Diamond Children's Center, Strategic Plan, Budget, Long-range Planning

Diamond Children’s Center Open House
Sandy and Brooke represented AHSL and AZHIN respectively at the Diamond Children Center’s Physician Open House last night. The event had a dual purpose: celebration of the grand opening of the new Center and a strong push to involve physicians throughout the state by encouraging them to become affiliated with the University of Arizona. Over 300 physicians were invited to attend and in addition to virtual tours of the center, which highlighted their state of the art services, a whole section was devoted to information on how to become a UA affiliate along with the benefits and responsibilities of affiliation. Library resources and services are of course major benefits and Sandy talked to physicians who came to the “library booth.” Since some physicians will likely choose not to become affiliated, Brooke was there to tell them about the resources they may already have access to—AZHIN. The event was a big success and Dr. Cleo Hardin, Section Chief Pediatric Hospital Medicine and Outreach, and her assistant Debbie Boggs were enthusiastic in their appreciation of the library’s participation.

Strategic Plan
Thanks again to the three groups that worked on the goals and objectives. The Administrative Team has reviewed the reports and has sent a few questions back to the groups. The next step will be for the ATeam to bring these suggestions together into a single strategic plan with Goals spread over the next several years and people assigned to different tasks or committees. I expect this part of the process to take 4-6 weeks. Stay tuned!

State Budget
News reports this morning brought bad news about the Arizona economy. Tax revenues are way down leaving the state facing a $700 million shortfall for this fiscal year. The governor is ruling out any tax increases and wants the cover the deficit with cuts to healthcare and education. The library has been asked to “hold back” or not allocate 5% of our state budget for just this situation. This amounts to $127,000 that is not available for collections or other purposes. We have no word yet from the university on whether or not we will have to give up this sum but all signs are pointing in that direction. (for more on the budget see the next item.)

Long Range Planning
On Monday I met with Dr. Crist, Vice President for Health Affairs, to talk about several urgent issues. On Tuesday Cindy and I met with Dr. Crist, Jerry Miron and Herminia Rios, (Dr. Crist's top financial advisors) to present the library’s “all sums” budget. This is a complete budget review that all departments have been asked to do and an opportunity to present budgetary issues to the Vice President.

As a result of these two meetings AHSL administration will be working with Dr. Crist on three initiatives that we hope will have some long-range, and perhaps short-range, results.

Perhaps the most important is to look at a fundamental restructuring of how AHSL is funded on campus. We are currently trapped between constantly increasing prices for information and a steadily decreasing state budget. We have identified several strategies to insure a reliable budget for the library and will be working with Dr. Crist to present these to the Provost and President.

A second initiative will be to work more closely with the new UA Healthcare to get support, not only for collections, but also for personnel to better serve Kino Hospital and, perhaps, UMC.

The third area is development or fundraising. You may know that Dr. Crist came to the University promising to bring in large donations. He has spent his first two years making contacts in the state and laying the groundwork for support. He is now ready to begin asking for significant donations. In the past we have worked exclusively with the College of Medicine development team. From now on we will also work directly with Dr. Crist, keeping him informed of our needs and suggesting giving opportunities. These opportunities could range from naming the entire building to naming a group study room and from creating an endowment to naming an endowed “chair” (an ongoing position) in the library. We have started organizing information to give to Dr. Crist in support of his efforts.

Yesterday, as a result of these discussions with Dr. Crist, I attended a planning session with administrators from UA Healthcare that I hope will lead to stronger links between AHSL and the clinical enterprise.