Candidate(s), Flu, Budget, Nursing Dean

Candidate
Congratulations to Jacque who has been selected as a candidate for the Medical Library Association (MLA) Nominating Committee. (“Our own” Jerry Perry is a candidate for MLA President!)

Pandemic planning
The H1N1 virus or swine flu has been in the news a lot lately. Last May the campus asked each unit to develop a plan for dealing with a possible outbreak. Our plan is focused on providing services that might be needed by medical professionals and also addresses how we would continue to function if many of the staff became ill. You can expect to be hearing more about campus planning and our plans if the outbreak becomes more widespread.

Budget non-news
We still have no definitive news on our budget for the year. However Dr. Crist has asked me to be prepared for a 5 to 7% cut. I have been planning for various contingencies since last spring and have plans in place for a 7% cut. We have slowed our spending until we know what the exact figures will be.

Meeting with Dean
On Wednesday Jeanette, Sandy and I met with Joan Shaver, PhD, RN, FAAN, the new Dean in the College of Nursing. We described AHSL services with an emphasis on the liaison program and outreach. The Dean described her plans that include more distance education and an emphasis on graduate education. We look forward to partnering with the CON in the future.

Pandemic preparations

Last week I attended two meetings regarding campus planning for a possible pandemic. On Friday afternoon the Administrative Team met to talk about reasonable plans. Given the current situation we drafted a plan for “significant absenteeism” among library staff. We don’t feel that a total closure of the library is likely, but we want to be ready in case large numbers of staff members (or members of their families) are ill and unable to come to work. We have also talked about a total closure and have identified a strategy to handle this situation.
We will be creating signs for the offices of library liaisons in the Colleges listing who to call if the liaison is out. We will also create signs for the library entrance in the event that we are closed.
We will encourage everyone who has a need to use VPN in order to work from home, to test out the software. We will work with you if you have problems.
We will be talking to the College of Medicine Information Technology Services (ITS) to 1) get an emergency phone number, 2) stress the importance to the library (and campus and UMC) of keeping library servers and network service up and running and 3) stress the importance to hospitals and clinics around the state of keeping the AZHIN server up and running.
We are revising our phone tree and creating quick lists of staff phone numbers for ATeam members.
We have created a new reporting procedure for ATeam members to track the number of absentees in each department so staff can substitute in other departments if needed.
Obviously we hope that none of these procedures is necessary!