Jacque & Kathleen, Visitor, Office Moves

Headline in UA News
Jacque generated some great publicity for the AHSL in working with Kathleen Carlson of ASU (and an AHSL Clinical Education Librarian) to produce a list of trusted consumer health web sites. She and Kathleen gave a presentation on finding health information on the web at a monthly breakfast series for UA and ASU faculty in Phoenix. Their presentation was picked up by one newspaper in Phoenix and by our own UANews.
Link: http://uanews.org/click/23783/1

Visitor
Sandra Martin, Interim Director of the Shiffman Medical Library at Wayne State University in Detroit will be visiting the library next week. As I mentioned in November, Sandra is an NLM/AAHSL Fellow, one of five this year, participating in this highly competitive program for librarians who show strong leadership potential. Sandra will be meeting with many people around the library to ask questions and to learn about our operations. She will visit us again, probably in late summer or early fall.

Office Moves
On Friday Jennifer will be moving downstairs to a cubicle “over the wall” from Amanda. Annabelle will be moving into the Information Desk Offices. This will make their former office available for the ITS Help Desk staff. For the next week Sandra Martin will be using Annabelle’s “old” desk.

Fourth Floor, Office Renovation, Moves, VP for Health Affairs

Fourth Floor
We are going to experiment with a “reading room” approach to the fourth floor. Javad is working on a plan to move some study carrels and study tables into the southern third of the room. We hope this more open arrangement, which will allow students to see each other studying, will encourage a quieter environment.

Office Renovation, Moves
Facilities management (FM) has had many urgent projects that had been given a higher priority than our project to divide the former IS Desk office into three new offices. Now, however, these other projects are mostly complete. Don’t hold your breath, but we may soon see some progress on this project.

FM is still gathering information as we negotiate the possible swap of office space between the second floor IS offices near the Java City area and the former Systems offices.

Vice President for Health Affairs
Today the Tucson Citizen reported that the University has asked the Board of Regents to approve the hiring of Dr. William Crist. If approved he would be on campus no later than November 17. Several people from AHSL were able to attend his presentation to the campus on Thursday, July 31. He seemed to be very personable and knowledgeable about academic medicine. He spoke about the need to integrate all of the health professions. I’ve spoken to people who have worked with him and they report that he has an understanding of libraries and a positive attitude about them.

Mari, Pat, Publicity!

Mari Stoddard is moving to MEZCOPH!
Our liaison outreach program to the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health has been very successful. Annabelle has built up a loyal clientele and has more “business” than she knows what to do with. Mari Stoddard will be joining Annabelle as a second, half-time, liaison to MEZCOPH. We are finalizing desk/office space for her right next to Annabelle’s current location.

Pat has moved again!
Pat Auflick has moved from the 2nd floor to the first. She is now in the office that Shanna used to occupy. Stop by and see her new digs. Pat may have edged out Mari for the record number of office moves!

We have not heard if COM Information Technology Services is going to accept our proposal to create a help desk in the Java City area. If this plan moves ahead, Mary, Jennifer and Annabelle will move into the former Systems Offices. If not, we’ll consider other uses for Pat’s former office.

Publicity
Advances, the College of Medicine newsletter, has a front page article on AHSL’s liaison program. You can read the article or download the attractive pdf file of the issue at:
http://www.opa.medicine.arizona.edu/ahsnews/jun08/index.shtml

Innovative migration, Visitor and Space

Thank you!

Our migration from SIRSI to Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (“Triple I”) and our move from an in-house database to Serials Solutions are pretty much complete. There is still clean-up and learning going on but the actual transfers of data and setup are done. I know that many people contributed in many ways to these projects. I’d like to especially thank Joan for overseeing two very complex operations. I’d also like to thank Mary Holcomb, Amanda, Javad and Nga for their work on the triple I migration. Andrew See also worked on this and, of course, Robin Sewell did an enormous amount of work and saved us a lot of money. Thanks also to Dave Piper, Marcus and Mary Holcomb (and to Robin) for their past and ongoing work with Serials Solutions!

Visitor

On Thursday, Carolyn Reid, Director of the medical library at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City visited AHSL. Their library has many interesting similarities to our library. They license materials through a multi-university consortium, similar to AULC, they have no systems personnel in the library, relying on a College of Medicine IT unit, and they have a remote site, although theirs is 6700 miles away in Doha, Qatar!

Space

We all know that space is a very valuable commodity on a university campus. A recent email discussion among health sciences library directors shows that almost every library has been asked to give up space – often for offices or other non-academic uses. In reality the library of the future will not need as much space as we have in the past. Our future lies in providing service, developing partnerships and in making sure that space in the library building contributes to the mission of the university.

In this spirit we have been continuing to look at our space situation. Two transitions are taking place that offer us a great opportunity to bring more people into the building, to show that we are aware of the needs of our users and for us to continue to provide attractive workspaces for our staff. The first transition is Marcus and Stef moving upstairs. (Run up and say “hello” when you get a chance!) The second is the early planning stages for a computer help desk that Jose is working on.

The library has offered the old ITC desk (outside of Pat Auflick’s current office) as a space for a help desk. This would be a place where COM students and faculty could bring computers or just questions and get help. It would augment a phone-in help desk.

Under the new IT reorganization, Spencer and Jose (and perhaps others from other COM computer support departments) will likely be helping to support this desk. It would seem natural that their office should be located close to the desk. After talking with everyone involved we have offered to move Pat, Mary Riordan, Annabelle and Jennifer downstairs and to make their current offices available to the new IT organization. This is still in the very early discussion phase but I want to give everyone a “head’s up.” I will do my best to keep you informed about any decisions or action on this matter.

Summertime . . . and the living is easy?

Summer is finishing with a real “bang!” (that’s not just the thunder.)

UpToDate, First Consult and MD-Consult, three important clinical information tools, are now available to our users. Look for the links on the home page and the banner announcement. We’ve also got announcements posted on the TV monitor in the lobby.

New tables and chairs were delivered this morning in 2101 (“Java City”) and are being installed as part of the continuing “make-over” of this area. (Thanks to Linda, Andrew and Javad for working as furniture movers to make room!) Earlier this summer all of the wooden tables were refinished. As the year progresses we will be reupholstering many of the chairs in this area.

The Java City contract has been signed by all parties and is good for another two years.

Last but not least, thanks to all who have moved their offices or who have helped with the moving. The first floor is looking completely full and busy for the first time in quite awhile. We added five group study rooms on the second floor over the summer. Eventually these rooms will be painted and whiteboards will be added. Construction in the old Information Desk Staff offices is tentatively scheduled to begin in October.

As usual, it’s been a very busy summer for us all. I’m starting to see students coming into the bookstore outside my window. Pretty soon the library will be filled with students and our “restful” summer will just be a memory!