Security, 4 Corners Meeting

Security Awareness
Most of us love animals and want only the best for them. However some who are concerned about the use of animals in medical research have used tactics that endanger property, research and people. April is Animal Rights Month and April 20-26 is World Week for Animals in Labs.
In the past April has seen demonstrations, sometimes accompanied by violence, at universities where medical research is done. In 1989 fires were set in two buildings at the University of Arizona (one was destroyed) and 1200 lab animals were released, some carrying infectious diseases.
No threats are known to exist on campus this year. I attended a campus session today that reminded the community of precautions that should be taken to insure the safety of university employees. A good handout was distributed and I will send copies out early next week.

4 Corners Meeting
This Thursday and Friday the directors of the 4 Corners academic health sciences libraries will be meeting in Phoenix. We will tour the new campus, the ASU downtown campus and library, and TGen. We will also meet regarding shared concerns, issues and solutions. Jacque is hosting us and has done a fantastic job of planning and scheduling.

Annabelle, Videoconference Room

Annabelle – a “Mover and Shaker”
On Monday Jeanette sent out the URL for Library Journal’s article on Annabelle at:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6535094.html

All of the medical library Movers and Shakers are listed in Michelle Kraft’s blog, The Krafty Librarian at:

http://kraftylibrarian.com/2008/03/congratulations-library-journals-movers.html

Congratulations again Annabelle!

Videoconference Room
I’d like to try to clear up some misconceptions about the new videoconference room in the Circulation Desk area. I view this space as a tremendous asset to the library – it’s bringing people into the building and has been great for meetings that we have with folks up in Phoenix. Because there is such a high demand on campus for videoconferencing and because use of the equipment requires technical support staff, scheduling of this room (and all video rooms) must be coordinated with the other videoconferencing rooms and is best handled outside of the library. We have access to this room and Linda can help you with scheduling. If you have problems with equipment or access to the room, the IS Desk staff know who to call. You may not know that the College of Medicine covered all of the cost for the renovation of this room.

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.

Congrats Carol! + other news

Congratulations to Carol
Carol 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. Acceptance comes with a full scholarship that covers all expenses for the seven-day course. Carol will be attending the September session.

Small Classroom
Between April 28 and June 27 there will be no computers in the small classroom. The computers in there are on loan from the College of Medicine with the understanding that they are pulled each year for use in student testing. Classes that require computers will have to be limited to the large classroom.

NIH Mandate

As part of the federal budget, the National Institutes of Health were given a mandate that all NIH funded research be deposited in PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. Many organizations and universities are scrambling to figure out how this will affect their operations and how they can comply with the mandate. Failure of an NIH funded researcher to deposit a research report (usually a journal article) in PubMed Central could result in a loss of current or future funding and could jeopardize future university NIH funding.

UofA wants to adopt a university-wide set of policies and procedures to insure that funding is not jeopardized. Carla Stoffle (Dean of University Libraries) and I met with Leslie Tolbert (UA Vice President for Research, Graduate Studies, and Economic Development) last week. The first outcome of this meeting is that Dan Lee from the Main Library is putting together a web page describing the options available to faculty. (The Association of Research Libraries and other groups have already started putting together informative lists, links and pages.) The web pages from the AHSL, Main and the VP for Research will all point to this new page. A 3D memo will be coming out from Carla, Dr. Tolbert and I informing faculty of the issue and their options. Carla and I are attending a meeting in Denver on March 10 to learn what resources the Greater Western Library Alliance has put together and will be talking with Dr. Tolbert again after that to discuss other methods of supporting faculty participation.

Joint Chapter Meeting

Last week the California, Nevada and Arizona chapters of the Medical Library Association held their joint meeting in Las Vegas and Jacque, Pat and I attended. I think each of us found it to be a valuable and useful meeting. Pat presented a paper on her research into the actual reading levels of “easy-to-read” medical information. Five SIRLS Knowledge River students attended the meeting with partial support from AHSL via our NLM grant. They presented a poster on the WeSearch project, which involved local high school students. (Pat, Annabelle and Mari all helped to support the students with this project.) The students met librarians from all over the West and charmed everyone they met. Jacque and I both moderated sessions and found the papers presented to be educational and sometimes inspirational. Another SIRLS student presented a paper on “visual searching” which discussed and demonstrated web search engines that present results visually, and systems for searching visual images. Jacque moderated a panel discussion on the future of hospital librarianship.

As you can see this meeting packed a lot into two days. I won’t go into detail about the three plenary speakers; Jim Cimino, MD from NLM who spoke on “infobuttons” in electronic health records systems, Mary Guinan, MD, PhD who spoke on her varied life in public health or Tom Bassler, PhD from the Medical University of South Carolina who described their amazing outreach program.

Jeanette is going to see if we can bring a little of the meeting to AHSL by arranging for you to see one or two of the presentations. Unfortunately that is about all of Las Vegas that we can bring back to you!

Systems vision and more on the budget

Systems “visioning”
One of the roles that everyone in the Systems Department plays is current awareness. They pay attention to new technologies and products and how they are being used or how they could be used in the library. With our Systems Department moving outside of the library and with no Systems Librarian, we need someone to fill this role. I have asked Kristy if she will help us. All of you may not know that she was the Head of Library Technology Services at the Medical College of Georgia before joining the AHSL-Phoenix. She will be keeping up with the latest trends in library technology and will be available to help us decide on the viability of new technology-related projects. Please feel free to call her with questions or ideas.

Budget woes begin
Dean Joiner has announced a plan to increase College of Medicine faculty salaries. This will be partially funded by “sweeping” vacant positions. I have been informally notified that we should not open any searches since at least one FTE vacancy will be taken. I have no more details right now.