October is a busy month for health-related celebrations. Tucked in with Physical Therapy Month, American Pharmacists Month, and Health Literacy Month is another little known celebration – National Medical Librarians Month (NMLM). Some of my colleagues in medical libraries across the U.S. have elevated this celebration to an art. They even win prizes for the cleverness of their events and promotions. Here at the HS/HSL we joke about our National Medical Librarians Month carols and decorating an NMLM tree (old catalog cards strung together, anyone?). We return to our work as liaisons, teachers, collection developers, resource managers, outreach workers, researchers, web designers and administrators, and do our best to make sure we are meeting the information needs of all our constituents.

Let me be the first to wish you a happy NMLM. Come to our celebratory breakfast on Halloween at 8:00am, have a bagel on the library, and see your favorite librarian celebrity. Let us know what else we can do to help. See you there!

Read more about our plans for NMLM.

Science Resource Center, a new database from Thomson Gale, is now available from the HS/HSL Database page.

Science Resource Center offers abstracts and full text articles covering a wide range of scientific topics, including aviation, genetic disorders, natural disasters, and physiology. Articles are drawn from reference works, popular magazines, scholarly journals, newspapers, multimedia, and websites. Helpful resource tools, such as links to information on how to cite sources are included. It’s also easy to incorporate found articles into your online lesson plans by using SRC’s InfoMark tool. Take the guided tour, accessible from the Toolbox, to find out more. Try it today!

Twice each year 30 professionals are selected to attend the week-long BioMedical Informatics course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The course is a fellowship program sponsored by the National Library of Medicine. This competitive program accepts less than 25% of applicants for each session. The participants come from a variety of backgrounds – nursing, medicine, computing, and library science.

The course is a survey of current research areas in biomedical informatics and is taught by informatics leaders. Key topics include human-computer interfaces, medical vocabularies and coding systems, medical decision analysis methods, evaluation methods in medical informatics, and strategies for designing and managing clinical information systems. Students gain practical skills such as web page development and database design through hands-on workshops.

Three HSHSL librarians, Jaime Blanck (SOM liaison), Teresa Knott (Deputy Director), and Tierney Lyons (Head of Reference), have had the opportunity to attend in recent years.

If you have ideas or questions about how the Library can be integrated into your Informatics project, please Ask us!

For more information or to apply, please visit: http://courses.mbl.edu/mi/

Photo Credit: Nadine Ellero

October has been named Medical Librarians month by the Medical Library Association. With the explosion and increased accessibility of health related information, biomedical librarians are more valuable than ever to health professionals, patients, and the community.

Come celebrate our month with us! Please join us for one (or all) of the following events scheduled for the last week in October.

Meet your Librarians Breakfast
October 31st 8-9 am, HS/HSL Lobby

Fun & Informal Workshops – 11-11:30 on October 29, 30, & 31

Flickr – Monday, October 29th (Room LL05)
Instructor: Julie Nanavati

RSS feeds & Bloglines – Tuesday, October 30th (Room LL04)
Instructor: Jaime Blanck

Google Docs & Google Calendar – Wednesday, October 31st (Room LL03)
Instructors: Debra Berlanstein & Stefanie Warlick?????????????????

Register now or just stop by!

We’d like to welcome our new Outreach Librarian, Meredith Solomon to HS/HSL. Meredith is here to support the Library in its mission to meet the health information needs of our diverse constituents throughout the state.

Meredith comes to us from the National Library of Medicine, where she participated in the Associate Fellowship program from 2006 – 2007. She received her Masters degree in Library Science from Emporia State University in August 2006.

While at the National Library of Medicine, Meredith volunteered with LifeGuard D.C., an AIDS prevention organization. She was also a technical assistant at a community hospital library in Oregon for eight years. Meredith spent a portion of her time working in the Consumer Health Library, and focused on providing patients and community members with health and nutrition information. She is currently working on becoming a certified Level One Consumer Health Information Specialist.

Meredith is looking forward to getting to know the citizens of Maryland and assisting them with their health information needs. She can also help support your school?s outreach projects. Please call her at 410.706.1551, or email her at msolomon@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

Hello, HS/HSL Connective Issue readers. My name is Meredith Solomon and I am excited to be the new Outreach Librarian for the library. Since I have been employed at HS/HSL I have had the chance to participate in two outreach events.

My first opportunity came during my second week at HS/HSL. Stefanie Warlick, HS/HSL’s Nursing Liaison, and I exhibited at the Leadership Pathways to Nursing Excellence Conference held in Cumberland, MD. Here, we promoted Maryland Health → GoLocal and MedlinePlus. Maryland Health → GoLocal is a link to local Maryland health programs and services maintained in partnership with the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) consumer health information website, MedlinePlus. Maryland citizens can link directly to support services in their local community, without special training or assistance. It is a joint project of the HS/HSL, NIH, and the NLM.

We had a great response from the conference attendees. My hope is that we can collaborate with community organizations, hospitals, and public libraries in western Maryland to promote health related information resources and health literacy.

My second outreach opportunity came at the Maryland Academy of Physician Assistants conference in Ocean City. About 400 PA’s from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and even New Jersey were in attendance. Our exhibit promoted consumer health resources PA’s can use to educate their patients.

On the whole, my goal is to connect with UMB’s many schools, collaborate on projects, and grant awards that promote not only HS/HSL’s services but those of the NLM as well. I want to empower our users to be well informed, health literate patients. So, if you have any ideas or would like to just introduce yourself to me, please e-mail me at msolomon@hshsl.umaryland.edu or call me at 410.706.1551.

Photographer Eric Randolph will be exhibiting his work at HS/HSL October 9-December 9, 2007. The opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 11 from 5:00? 8:00 p.m. in the Frieda Weise Gallery.

Randolph’s collection of work focuses on unique Baltimore locales and scenic areas from surrounding counties. His photographs are taken with digital cameras as well as traditional film. Some of his work is even created with a plastic Diana toy camera. For more information about the artist and the exhibit visit the gallery website.

OvidSP, the new look and feel, will be available beginning October 25th. At that time, we will have "dual" access to the current version of the Ovid interface and OvidSP. Access to both versions will continue until February 4, 2008.

According to product announcements, OvidSP will showcase multiple enhancements including a clean look and multiple search modes (beginner to more advanced).

For those Ovid users who prefer the current version, you will still be able to access "Classic Ovid" through the new version.

We will keep you updated as we receive more information and modify our training materials.

Linda Gray Kelley performed A Lady Alone on September 11, 2007 to celebrate the Changing the Face of Medicine exhibit and the 200th Anniversary of the School of Medicine.

Linda Gray Kelley’s portrayal of Elizabeth Blackwell was engaging, informative, and provided a closer look into what life was like for young women who aspired to become physicians and work in the medical profession in the late 1800s. A reception followed the play where attendees viewed the exhibit firsthand and gained a greater appreciation of the accomplishments of women physicians.

Historical Highlights focuses on some of the unique materials available for viewing in the Historical Collections department, located on the fifth floor of the HS/HSL. For more information on the materials you read about, contact Rich Behles, the library’s Historical Librarian and author of our series, at 410.706.5048 or rbehles@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

The Lighter Side of Dark: The Mysteries of Opium

No doubt the word "Opium" here, in all its inky blackness, conjures up images of downtrodden addicts slumped in dank alleyways. Likewise, "Mysteries" suggests the aura of a desensitized stupor. Opium certainly does possess such sinister narcotic qualities, yet physicians have documented its therapeutic characteristics for millennia, dating back to the formulary of Scribonius Largus, written in about 43 A.D.

The New London Dispensatory of 1682 attests that "The best Opium is a Medicine to be prized, if it fall into the hand of a wise man…. It eases all manner of pains almost in a moment, whether inward or outward…." Further, "It helps in most diseases of the Breast and Lungs, as Coughs, Colds, Hoarsness, Asthma’s; stops all Fluxes, helps spitting of Blood, and is an excellent thing in Consumptions, if given by a prudent hand."

This 1700 book by Dr. John Jones attempts to guide the caution of that prudent hand, separating myth from truth, and shedding the Light from God (A Deo Lux) onto the murky therapeutics of a dangerous substance. Jones cites the ill effects of opium as "Nauseas, Vomitings, which are generally very dismal, with great distress, and sometimes dangerous ; Swimming in the head, Hiccoughs, Distresses, Anxieties, Convulsions, Faintings, Leipothymies, Syncopes, &c." Attempting to debunk previous misconceptions, Jones states that the trick to successful administration of opium is in its preparation. One must be extremely careful to separate off its "Earthy or Phlegmatick parts." In particular, he blames the "Rosin" for being the chief source of the drug’s dangerous narcotic tendencies. In other words, Jones will have us believe that one need not fear the ingestion of opium, so long as its composition and dosage are correctly proportionate.

Jones’ book enjoys a place in our Crawford Collection, the Library’s original founding collection. John Crawford’s own inscription on the title page adds special merit to the piece.