NYT, Carol and the LAC

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Congratulations Carol

An article in the New York Times refers to work that Carol did.  She is the anonymous “medical librarian” mentioned in the article.  The story also links to an article in The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society for which Carol is a co-author.

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/hiring-an-end-of-life-enforcer/?_r=0

Library Advisory Committee

Our Library Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting of the year on Monday.  We have faculty and student representatives from each of the AHSC colleges on the committee.  They serve as a vehicle for communication with the colleges and offer feedback from the students and faculty members that we serve.  Our new student representative from the College of Pharmacy has already distributed a survey to classmates asking about the library.  We’ll hear the results on Monday.

Lights! Camera! Action! Chairs! Tables!

Recording Studio

We are partnering with BioCommunications on planning and constructing the new mini-recording studio (any ideas for what we should call this room?) which will be created in the first AV listening room as you enter Java City.  BioComm has worked up the specifications for equipment and will handle ordering it.  Facilities Management will be taking out the counter and repainting the inside of the room to provide good color balance for videos.  Professional lighting will be installed as well as a high definition camera and computer controls.  We already have people who want to sign up to use the room.  Once the equipment is ready for use BioComm will offer some training for our staff so that we can answer basic questions.  Anything beyond basic questions will be handled by BioComm.

After EPIC

We are getting price quotes for new study cubes for the 4th floor and new study tables for the 3rd and 4th floors.  With those in hand we will be ordering chairs for the new tables and to replace many of our older, deteriorating chairs.  I think we will be asking for volunteers in the future to form teams to deploy our new chairs and to redistribute some of the other chairs that have wandered around the building.

More EPIC

The EPIC “command center” is scheduled to cease operations on the 4th floor on Friday, November 29.  After that all EPIC help desk questions will go to UAHN staff in their regular offices.  The schedule calls for computers to be removed during the week of December 2nd and for the walls to come down the following week.  We have asked for 20 of the tables to be gifted to us to be used for student study.

The College of Medicine accreditation team will be here in mid-January.  Our goal is to have the 4th floor useful for study and looking nice before the visit!  There are 24 of the new study cubes currently at the UA warehouse.  We are hoping to have these installed on the 4th floor beginning in the third week of December.  We also hope to purchase 24 additional cubes (using the rent money from EPIC) that will be installed at the same time.  The remainder of the floor will be filled with study tables, also to be purchased with EPIC rent money.

EPIC Update

EPIC training is scheduled to end around October 25th.  During the following week phones will be installed to convert the 4th floor into a “command center” for the EPIC launch.  At 3 AM on November 1st (Halloween night!) EPIC will “go live”.  The command center will be in operation 24/7 through the month of November.  About 150 employees will be there at one time or another to provide help desk services to UAHN.  Security guards will be stationed at the front door during hours when the library is closed.  We will be meeting with UAHN soon to discuss plans for their exit from the floor!

New Guide, Happy Anniversary!

NIH Policy Guide

Many of you know that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) now requires all NIH funded researchers to make their research publications available to the public through PubMed Central.  Joan has developed a guide to help researchers understand how to submit their articles.  The campus Institutional Review Board (IRB) staff has already publicized the guide through an email to all researchers.  You can see this extensive guide at http://azhin.org/nihpublicaccess

AZHIN’s 20th Anniversary

2013 is the 20th anniversary of the Arizona Health Information Network.  AZHIN is a consortium of over 30 hospital, clinic and academic libraries around the state that originally joined together to provide MEDLINE access.  Over the past 20 years AZHIN has evolved into an organization that not only jointly purchases access to electronic information but also provides web and authentication tools to it’s members and employs a librarian, Brooke Billman, to train members, to troubleshoot and to negotiate with vendors.  AZHIN has won awards and is a major force in ensuring that healthcare providers around the state have access to the latest and most reliable biomedical information.  Today AZHIN members, including founder Rachel Anderson, will be meeting at the Arizona Inn for a celebratory luncheon.

New baby, Yamila, Dave, Hawaii and a gift

Congratulations to Jennifer and Jim Martin!
Jennifer gave birth to a baby girl at 1 AM this morning.  Details later!

Yamila explains it all

Last week Yamila presented a webinar on the Affordable Care Act on behalf of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.  There were 119 people signed up – the largest attendance that the State Library has ever had for a webinar.  They are putting links up on their website so that others can view the presentation.  A representative of the state library said, “Yamila did an exemplary job in putting together the information and presenting it clearly. We are very grateful for the knowledge, skills, and abilities which she brought to bear in creating and presenting this webinar and others like it.”

Dave recognized

Dave’s work on the “Prescription for Health” video digitization project was recognized in Sombrero, the official publication of the Pima County Medical Society (PCMS) (Aug-Sept 2013, 46:7 p. 11).  The PCMS created a 30-minute television show for public access cable television that ran from 1983 until 1997.  Dave worked with BioCommunications to organize the digitization of 218 of the 284 known episodes.  You can search these episodes by date, topic or speaker and watch them online.  See http://ahsl.arizona.edu/spec-coll/pcms-pfh for the indexes.

Voyage to Health

Take a few minutes to visit this new exhibit that describes the Pacific voyages of native islanders, gives insight into native culture and has examples of medicinal herbs and plants from the College of Pharmacy collection.  Although small, this is a fascinating exhibit and the AHSL exhibits committee has done a great job of supplementing the NLM-provided banners with items in the display cases.

“New” map cases

Thanks to the main library we now have two new map cases.  Although gently used they are just what we need to store flat materials such as blueprints, some older diplomas, and other large format items.

Congratulations!, Building changes?

Congratulations Sandy!

The College of Nursing has approved a joint appointment for Sandy as an Adjunct Instructor.  This is in recognition of all of the support she provides to nursing students through classes and one on one assistance.

Possible small renovation projects

Two projects are being discussed but have not been decided upon.

Veterans’ Center in the library

The Board of Regents and the AHSC are both interested in providing better service for Veterans who are continuing their education at UA.  The Veterans Education and Transition Services program has student veterans’ center in the student union on main campus.  They would like to be able to offer counseling, assistance and a place for vets on the AHSC to meet.  We are exploring creating, using “office landscaping” type walls (like those in the EPIC training classrooms on the 4th floor) to create a small area in Java City.  The new “room” would be just past the 3 group study rooms across from the ITS Help Desk.  This is still in the early planning stages and would be funded by the VETS program.

Recording studio

Last December I mentioned that we are looking at creating a small recording studio in the library.  This project is starting to move forward supported by one-time temporary funds.  Last summer during the meetings of the Library of the Future Task Force we heard that faculty members are being asked to create more and more online content, either for distance education students or for their on-campus classes.  Most often this is audio in the form of podcasts or tutorials with voice over screen shots or Powerpoint presentations.  After meetings with technical and educational staff from all of the AHSC colleges and BioCommunications, we are exploring the possibility of creating a small recording studio in the library for the use of AHSC faculty and students.  The most likely location would be the first of the three rooms across from the IT Help Desk in Java City.  We have a price on the equipment but still need to work out many details such as how the room will be reserved, how much support BioComm and the library staff will be expected to provide, how faculty and students will be trained to use the room, etc.