ILL, Yamila and Progress

Interlibrary Loan

Joan and Kathy are continuing to meet with staff at the main library to plan the merger of our ILL department with theirs.  There are many details to work out but we believe that the end result will be better service for the campus.  We have started a search for a part-time, temporary employee to cover some of the work that Kathy does.  Kathy will be retiring in late March.  The new employee will overlap with Kathy to learn the job and will continue work until the merger is worked out.  Our goal is to complete the planning during the summer and to go live in the fall.

Outreach

As part of our contract with the Pacific Southwest Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Yamila traveled to Los Angeles last week to provide training (in Spanish) to promotoras (community health workers).  The topic was consumer health information.

Recording Studio

Work is progressing on the recording studio.  Today the painters are painting a delightful shade of gray on the walls.  This neutral color is needed for good lighting when filming video.

LCME and Construction

COM Accreditation

On Monday I was in one of the first groups to meet with the site visitors from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education – here to gather information for the accreditation of the College of Medicine.  They had many questions about the library ranging from asking about our role in the curriculum to concerns about noisy fraternity members.  I think I was able to respond to all of their questions to their satisfaction.  I even got a chance to describe our budget problems.  Early reports are that the college did well.

Recording Studio

Facilities Management is now scheduled to begin work on the recording studio next Tuesday, January 21.

Guests, Construction and Seating

Tourists coming!

The accreditation team for the College of Medicine will be working from the large classroom next Monday through Wednesday.  Please make them feel welcome if you see them.  They are scheduled to tour the library and other facilities, led by medical students, on Monday between 11:15 and noon.  Please be sure that your area (particularly public areas) is looking neat and clean.

Recording studio

Facilities Management is scheduled to begin work on the recording studio next Thursday, January 16.  They will be doing some basic renovations in preparation for the installation of the recording equipment.  This will be in the first “AV listening” room as you enter the Java City area.  Be prepared for some noise.

Chairs

Thanks to the Chair Committee, Nicole, Javad, Stephen and Mari and to the rent money from EPIC, we have ordered 150 new chairs.  We expect them to arrive in late February.  At that time we’ll ask for volunteers to do a mass “chair swap.”  The Chair Committee selected several models of chairs that we’ll want to remove from the floors so that they can go to surplus property.  As those chairs are removed we’ll want to replace them with the new chairs.  Stay tuned for details!

SRVPHS, VETS, DEPP, Break!

Dr. Garcia’s Town Hall

On Tuesday Dr. Joe, “Skip” Garcia, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, hosted a Town Hall meeting.  To summarize, Dr. Garcia is very optimistic, yet realistic, about the opportunities and challenges that face the AHSC.  The UofA is underperforming in research funding when compared to our peers.  However he plans to build on the foundation that we have created to increase research in the coming years.  He has already recruited “thought leaders” who will move us ahead.  He has created four advisory councils that will develop strategies to excel in four areas: population health and health outcomes, health disparities, precision health and neuroscience.  It’s clear that both President Hart and Dr. Garcia see research as the primary focus for the institution.  We will be working to be sure that the university libraries are a vital part of this effort.  Next year my personal goal and that of the ATeam members will be to develop a strategy for improving our support for research on the AHSC.  Everyone will have a chance to help to shape this strategy.

Welcome gift to the VETS Center

This week we delivered a printer to the VETS Center as a welcome gift from the library.  The wireless printer will allow all of the computers in the VETS Center to do color printing.  The printer also supports scanning and copying.

Thanks to DEPP!

DEPP stands for Disaster and Emergency Preparedness Planning and is one of our hard-working committees.  Over the past several years DEPP has completed an Emergency Response and Disaster Recovery Plan.  They have made it easy for us to get fire extinguisher training.  They have set up a plan to regularly review the contents of our first aid kits.  They have worked with the library staff at the Oregon Health and Sciences University to serve as each other’s backups in the event of loss of access to ILL or searching capabilities.  Thanks to DEPP (Brooke, Cindy, Javad and Kathy) we join a small number of health sciences libraries that have taken emergency preparedness seriously and that are ready for those situations that we hope will never occur.

Break time!

I hope that all of you enjoy the holiday break whatever your plans.  A special thanks to those who will be keeping the library open during the next two weeks.  I wish you all good things in 2014!

Justin Bieber? Not!

Progress on the recording studio has been hard to see but will become evident in January.  Facilities Management will be working in the first AV listening room to remove the counter and to paint the room.  That work is scheduled to finish by January 17th.  Soon after that (we hope), equipment and soundproofing will be installed and we will have an operational recording studio.  BioCommunications will provide training to our desk staff and to the ITS staff at the Help Desk.  Training will be very basic as users of the room will be expected to know how to run the equipment or to bring someone who does.  The studio will be on the campus room scheduling system and available to AHSC faculty and students.

Staff Lounge

We have invited the STAFF of the VETS Center to feel free to use our staff lounge, as we have with other groups sharing space in the building.  It seems that most of the VETS Center staff are undergraduate veterans.

VETS!

The VETS Center will have a “soft” opening next week.  It will be staffed and open to veterans.  However the grand opening with dignitaries, etc. won’t happen until January.  VETS staff members are working on ordering furniture so we will be loaning them some tables and chairs until theirs arrive.