Congratulations Cindy!

At a lovely ceremony this morning, attended by all of the AHSC Deans and Vice President Crist, Cindy was awarded the College of Medicine Staff Award for Excellence. Cindy was selected from eight nominees from the College – a very impressive group of people. She received a gift bag, a certificate, a plaque and a substantial cash award. Please join me in congratulating Cindy!

Troubleshooting Access to RefWorks

The good news is that more and more students are using RefWorks, but there's still a lot of confusion on how to access this resource. Annabelle and I worked together and solicited help from the folks from UAL to understand some of the problems that our students were having. While UAL's "RefWorks Guide" provides the most complete instructions, we designed a quick troubleshooting page on access issues that are causing most of the problems for our students. Click on RefWorks on the AHSL home page and "Troubleshooting Remote Access" is a link on the page about RefWorks. Please let Joan or Annabelle know if you have questions or suggestions.

Reporting, Outlook

Change in reporting
There has still been no official announcement, but I can tell you that the library will be reporting to Dr. William Crist, Vice President for Health Affairs as of July 1. This structure recognizes that we serve the entire AHSC. There are still some details to be worked out regarding computing support. Librarians’ appointments will still be through the College of Medicine. I don’t expect this change to have any immediate effect on our day-to-day operations and will keep you posted.

Outlook Calendar
Because of the uncertainty involved in our change of reporting, our switch to Outlook is temporarily on hold. I can’t say when or if it will start up again but will try to resolve this question as soon as possible. Outlook is a College of Medicine solution and we are weighing whether we should be moving to a COM “domain” when we will be an AHSC/campus unit.

In the meantime, a few people around the library have also exported their calendars to Google Calendar ( www.google.com/calendar ). If you create a Google calendar you can share it with anyone else who has a Google calendar and “synch” it with Outlook. This is NOT an “official” move to Google calendar at the moment – but a possible work-around if you are feeling isolated by not having your Outlook calendar connected to everyone else’s. Cindy and Linda have some experience with this and would be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Article published

Congratulations to Sandy and me. We’ve had an article published in the April 2009 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association. The article is called, “Embedded librarians: one library’s model for decentralized service” and describes the library liaison model at the AHSL. If you can’t wait to read it, the library, as well as many librarians, have subscriptions. It should appear in Pubmed Central soon at:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?action=archive&journal=93

Minutes for the All Staff meeting April 7, 2009

All Staff Meeting
Minutes
April 7, 2009

Staff Service Awards

Gary announced that this year we had quite a few staff members receiving service awards a combined total of 205 years of service. The following people received services pins from AHSL in appreciation for all their hard work:

Kramer, Sandra 5
Nunez, Annabelle 5
Bates, Mikel 10
Lee, Jennifer 10
O'Talley, Tessie 10
Fisher, Hannah 20
Holcomb, Mary 20
Basij, Javad 25
Godinez, Vera 25
Ryan, Jeanette 35
Riordan, Mary 40

WE Search and Digital Stories

WE (Wellness Education) is a collaboration between the Arizona Health Sciences Library, the College of Medicine Women’s Center on Excellence and the School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona and Sunnyside High located in south Tucson. At the beginning of fall semester 2008, three Knowledge River* graduate assistants received 20 hours of training on how to create a digital story.** They, in turn, trained Sunnyside High School students who were participants in the WE Search program. Students were asked to pick a health topic that affected them or a family member and create a 3-5 minute story talking about the disease or condition, how it has affected the individuals and/or family, health information resources that have provided them with information to help make medical decisions and what the family has learned going through the experience. Some topics included diabetes, breast cancer, diabetes, cervical cancer and cocaine/substance abuse.

*Knowledge River – A scholarship program of the School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona for students who are of Hispanic or Native American descent.

**Digital stories - use new digital tools to help ordinary people tell their own 'true stories' in a compelling and emotionally engaging form

Go to the G drive to find the two digital stories which were played during the meeting. They can be found at: G:\KnowledgeRiver\Presentation\ and then either america or Annie's ...

Library Cameras

Cindy gave a brief demonstration of the library security cameras.

News of Note from Outreach, AZHIN, and the Deputy Director – March 2009

 

AzHealthINFO

• Continued to identify and add new news content as needed.
  
• Finished reviewing all AZHI topic pages to identify and repair broken links.
  
• Learned that AZ2-1-1- has been defunded and is no longer available
  

 

AZHIN

2009 AZHIN Dues – Still working with three members to acquire their dues. All vendors have been paid, as well as first installment of Admin Contract. (Athens is due mid-year)

Invoiced HRAA for April thru Dec 2009 at Regular 8 membership level

On-going Athens account set-ups and renewals

Mayo Clinic will not be renewing as a Friend for 2009

Brooke's first trip will be to Cobre Valley Medical Center in the Miami/Globe area. They are investigating AZHIN membership.

Brooke is doing much of the trouble-shooting technical work for AZHIN with Dave and Mikel backing her up. A lot of time has been spent trying to understand the turnaways that are occurring with Stat!Ref.

 

OUTREACH - EXHIBITS

Changing the Face: Celebrating America's Women Physicians, our exhibit from ALA and NLM has been packed up and is on its way to Albuquerque. By all accounts the exhibit was a resounding success. The play about Elizabeth Blackwell was very well received. Many women were clearly moved by the stories. Several receptions were arranged by other departments. One person wanted to pick up the entire exhibit and include it in an event being planned for mid- April. Several school groups visited as well. Much thanks goes to the group planning for the exhibit – Nga Nguyen, Mary Riordan, Jose Solorzano, Mikel Bates, and Gary Freiburger. And to our partners – COM Kenneth Hill Fund, ITS/Biomedical Communications, Michael Stoklos, Office of Outreach and Multicultural Affairs, and Office of Public Affairs.

 

OUTREACH - GENERAL

Several of us attended Jane Kolbe's retirement party this month. Jane was the director of library development for the State Library and was instrumental in our becoming involved in the Turning Point project (one outcome was AZHealthINfo) and with the tribal librarians. The entire state library community will miss her.

As mentioned in an earlier report, Outreach is investigating whether there's a role for the library when new refugees come to town. Do they have access to health information, is it in a form that is easily understood, etc.? Members of the PCCHTF (Pima County Community Health Taskforce) worked with Jean McClelland from the College of Public Health to get a grant funded which looks into the health information needs of both refugees and their providers. Pat is participating in the grant. Mary R will also be a part of the project as it moves along, and is also investigating other ways where we might make a contribution.

Later this year we'll be investigating ways in which we might do presentations with Outreach clients over the Internet. It's likely we'll be focusing on what the university already supports - COM ITS supports WebEx COM ITS) and Breeze/Adobe (or Web) Connect (Learning Teaching Center). Pat and Jeanette attended an ACRL/ALA webinar on how to give a webinar during March.

The library exhibited at the Not Simply Red HIV/AIDS Native American Conference in Tucson, the Women's Health Expo (College of Pharmacy students hold this event), and the Walking in Wellness event.

The MLA Webcast on March 25, 2009 was organized – Finding Work-Life Balance: Strategies for You and Your Institution. . There were 9 attendees and 3 requests for on demand viewing when it becomes available –

OUTREACH - GRANTS -

PSR Outreach subcontract ended March 31. Quarterly and final reports, plus a report on the Tribal Librarians' conference are due soon.

 

 

Administrative Office

Cindy attended two important meetings this month with valuable information for Library employees.

The first meeting for People soft the software that will replace employee link and eventually career tracks. Implementation of the first phase will be in October 2009; creating a self-serve employee link that will include benefits enrollment and time/attendance. The program is web-based which means time recording will be done online, no more paper time sheets. Supervisors will be able to submit time for employees who do not have access to a computer at home or on vacation. The employee will get a message telling them what was recorded if there are problems they can request a change.

The Second was a COM pilot for HR liaisons; this group will focus on HR policy. Our first meeting was for introductions; the following is contact information you may already know, however you may not know what each person specialty is:

Director, AHSC Human Resources

Cathy Nicholson
520-626-4650

• Employee Relations/Management Advising
• Workplace Violence Concerns/Reports
• Management and Organizational Consulting (Strategic Planning, Conflict Management, Performance Management, Unit Effectiveness, Management & Leadership Development, Organization/Reorganization)
• Compensation

HR Generalist, AHSC

Pam Jones
520-626-6765

• Employee Relations/Employee Advising
• Recruitment, Advertising and Job Postings
• Policy Interpretation & Application

HR Consultant, AHSC

Charles Hester
520-626-2234

• Employee Relations/Management Advising
• Professional Development
• Performance Management Consulting
• Employee Orientation/On-Boarding

HR Specialist Sr., AHSC

Candace Downard
520-626-2600

• Recruitment/Job Postings
• Policy Application & Interpretation
• Employee Advising
• Benefits (Qualified Tuition Reduction, medical, etc.)

Students

Esther Pullido
520-626-5593

Gandessa Orteza
520-626-5593

Our Benefits contact is located on Main Campus her name is Melissa Beard, you can contact her at 626-1708.

Cathy announced that there will soon be a new AHSC HR website.

Our next meeting will focus on furloughs "Everything About the Darn Furloughs You Need To Know to Help Your Folks!" So if you have any questions please let me know before April 13^th.

All Staff Meeting

This is just a reminder of our All Staff meeting on Tuesday at 11 in the large classroom. We will be awarding Service pins, showing some clips of digital storytelling from the WeSearch project and doing a demonstration of the new security camera system. There should be time for any questions that you may have. If you have other items that you’d like to see on the agenda, please let me know.