Entryway

Security gates
If you don’t normally come through the front door, be sure to take a look at our new security gates. They are thinner and more attractive than the old gates and, together with some nice plants, grown from cuttings and nurtured by Nga and Tessie, really dress up the front entrance. We’ve requested some design changes to the new front doors but that project is still moving forward. We still hope to have the new doors installed by the end of the calendar year.

New front doors, security gates

The new front doors for the library are custom built items. Facilities is just going out on bid for them and once the contract is awarded it will be almost a month before they are delivered to campus and a little while longer for installation. Facilities hopes to have them in place before the end of the year. However, our new security gates will be installed soon. Javad is working with the vendor to schedule that installation.

COM Phx Topping Out

On Oct 5, the construction crew placed the final beam on the Health Sciences Education Building (aka HSEB) which will also house the AHSL Phx.

More photos are HERE.

Welcome Heather!, 4th floor

Welcome Heather!

Heather Hershey is our newest Clinical Education Librarian. Heather is a librarian at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix. Our third and fourth year students rotate through the clinical departments at Good Samaritan and Heather works with Sally Harvey to support their information needs.

What’s up with the 4th floor?

1. Ongoing noise complaints. We think one reason that we get so many complaints about people talking on the 4th floor is because of the dividers. A small group will be sitting on one side of the dividers. They may get a little noisy and they don’t realize that someone else is just on the other side of the divider, trying to study quietly. There are financial, logistical and ownership issues to work through on this. However, this week we negotiated permission to remove the “screens” that hang on the metal uprights. This will open up the floor a little and create more of a study hall atmosphere. It will give us a chance to experiment and see if the noise levels decrease in an open area. At the moment it’s too expensive to remove the uprights and Facilities is exploring options to sell or surplus them. Tessie has removed all of the screens in the center of the room. Run upstairs and take a look.

2. The College of Medicine would like to use the 4th floor for office space. We, and others, would like to see it used as “educational space.” That means study rooms, large and small, meeting rooms, classrooms, seminar rooms, etc. This discussion has gone on for two years and the final decision may depend on who gets money to renovate the floor first. If we should lose this race we will concentrate on creating desirable study space on the third floor. If we can find a way to retain use of the 4th floor we’ll do our best to make it a useful educational space for the benefit of the entire campus.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

AHSL Phoenix Librarian Search is Underway

Finally, I won't need to be an OPL (One Person Library) librarian anymore! We have posted and are beginning to review applicants for a second librarian at this campus! Please see the listing on Career Tracks for details. The committee consists of Sandy and Brooke from Tucson, Kathy Z and April A as Phoenix CELs, Patricia Rodriguez from Phx OMA, Kurt Gustin, PhD, Phx BMS faculty, and John Sarko, MD, Phx Clinical Faculty. Howard Silverman, MD and I are chairing the group.

Please call if you have questions, and I promise to keep you all informed!

BTW, our new Health Sciences Education (HSEB) building tops out October 5! And it's looking great! See photos here.

Super Cindy!, Spare change

Congratulations to Cindy!

Cindy has completed her Superuser training on the new university financial system. Not only is she thoroughly familiar with it for our benefit but she is already helping train and support other folks around campus. Great recognition for Cindy and for the AHSL!

Budget

I know that you’ve heard a lot about budget cuts and our inability to purchase all of the information resources that we need or would like to offer. However, we are not broke! The library budget consists of salaries, collections and operating funds. If you need a piece of equipment to do your job or if you have an idea for a project that might take some funding, please inform either your supervisor or the office. We can often find funds for special needs or projects and don’t want concern about funding to hold back our innovation and service.

Sandy & Jennifer share in award, Book Banning

Congratulations to Sandy and Jennifer

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists has awarded its Pharmacy Practice Research Award to the article, “U.S. Pharmacists’ Effects as Team Members on Direct Patient Care: Systematic Review and Meta-analyses” published in Medical Care.

( 48(10):923-933, October 2010 doi: 10.1097/MLR.0b013e3181e57962 ) Sandy and Jennifer were listed as authors on this important piece of research that involved locating and reviewing over 50,000 article abstracts.

Caution! Dangerous Books

Our latest exhibit recognizes Banned Books Week – Sept. 24 – Oct. 1. It features books that have been removed from library shelves for a variety of reasons. See the books and read about the particular “danger” of each book. Thanks to Rebecca Blakiston in the Main Library and to Mary Riordan, Nga and Yamila from our exhibits committee for mounting this interesting and timely exhibit!