Krakar. This is used or details about PHL (mission, history, donations, contact us, etc.), as a launching pad to connect to individual LibGuides, as the home for our community calendar, to make current & archival issues of PlaneTalk newsletter discoverable, and an RSS link to our social media accounts.
https://library.planetree-sv.org = online library collections + more. These are hosted on Springshare's cloud server, and maintained through LibApps. Lise is admin; all staff will have an individual log on account.
PHL's online library consists of topical websites of curated links to free & publicly available informational content, organized and displayed in ways that help the user to better understand the subject, and to be able to find what they need more efficiently or expeditiously.
We use Springshare's LibGuides software to create our online library collections. It is part of Springshare's LibApps suite of products (we just have this one, and not the LibGuides CMS version).
To edit or manage content, first log into LibApps with your personal credentials. There are a couple of ways to do this:
Public LibGuides
At present these are our online libraries:
Later Life, divided into:
We also have online libraries for health emergencies:
Since health information literacy is key to our work, we also have an online library on Evaluating health information and on critical thinking about health-related content.
We also have a LibGuide page to advertise our public programs, and to guide users to registration links for programs.
Private or Unpublished LibGuides
LibGuide content - whole pages, or boxes within a page - can be visible or invisible to the public.
For whole guides or whole pages within a guide, there are 3 status settings:
Currently, our private LibGuides are:
PHL has had a newsletter from the start in 1989, entitled PlaneTalk. First distributed in print, for the last decade it has been online, distributed to subscribers' emails, currently using MailChimp. Like our library collections, its content primarily consists of links to content written by other sources. And like our online library, content focuses on actions that individuals can take (or take to consult with their healthcare team); its unofficial motto is "news you can use".
Currently it has roughly 10-12 issues per year, sent out mid-month.
At present format for the regular issues is semi-standardized into these sections:
In November 2021 and 2022, content was devoted to self-care (to accompany November giving appeal).
Issues of PlaneTalk are linked on our homepage (www.planetree-sv.org), both the current and back issues.
Started in April 2021, this calendar is for free, open to the public, health-related events located in or of interest to people in the Bay Area. It's intended to advertise PHL's events, but even more to offer a virtual community bulletin board for other nonprofit organizations too (and as a way to build partnerships). Organizations can enter their own event details, subject to PHL staff approval (i.e., postings are moderated by us).
PHL staff (so far, just Lise) have been making presentations on various topics, both in partnership with other nonprofit organizations (eg., Sunnyvale Senior Center, AARP, Institute on Aging) and under PHL's own name. Details on the latter can be found on the Programs LibGuides page.
During the pandemic, these have all been conducted over Zoom. (PHL has an account through TechSoup, that allows for up to 100 participants. We have been calling these "webinars", but we do not - as yet - have a license for the webinar version of this software). Registration has been handled either a) by the host organization, or b) using the Registration function of our Zoom account.
These monthly meetings started in September 2021 as networking / outreach to other local agencies. They focus on sharing marketing activities, and mutual support around outreach questions or concerns.
The text on this page is copyright PlaneTree Health Library, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Linked contents are the responsibility of their creators or copyright holders.