Author! :-) Flood :-(

Congratulations Carol

Carol is the co-author on a paper recently published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.  The article is titled, “Medical decision-making for older adults without family” and proposes a new type of professional – a health fiduciary – who would be “trained and certified to act as a surrogate decision-maker for individuals who are unable to make decisions for themselves.”

Hurricane Sandy

Here is an email the Neil Rambo, library director at New York University Medical Center, sent to other health sciences library directors last Friday.

“Hi all. I know many of you have been wondering what in the world is going on at NYU in light of Hurricane Sandy that swept through our area on Monday night. The big story is, essentially, that the storm surge was 14 ft. That's a lot of angry water and about 3 ft beyond the maximum that had been forecast. The surge knocked out back-up generators and flooded the lower levels throughout the medical center. The lower level of the library is one of those that was flooded, to the ceiling. That's where our onsite print collection was shelved and many of our faculty and staff work areas were located. It remains completely submerged today even though emergency pumps are working 24/7. The level above that — the main library area — was flooded by about 1-2 ft of water, moving heavy objects around in a pattern indicating a dramatic surge.

All medical center power and network infrastructure has been knocked out. Twice in a little more than a year, all patients were evacuated in very short order. Research samples are being carted out from labs en masse to freezer trucks surrounding the medical center. Recovery is becoming more organized and picking up speed.

Medical center email and basic web services have recently been restored. We hope that rudimentary online library resources will be available in a few days. Our tremendous library faculty and staff are eager to re-establish service from off-site or wherever and we are pulling together to begin planning a very positive way forward. In the meantime, the NN/LM MAR is graciously providing back-up clinical reference and document delivery service.

Sorry not to be joining you all in San Francisco. As I know you will understand, we've got a lot to do here and the next few days will be particularly important. Thanks for your good thoughts. We will come through this in great shape.

Best,

Neil”