Website, budget, best wishes

New website!
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the new website. We went live on Tuesday and it looks great! We had a few opening day problems but Nicole, Biomed and others worked hard to fix broken links and to track down reported anomalies. Please continue to let Nicole know if you find any problems.

Budget
On Thursday I delivered a proposal to Sr. Vice President Bootman that suggested changes to the funding model for AHSL. Jeanette and I reworked earlier proposals that had been developed for Vice President Crist and incorporated changes suggested by Dr. Bootman. We’ve done this now because university budgeting decisions for July 1, 2012 will be discussed beginning in January.

Happy Holidays
After a very productive 2011 I hope that you have a joyful, peaceful and relaxing break. Thank you especially to those folks who will be keeping the library open on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between the holidays. See you all in 2012!

Website, Doors, Phoenix, Food!

New website going live!
Our new website will be going live on Monday. Although not 100% complete and still with a few rough edges it looks good and should be easier for users to navigate than our old one.

New front doors
We have approved a final plan for the front doors. They are being designed with the hope that they can remain open most of the time, but be closed during particularly noisy times. They will be mostly glass with aluminum frames, similar to the door to the videoconference room off the lobby. The single door opening on the south side of the entrance will be closed in with glass. There is still a bidding process to go through so it may April before the project is completed.

Phoenix progress
Jacque will be working this coming week with planners to choose office furniture for the new library and the Health Sciences Education Building. The construction is moving quickly and still on schedule for a summer opening! You can see the building’s progress at this URL:http://www.pdc.arizona.edu/webcam/HSEB.aspx

Pot luck feast
Thanks to everyone who brought in food for the LSA Holiday Pot Luck Luncheon. What a wonderful buffet we enjoyed!

Jeanette lunches

On Wednesday, Jeanette attended a luncheon with Deans, Regents Professors and other distinguished leaders of the UA. Jeanette was invited by virtue of her Distinguished Outreach Librarian status. The luncheon featured ASU President Michael Crow who spoke about his idea of a “Sun Corridor” where Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties would jointly compete with other metropolitan regions in the global economy.

Nga, Study solution?

Thanks to Nga

The library owns the papers of Orville Harry Brown, an early 20th century Arizona physician. As part of a project to make these papers more accessible Nga has recently finished transcribing almost 3,000 index entries into an electronic format. Congratulations to Nga for completing this huge task!

Single-person study rooms?

We are exploring the idea of creating single-person study rooms on the third floor. Because the users won’t be talking to themselves (we hope) the walls don’t need to be absolutely soundproof. This means that we can use modular walls, which are less expensive than putting up actual walls, re-routing HVAC and rearranging lighting. We are just beginning to talk with vendors now about possible solutions.

Shocking! Happy holiday.

New equipment

A defibrillator has been installed in the main hallway of the College of Medicine. This device is used to treat certain kinds of heart attacks. When you head down the hall, it’s on the wall on your left around the corner toward the hospital. It is designed to give you audio guidance when you begin to use it so that no training is required. However we will be offering training sessions in the near future.

Enjoy the holiday

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I hope that everyone has an enjoyable and restful holiday break.

Texting, website, furniture, taxi?

Pilot project at the desk

Information desk staff are starting a pilot project to use text messaging to notify students when study rooms are available. Students who sign up on a waiting list for a study room will have the option to leave their phone number at the desk. An email message can be sent to their phone as a text message. If the student doesn’t respond in 15 minutes, the next person on the list will be notified.

AHSL’s new website

We are in the final stages of completing our new website. Many people around the library are busy migrating content from the old site and creating new content. We are only a month away from having a working version that we can unveil to the world on January 2, 2012! Thanks to everyone who has been working on this project!

New study tables

Our new furniture was delivered on Monday. Stop by the Reference Area to see the new chairs and powered tables. We hope these will be a hit with the students!

CABIII

This Saturday, Sunday and Monday I’ll be attending “Collaborating Across Borders III” a conference on Interprofessional Education (IPE) in Healthcare. Previous CAB conferences were held in Minneapolis and Halifax, Nova Scotia. This year the meeting is in Tucson at the El Conquistador Resort. During the meeting I’ll be getting together with several librarians from other universities to share ideas on supporting IPE.

Facilities News

News from the monthly AHSC Facilities Meeting

Elevators

The head of Facilities Management informed me that we will be getting new elevators sometime in the next six months! Details will follow.

Streetcar project

I have several pages of drawings, photos and text describing the new streetcar that will run from Helen St., South of the College of Pharmacy, under Speedway at Warren Ave. to campus and then on to downtown and ending on Congress St. west of I-10. Tracks will be installed beginning no later than summer 2012. I will leave the packet on the table in the office. Please look at it there and leave for others to see. Some of the same information is available at: www.tucsonstreetcar.com especially in the “Background” section.

Fire Drills

We’ve had plenty of “unplanned” fire drills. Soon the AHSC will be conducting a series of planned fire drills. We will get notice of a two-week window but will not be told exactly when the drill will take place. The library will probably be scheduled for sometime during the holiday break.

Lights in the Medical Research Building (MRB)

You may have noticed lights on throughout the MRB in the evenings after many people have left. There is a problem with the placement of light switches that means people are hesitant to turn out the lights thinking they’ll leave another lab in the dark. Facilities Management is experimenting with motion sensors that will work in the lab areas in order to save energy overnight.

Cred, Tables and Data

MEZCOPH Accreditation

Each of the Colleges we support is accredited by an external oversight organization. The Colleges of Pharmacy and Nursing both relied on our liaison librarians to provide input and support in this important process. Now the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health is starting to prepare for their upcoming accreditation. Annabelle and Mari will be working with the College to get them information that they need for their self-study.

New study tables

We hope that our new study tables for the reference area will be delivered next week.

AAHSL/AAMC

I just returned from the annual meeting of the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries that was held in conjunction with the Association of American Medical Colleges in Denver. Among the highlights was a Nobel laureate speaking about the need to get a handle on research data. What used to be kept in lab notebooks is now terabytes, petabytes and even “brontobytes” of data often stored on computers in researchers offices. In another session the speaker explained that Electronic Health Records, now being implemented in doctors’ offices and in hospitals, will only reach their full potential if the human-computer interface is improved so that physicians can view the data in easily understood formats. These were just a tiny fraction of this jam-packed four-day meeting.

Stats, stats, and more stats

Google Analytics

Gary has sent out, and now Nicole is sending out, quarterly reports of the usage of our website from Google Analytics to some folks in the library. Now everyone who is interested can see the cumulated reports on the G drive in the “Google Analytics” folder.

Entryway

Security gates
If you don’t normally come through the front door, be sure to take a look at our new security gates. They are thinner and more attractive than the old gates and, together with some nice plants, grown from cuttings and nurtured by Nga and Tessie, really dress up the front entrance. We’ve requested some design changes to the new front doors but that project is still moving forward. We still hope to have the new doors installed by the end of the calendar year.

New front doors, security gates

The new front doors for the library are custom built items. Facilities is just going out on bid for them and once the contract is awarded it will be almost a month before they are delivered to campus and a little while longer for installation. Facilities hopes to have them in place before the end of the year. However, our new security gates will be installed soon. Javad is working with the vendor to schedule that installation.

COM Phx Topping Out

On Oct 5, the construction crew placed the final beam on the Health Sciences Education Building (aka HSEB) which will also house the AHSL Phx.

More photos are HERE.

Welcome Heather!, 4th floor

Welcome Heather!

Heather Hershey is our newest Clinical Education Librarian. Heather is a librarian at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix. Our third and fourth year students rotate through the clinical departments at Good Samaritan and Heather works with Sally Harvey to support their information needs.

What’s up with the 4th floor?

1. Ongoing noise complaints. We think one reason that we get so many complaints about people talking on the 4th floor is because of the dividers. A small group will be sitting on one side of the dividers. They may get a little noisy and they don’t realize that someone else is just on the other side of the divider, trying to study quietly. There are financial, logistical and ownership issues to work through on this. However, this week we negotiated permission to remove the “screens” that hang on the metal uprights. This will open up the floor a little and create more of a study hall atmosphere. It will give us a chance to experiment and see if the noise levels decrease in an open area. At the moment it’s too expensive to remove the uprights and Facilities is exploring options to sell or surplus them. Tessie has removed all of the screens in the center of the room. Run upstairs and take a look.

2. The College of Medicine would like to use the 4th floor for office space. We, and others, would like to see it used as “educational space.” That means study rooms, large and small, meeting rooms, classrooms, seminar rooms, etc. This discussion has gone on for two years and the final decision may depend on who gets money to renovate the floor first. If we should lose this race we will concentrate on creating desirable study space on the third floor. If we can find a way to retain use of the 4th floor we’ll do our best to make it a useful educational space for the benefit of the entire campus.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

AHSL Phoenix Librarian Search is Underway

Finally, I won't need to be an OPL (One Person Library) librarian anymore! We have posted and are beginning to review applicants for a second librarian at this campus! Please see the listing on Career Tracks for details. The committee consists of Sandy and Brooke from Tucson, Kathy Z and April A as Phoenix CELs, Patricia Rodriguez from Phx OMA, Kurt Gustin, PhD, Phx BMS faculty, and John Sarko, MD, Phx Clinical Faculty. Howard Silverman, MD and I are chairing the group.

Please call if you have questions, and I promise to keep you all informed!

BTW, our new Health Sciences Education (HSEB) building tops out October 5! And it's looking great! See photos here.

Super Cindy!, Spare change

Congratulations to Cindy!

Cindy has completed her Superuser training on the new university financial system. Not only is she thoroughly familiar with it for our benefit but she is already helping train and support other folks around campus. Great recognition for Cindy and for the AHSL!

Budget

I know that you’ve heard a lot about budget cuts and our inability to purchase all of the information resources that we need or would like to offer. However, we are not broke! The library budget consists of salaries, collections and operating funds. If you need a piece of equipment to do your job or if you have an idea for a project that might take some funding, please inform either your supervisor or the office. We can often find funds for special needs or projects and don’t want concern about funding to hold back our innovation and service.

Sandy & Jennifer share in award, Book Banning

Congratulations to Sandy and Jennifer

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists has awarded its Pharmacy Practice Research Award to the article, “U.S. Pharmacists’ Effects as Team Members on Direct Patient Care: Systematic Review and Meta-analyses” published in Medical Care.

( 48(10):923-933, October 2010 doi: 10.1097/MLR.0b013e3181e57962 ) Sandy and Jennifer were listed as authors on this important piece of research that involved locating and reviewing over 50,000 article abstracts.

Caution! Dangerous Books

Our latest exhibit recognizes Banned Books Week – Sept. 24 – Oct. 1. It features books that have been removed from library shelves for a variety of reasons. See the books and read about the particular “danger” of each book. Thanks to Rebecca Blakiston in the Main Library and to Mary Riordan, Nga and Yamila from our exhibits committee for mounting this interesting and timely exhibit!

Jeanette & Jacque publish, new furniture

Congratulations to Jeanette and Jacque
Jeanette and Jacque have coauthored a paper titled, “Arizona Go Local – A Journey.” The article was published in the September 2011 issue of Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet and describes the history of and lessons learned from AHSL’s AZGoLocal project. The article can be downloaded at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15398285.2011.597342

New Chairs
We now have new chairs in the small classroom. These are the same model chairs that we’ve ordered for the 2nd floor study area and that are used in the computer lab area.

Fire codes and new front doors.

Fire codes and power strips
Recently the fire marshal paid us a visit and pointed out some problems. We are not allowed to plug a power strip or surge protector into another power strip or surge protector. They must be plugged directly into the wall. We have corrected most of these situations, but, if you need a surge protector or power strip with a longer cord, please let us know in the office. We have spares.

Some of our study carrels on the third floor and in the “purple room” on the 4th floor have ancient power strips attached to them. These do not meet the fire code. We will be replacing some of them in the purple room with surge protectors. Others will be removed entirely. The carrels are near wall or floor outlets and equipment can be plugged directly into the outlets.

Library Entrance
After lots of exploration with Facilities Management and the Fire Marshal, we have finally issued a work order for changes to the front of the library. The single entrance on the south side of the entry, near the exterior door, will be closed permanently. Regular glass doors will be installed in the double-sized opening. These doors will stay open during the day and can be locked shut at night. This will eliminate the need for the sliding metal “fence” that has been so troublesome lately.

We will be installing new security gates by the double doors. We have to go through a bid process to obtain these so it may take quite awhile before they are installed.

Authors thank Nga

Nga was recently thanked in the acknowledgement section of three papers published in the journal Brain Research. Nga contributed library research to the completion of the articles which appeared in volume 1409.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00068993

Yamila, popcorn!, furniture again

Yamila’s story
Yamila reported on her attendance at the Arizona Adult Services Summit in the latest issue of Latitudes, the newsletter of the Pacific Southwest Regional Medical Library. You can read her article here: http://tinyurl.com/3su8jqh

Popcorn promotion
This week as students started their school year they were greeted in the library lobby and on the “Walk of Wellness” between the Colleges of Pharmacy and Public Health, by library staff handing out free popcorn and bookmarks. The bookmarks contained QR codes that can be scanned by a smartphone or iPad to automatically load the contact information for our library liaisons. Jennifer and Annabelle reached over 230 students and survived the heat over the course of two days on the Walk of Wellness. (photo here: http://tinyurl.com/3fdkkm6 )
Linda, Javad, Nicole, Sandy, Tessie, Mari, Sandy, Gary, Mary R., Amanda, Brooke, Laura, Mikel and Joan either handed out popcorn in front of the library, purchased the popcorn and bags, planned the event or designed the bookmarks among other tasks. We gave away over 500 bags of popcorn and at least as many bookmarks! Thanks to all for making this event such a success.


Front lobby furniture
The College of Medicine is trying to make the lobby area, outside the library, more comfortable and inviting for students here for interviews. They will be removing the green furniture and replacing it with some of the “comfortable” chairs from the 4th floor, along with a few dividers and their attached tall tables. Watch for this transformation sometime in the next month.

Elevators, helicopters and first run movies

Facilities Notes
There are three items of interest from the monthly AHSC Facilities Management meeting.
First, I was able to bring our elevator situation to the attention of Chris Kopach, Head of Facilities for the entire UA. He had just heard about elevator problems in the Diamond Children’s Center and promised to look into our situation.

Second, because of the failure of all four elevators recently in Diamond Children’s Center, all helicopter flights had to be diverted for a short time. In the case of a major disaster the front lawn of the University of Arizona Medical Center (UAMC) can be used for helicopter landings, but is far from ideal. Safety and Facilities people are now looking at the western retention basin on the west side of the library as a possible emergency landing area. Portable lights and a windsock would be brought out and police would block the streets if an emergency developed. This is still just one possible plan under consideration.

Finally, for you movie lovers, AHSC Facilities is exploring the possibility of installing Redbox vending machine somewhere in the COM, perhaps in the lobby outside of the library. The Redbox machines allow you to rent DVD’s, Blu-ray disks and video games, pick them up and return them to the vending machine.

A new role for Nicole

Emerging Technologies Librarian
I’m pleased to announce that Nicole Capdarest has accepted our offer to serve as Emerging Technologies Librarian. Nicole will begin work in her new position on Monday, August 22nd. In this new role Nicole will be assisting with our implementation of technology, serving as a liaison with ITS and UITS (the Information Technology Services of the College of Medicine and the UA), and exploring new technologies that can help us to work more efficiently and better serve our users.

You may remember that we did a national search to fill this position and were unable to identify any suitable candidates. We later learned that Nicole was interested in the position. After meetings with Nicole, Sandy, Carol and the Administrative Team we decided to offer her the position. Nicole has the enthusiasm and interest that we were looking for, along with technology skills including experience with Drupal, the language being used to create our new website.

Superuser!

Cindy has been tapped to serve as a “superuser” for the new campus financial system called Kuali. She will have a heavy schedule of extra training and will then be on call for anyone with questions about the system. She is one of 10 superusers on the health sciences campus. All of that extra training will be a great help to us!

Funds and Furniture

Development/Fund Raising
On Tuesday I met with Andrea Miller, Director of Annual Giving Programs for the UA Foundation. I’m happy to let you know that the AHSL will be included in the UA spring fund raising appeal. A letter will go out to alumni, previous donors and others explaining our needs and asking for donations. Depending on the response we may follow this up with a phone-a-thon. Don’t worry, you won’t have to call donors – this will all be handled by the Foundation. ☺

Furniture
We have decided on the tables and chairs and layout for the second floor reference study area. We are waiting for quotes from two vendors and hope to place an order shortly. The new furniture won’t be here for the start of the new semester but maybe by Labor Day!

Meetings, Gates

Around the Library
This week the IS Department met. Hannah presented a tutorial on the Index Catalog of the Library of the Surgeon General’s Office and Mari presented EndNote information, including the interface between Sociological Abstracts, POPLINE and EndNote.

Security gates
Our security gates on the front doors have become very unreliable. We rely on them not only for book security but also to count the number of people coming into the library each day. We are looking at various options. One possibility is to close off the “single” door on the south side of the front entrance. This would save us the cost of purchasing another gate. We are also looking at installing only one gate on the “double” door and filling in the space with a panel or door that only library staff could open or move (in the event of needing a wider space to move equipment through.) Another option is to install two doors in the double space to eliminate the need for the sliding gate that we use to close the library.

Retirement Plan, Health Insurance changes

Insurance Waiting Periods, Higher Retirement Contributions Start This Month

Beginning this month, University of Arizona employees enrolled in the Arizona State Retirement System can expect to see a larger chunk of their paychecks going toward retirement. At the same time, new University employees will have to wait longer before they can contribute to the state retirement plan or receive health benefits. Increased retirement contribution rates and new waiting periods for employee benefits are just two of a series of changes mandated by the Arizona Legislature in the wake of continuing state budget challenges.

Thanks, Thanks and Shredding

Thanks to Mary, Dave and Amanda
Our Collection Services team has continued to do an amazing job this year. Despite flat budgets and constant price increases, they have kept our collection healthy and accessible and kept the budget balanced. On Tuesday I met a doctor on our faculty who said, “I don’t know how you do it but I rely so much on your collection and I find just what I need even with all of your budget cuts.” Collection Services has had to make some tough choices but have managed to meet most reasonable requests from our faculty. This has not been easy! Thank you!

Thanks to Nga
Nga has been very busy with a variety of projects. Last year she checked over 6,000 volumes of electronic journals against our print holdings. Nga has discovered missing issues and supplements. In some cases we can supply the missing items to the publishers who can add them to the digital versions. Nga also works on indexing some of the items in our special collections. In one case she is transcribing a print index so that we can make it available to scholars online. Thanks to Nga for all of this background work!

Convenient shredding
There is now a shredder located in the IS Desk Staff office on the second floor. There is also a new shredder in the library office.

Kudos, ETL, KRI, Furniture & Cats!

More kudos for our Pharmacy Liaison program
As we mentioned last November, the accrediting body for pharmacy colleges was very impressed by the liaison program between the AHSL and the College of Pharmacy. Yesterday Dr. John Murphy, Associate Dean of the College, announced that the Association of American Colleges of Pharmacy has asked the College to write about three of their “Noteworthy Practices” as an example for other schools. The liaison program was one of them. Congratulations to Jennifer and Sandy. I know that other AHSL librarians have helped out over there as well.

Emerging Technology Librarian search
We are stepping back to restart our search for an emerging technology librarian. After seeing how many applicants we had (almost 50) and how few seemed to match our requirements we’ve decided to reconstitute the search committee, rewrite or revise the job description and try again. Thanks to Jeanette, Joan, Tessie, Marcus and Yamila for serving on the committee.

Knowledge River Program grant renewed, AHSL listed as partner
This announcement is from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the funding agency, “The University of Arizona's School of Information Resources and Library Science (SIRLS) Knowledge River Program and partners will recruit and matriculate 33 culturally competent information professionals to work in public libraries, archives, and medical libraries that serve Hispanic American and Native American communities. While providing these needed professionals, the project will also enhance the existing Knowledge River Program by developing an online component. Partners for this project include the University of Arizona Libraries and Center for Creative Photography; the Arizona Health Sciences Library; the Pima County Public Library; the Arizona Historical Society; the Labriola National American Indian Data Center; and the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records.”

Furniture
We are looking at bids from several furniture vendors to put new tables and chairs into the area on the second floor that used to hold reference stacks. With luck new furniture will be delivered before the fall semester begins.

Cats
You may be aware of the feral cats that live near the SW corner of the library. You may also have noticed that there is a stash of food and water nearby. I learned last week that there are several people at the AHSC who look after these cats and also take them to be neutered. One of the cats has recently given birth so one of the cat guardians will be offering them for adoption after the mother is neutered.

Facilities News

Streetcar
Next summer the Warren Ave. underpass will be closed. The new streetcar will be going through this underpass. Tracks need to be installed and it needs to be made deeper. When it reopens the tunnel will carry bicycle and pedestrian traffic in addition to the streetcar. Sounds crazy but we’ll see!

Parking pay stations
As I mentioned in January, all parking meters on the AHSC will soon be replaced with pay stations that will only accept credit or debit cards – no cash. However the new machines can call your cell phone when your time is about to expire and allow you to add time from the phone. Expect them to be operational in mid-July. The cost will be $1.50/hour or $1.85 for time added over the phone. Departments will be issued a code that can be given to visitors and the department will be billed.

Humane trapping
If you’ve noticed fewer pigeons around the building, one of the reasons is that facilities personnel have been trapping the birds and releasing them far from campus.

Big Drill
On October 11, 2011 UMC will play a part in a National Emergency Drill being coordinated locally by Davis-Monthan AFB. Forty “patients” (actually students) will be airlifted off of Mt. Graham. They will be brought in Blackhawk helicopters to the UMC landing pad, but also to the UA mall, the Campbell Ave. farms or to the Rincon Vista sports complex at 15th St. and Tucson Blvd. Patients dropped at remote locations will be brought to UMC by ambulance. This exercise will take all day. There should be plenty of advance notice and publicity about this event.

A post on posters

Congratulations Yamila and Mary
Mary Riordan and Yamila have had a poster accepted for the annual meeting of the Arizona Library Association in November. The meeting will be held here in Tucson and the poster will focus on finding reliable health information for diverse populations. Yamila has also had a poster accepted to the national REFORMA conference in Denver in the fall. The poster will focus on consumer health information for Latino populations and also look at resources that provide information on prescription drugs.

Congratulations Lindsey!

Lindsey Greene, Library Supervisor at the AHSL-Phoenix, has been appointed Librarian at the John C Lincoln Health Network. Lindsey will start work on Monday, June 6 and will be the AZHIN representative for the John C Lincoln hospitals. Thanks Lindsey for all of your work in helping to establish the AHSL in Phoenix. We know you’ll do a great job at John C Lincoln!

Editor and Reception

Editor!
Congratulations to Carol who has been named editor of the Arizona Geriatrics Society Journal!

Exhibit and Reception
Please join me next Thursday, June 2nd in the Java City area for a reception honoring Dr. James C. Dunn. The reception runs from 2 – 4 PM with a formal presentation at 3 PM. It is being held in conjunction with our exhibit, “Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons.”

MLA

Medical Library Association (2)
Clinical Education Librarian April Aguinaga from Maricopa Integrated Health System was also at MLA. She and Kathy Zeblisky presented a poster, “The T-shaped librarian rethinks librarians’ roles in hospital settings” which was co-authored by CEL Becky Birr, also from MIHS and David Drachman. Sorry I missed this in last Friday's update!

Annual MLA Meeting

Medical Library Association

On Sunday Jennifer presented a paper at the Annual Meeting of the MLA. The paper, co-authored by Jennifer, Sandy and Dr. Marion Slack from the College of Pharmacy, described a role-playing approach to teaching how to search scholarly literature. Jennifer spoke to a full house and answered several questions – a very successful presentation.

Brooke, Annabelle and Jeanette were co-authors, along with several other people, of a paper presented by Keith Cogdill from the University of Texas, San Antonio. This paper described the Frontera Collaboration, our collaborative project on border health information involving Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Jennifer presented another paper on Tuesday, this one co-authored by Dr. Marie Chisholm-Burns, Sandy and several others. Her presentation described the process of carrying out a systematic review of the pharmacy literature looking for evidence of the effect of pharmacists as team members on patient care. Again this was a very full room and Jennifer answered several questions and spoke to some audience members after the talk.

Also spotted at MLA were Clinical Education Librarians Kathleen Carlson from ASU, Marni Ditmar from TMC, Sally Harvey from Good Samaritan/Banner Health and Kathy Zeblisky from Phoenix Children’s Hospital. (Please let me know if I missed anyone.)

The meeting included many interesting papers and plenary speakers. I hope that those who attended can share what they learned with everyone else. I think everyone who attended has returned with new ideas, new information and new energy!

Search, Eleanor, Jamie

Search Committee
The Search Committee for the Emerging Technologies Librarian is moving ahead and has posted the ad in numerous places. We already have applicants and will begin the initial selection process soon.

Eleanor Johnson Award
Eleanor Johnson was a librarian at the Arizona Health Sciences Library from 1972 until her death in 1984. She was active in women’s causes and had a longstanding interest in encouraging women in medicine. After her death a fund was created to recognize an outstanding female in each College of Medicine graduating class. Next Thursday I’ll have the honor of presenting the Eleanor Johnson Award at the College of Medicine Senior Awards Luncheon. However I can’t reveal the name of the winner until then!

Congratulations Jamie!
I’m happy to announce that MLGSCA (the Medical Library Group of Southern Arizona and Arizona) has awarded a $1,000 scholarship toward library school to Jamie Navarette, one of the Knowledge River Scholars who has been working in the library this year. Here is the brief bio that was published in the MLGSCA Newsletter.

Jamie N. Navarette is currently a Knowledge River 9 Scholar and graduate assistant enrolled at the University of Arizona’s Information Resources and Library Science program anticipating graduation in December of 2011. Her previous degrees include a BA and MA in English from the University of Nebraska as well as a Library Media Endorsement and Secondary Language Arts teaching license. Currently, she assists with circulation/reference, cataloging/technical services and outreach at the Arizona Health Sciences Center at the university. Her career plans will focus on the development of effective health promotion programs in collaboration with community agencies, public health personnel and health care entities.

CS for SK

Congratulations Sandy
Please join me in congratulating Sandy who has been given Continuing Status by the University!

Whee!

New Wii!
The fundraising drive for the Wii was successful! It is now set up in the administration conference room. If you would like to use it you need to fill out a release form in the office and ask the office staff to check the room schedule. If the room is free and you’ve signed the form you are free to bowl, golf, play tennis or baseball or to break world records. You can also bring in your own Wii games. We have four controllers so bring your friends!

Upstairs Downstairs

New study space
Over the past two weeks the empty shelving in the SW corner of the Reference area has been removed and additional electrical outlets have been added to the columns. We have begun moving study tables into this area and already have students using the new space. Eventually we will fill the space with tables.

New lobby TV monitor
We finally have the new monitor mounted on the wall in the lobby, outside of the videoconferencing room. The picture seems brighter than the old monitor. Tessie has been busy creating colorful new announcement screens to display on the monitor.

New storage for historical items
Two new storage units have been created in the Collection Services area. One unit allows us to hang pictures or awards and will protect them from dust and light. The second unit creates a cluster of padded “cubbies” suitable for storage of many different types of materials. This unit will soon have curtains added to further protect the contents.

Office moves

Office moves
This weekend Hannah will be moving to the office that David previously occupied, along the south wall on the 2nd floor. When Nicole begins work on April 8 she will move into the office that Hannah had been in.

Meeting, Budget, Budget

Meeting at UCLA
On Wednesday Gary attended the Resource Library Directors meeting at UCLA. Once a year the Regional Medical Library (RML) brings together the directors of 12 academic libraries in the California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Pacific Islands region to discuss issues of importance, to share information and the learn about programs at the RML. Although negotiations are still ongoing between the RML and the National Library of Medicine, we hope to soon have a subcontract with the RML to support some of our outreach activities. This will be a real help to our budget next year.

Library budget needs
Last week Gary delivered a report to the Vice President for Health Affairs, Dr. Crist, describing budget projections for the next nine years. This brief report also laid out several plans for supplementing the library’s state budget. Later today or early on Monday, Dr. Crist will receive a report from Jeanette and Gary proposing budgetary support from the UA Health Network (UMC, UPH and Kino). Many other libraries receive support from their clinical partners and we feel that this is a good time for the UA Health Network to step up to the plate.

Other budget news
President Shelton is scheduled to announce the UA budget for the coming year later today. We have heard that there may be a 10% cut but don’t know if that would be applied equally to all departments, etc.

Welcome Nicole!, Thank you, News Monitor

Welcome Nicole, Thanks search Committee
I’m happy to announce that Nicole Capdarest-Arest will be joining us on Monday, April 4 as our newest Information Services Librarian and College of Medicine Liaison. Special thanks to the search committee - Amanda, Brooke, Javad, Jeanette and Sandy – for sorting through applications, arranging the interviews, compiling staff comments and making a final recommendation!

The sound of progress
You may have heard (or be hearing) some noise on the second floor this morning. Pat, from the Carpentry Shop, is hanging up the mounting for our new “news” monitor in the front lobby. The monitor itself is on backorder but we hope to have it up and running in the next few weeks.

Tessie’s Photo Brown Bag

Yesterday Tessie treated staff members to a slide show of her photos. The Brown Bag Lunch presentation included photos taken mostly at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum but also at locations around Tucson, Denver and Austin, Texas. By visiting the museum in the early morning hours Tessie has captured many different animals in action poses. Watch for more staff Brown Bags!

New Scanner

The new BookEye4 scanner finally arrived last week in ILL to replace the earlier model that was purchased over a year ago and never worked properly. It is a welcome enhancement to the unit’s scanning operation. The scanning software that is installed on the machine is designed to work with the ILLiad application, so it’s not feasible to use the scanner for other library digitization projects at this time. Purchase of additional scanning software is being explored.

Congrats to Mary R., Dave, Jennifer M., New Position, Committee Assignments

Congratulations to Mary R.
Mary has been asked to serve as Chair Designate/Chair of the Medical Library Association Awards Committee. Her term will start on June 1, 2011. The Awards Committee oversees all of the MLA Award Juries, reviews policies and procedures related to awards and is empowered to recommend to the Board a nominee for the Noyes Award, the highest honor given by MLA. This position carries a lot of responsibility and a full workload!

Dave Piper, History Detective!
The December issue of the Pima County Medical Society (PCMS) newsletter has a page-long story about the digitization of the PCMS historical minutes and some of the interesting stories contained in them. The article credits Dave Piper with the digitization project and with additional extensive research that has helped to bring these minutes to life. The article ends with a heartfelt thank you to Dave from the Executive Director, Dr. Steve Nash.

Congratulations to Jennifer Martin
Jennifer has been accepted to the Biomedical Informatics Course jointly sponsored by the National Library of Medicine and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. Admission is very competitive and acceptance comes with a full scholarship that covers all expenses for the seven-day course. Jennifer will be attending the fall session. She will be joining Sandy and Carol as graduates of the program.

New Position
As mentioned in the January 7th update the library has received permission to create a new librarian position. A job description has been drafted for an “Emerging Technologies Librarian.” The person in this position will be helping us to use new technology – from mobile phones to social networks – to communicate with and support our clients. The search will begin as soon as the current search concludes.

Strategic Planning Committees
Thanks to all who volunteered to serve on committees this year. We weren’t able to place everyone on a committee and we did have to “draft” a few people. Thanks in advance to those who have agreed to serve for two years (or one year on the Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Task Force.) The ATeam will be meeting with each group to get them started.
Transforming Services – Sandy, Chair; Javad, Carol, Yamila, new IS librarian
Marketing and Promotion – Joan, Chair; Annabelle, Jacque, Tessie, Linda
Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Plan Task Force – Jeanette; Chair, Mikel, Brooke, Javad, “Emerging Technologies Librarian”