About six months ago, I wrote about the HS/HSL beginning its long overdue strategic planning project. Over the past six months, the leadership team at the Library has spent a significant amount of time researching strategies and envisioning just what that planning effort would look like.

It has been our experience that our best ideas, projects, and plans come when we learn from our user community. Knowing that, we are embarking on a "Strategic Listening Tour" to find out just what you are thinking about the HS/HSL, its programs, services, and resources. More importantly, we want to know how we contribute to your success, how we can insure your future success, and how we can integrate into your future.

Over the next month or so, we will be setting up strategic listening meetings with key users. We will ask you to recommend others who should be part of the conversation. We will hold a number of town hall meetings to open up our listening to a broader community. These opportunities will identify further questions and areas to explore. They will inform the directions for our strategic plans.

We look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Launched on October 16th to coincide with the opening of the new exhibit, Evolution and Influences: The HS/HSL at 200, the website provides faculty, students and staff an easy way to locate resources and services. It is simple to navigate and presents information more concisely. The most popular links are front and center, and the new responsive design will automatically adjust the website to fit any mobile device screen. Be sure to check it out.

Let us know what you think about the new website!

Send us an email, or text message 410.695.6362.

The HS/HSL’s new anniversary exhibit, Evolution and Influences: The HS/HSL at 200, opened to the public during Founder’s Week. Staff, faculty, students, and other friends of the Library joined in uncovering 200 years of the Library’s growth and progress. President Perman and Executive Director M.J. Tooey extended an enthusiastic welcome and offered exciting background information on the HS/HSL’s journey in discovery, collaboration, and innovation from its humble beginnings in 1813 to its ever-evolving array of resources in 2013.

If you visit the Library’s Weise Gallery before December 30th, you will have a chance to:

• Study a detailed timeline of the HS/HSL’s history
• Learn about the HS/HSL’s various historic buildings and accomplished directors
• Explore how information has been stored at the HS/HSL — from books to microfilm to microchips
• Examine antique library artifacts, and
• Consider M.J.’s predictions for the HS/HSL of the future!

Please sign the guestbook with anniversary greetings or leave your very own predictions for the future of the HS/HSL!

As part of the HS/HSL’s 200th anniversary celebration, the Library hosted "Embracing mHealth: Mobilizing Healthcare". This free symposium was held on October 22 at the SMC Campus Center.

Mobile technologies have become an integral part of health care delivery, and the symposium highlighted both mHealth trends and specific projects that illustrate ways that these technologies are being integrated into patient care and health promotion at the local, national, and global levels.

The HS/HSL was honored to have Susannah Fox, who leads the health and technology portfolio at the Pew Research Center, as a keynote speaker.

Invited panelists included Alain Labrique, founding director of the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative; Shiv Gaglani, editor of the medical technology blog, Medgadget, and curator of the popular Smartphone Physical (featured at TEDMED 2013); and Kathleen Murphy, Partner Outreach Manager for the successful text4baby program.

Speakers from our UM community also had a chance to present their own mHealth projects and research. This panel included Dr. Clarissa Jonas Diamantidis from the School of Medicine, Dr. Eun-Shim Nahm from the School of Nursing, and Dr. Kantahyanee Murray and Julie Gilliam from the School of Social Work.

To learn more about the symposium speakers, visit the website.

Questions may be directed to Katherine Downton or Ryan Harris.

In honor of our 200th Anniversary and the dawning of our third century, we have established the Health Sciences and Human Services Library Fund for Its Third Century. The purpose of the fund is to support programs, services, staff development, technology, and other needs to insure the ongoing evolution of a vibrant, responsive, and forward-facing library.

It is impossible to predict the future, but we can make some educated guesses about the direction in which academic health sciences library programs are going. We can be sure that we will need to pursue new services and new resources using enabling technologies and new strategies. Our building will need to progress, with our spaces evolving to support imagination and collaboration. Our health sciences library team will advance, developing new skills and expertise and further partnering and leading knowledge transformation.

We need to invest in these things.  We are asking for your help.

Support our HS/HSL Fund for Its Third Century online. Select the Health Sciences and Human Services Library under "School/Division," and then select the fund. Under "Other Instructions," please note that it is for the "HS/HSL Fund for its Third Century." If you are writing a check, please make it payable to the UMB Foundation and note that it is for the HS/HSL Fund for its Third Century." The check can be mailed to:

UMB Foundation
620 West Lexington Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Or

HS/HSL Administration
601 West Lombard Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

We thank you.

The Medical Alumni Association (MAA) of the University of Maryland has made the inaugural donation to the HS/HSL Fund for Its Third Century to support the digitization of the Crawford Collection. The Crawford Collection represents the founding collection of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library. In 1813, the collection, one of the best in the United States at the time, was purchased from the estate of Dr. John Crawford to establish a library for our medical faculty. The library was opened for student use in 1815, hence the two-year celebration of the HS/HSL’s 200th anniversary.

The generous donation from Medical Alumni Association will allow library staff to digitize this collection and make it available via the University of Maryland Digital Archive. The archive is a service of the HS/HSL that collects, preserves, and distributes the academic works, historical and contemporary, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The archive is open and fully searchable via tools such as Google and other search engines. This digitization project, a great marriage of the historical and modern, will make the Crawford Collection available throughout the world.

Dr. Protagoras N. Cutchis, the 139th Drs. Ronald and Richard Taylor Medical Alumni President said, "The Medical Alumni Association takes great pride in supporting the UMB Health Sciences and Human Service Library. Our historical collection is a precious gem, and we’re delighted that it will soon be accessible to the world on the Internet."

We thank the Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland for their support!

In response to demand from the scientific community, the NCBI recently launched PubMed Commons, a pilot program that allows researchers to comment on abstracts in the PubMed database. It is intended to provoke constructive criticism and high quality discussion and lead to better understanding and collaborations for researchers. Because the program is still in a beta version, only invited authors can participate (although you can request an invitation). For more information, please see this NCBI Insights blog post.

On October 24th, the Health Sciences and Human Services Library and the Graduate Student Association hosted a discussion of open-access publishing in the Library’s Gladhill Board Room. HS/HSL Executive Director, M.J. Tooey introduced the "Publishing Openly" event with a brief "State of Open Access" address, which was followed by a panel discussion among UMB authors who have published in open-access journals.

OpenHelix helps researchers learn to effectively use bioinformatics and genomics resources by providing over 100 narrated video tutorials and training materials. It includes tutorials on a variety of topics, including BLAST, dbSNP, Ensembl, and OMIM. Beginning October 16th, these tutorials will be available on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone operating systems, in addition to desktop browsers. Check out a new tutorial today!

Ashley Cuffia, BA, BS, Library Associate, National Networks of Libraries of Medicine Regional Medical Library, and Rachel Gleiberman, JD, MLS, Library Administration Budget Analyst, have been accepted into the Emerging Leadership Program sponsored by the campus’ Office of Academic and Student Affairs.

This program provides junior leaders with a framework to develop their leadership and management skills, develop collaborative relationships with colleagues, and interact with senior leaders from the University.

Alexa Mayo, MLS, AHIP, Associate Director for Services, has been selected as a Fellow in the National Library of Medicine /Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (NLM/AAHSL) Leadership Program for 2013-2014.   This national program is designed to provide learning opportunities and a mentoring experience for emerging leaders in academic health sciences libraries. Alexa is paired with mentor Christine Frank, MLS, AHIP, Director of the Library of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago

Last month’s gallery opening attracted a large audience who came to view the exhibit "Whack’ed …and then everything was different". The audience listened to artist Eliette Markhbein tell the story of her journey to recovery. Markhbein, who is a former magazine journalist, suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) after being hit by a car while riding her bike in New York City. She has since used the knowledge of her own recovery and recent education in healing arts to help other TBI patients. To see current and upcoming exhibits at the Library, please visit the Weise Galley website.

Background

Over two years ago, it became obvious that some sort of collaborative effort between UMB and College Park was going to emerge.  That effort, MPowering the State, posed many challenges, not the least of which was the desire by the researchers and faculty to have access to library resources across the campuses.  The leadership of the Health Sciences and Human Library (M.J. Tooey), the Thurgood Marshall Law Library (Barbara Gontrum) and the Libraries at College Park (Patricia Steele) met that challenge head on.  Fortunately, they had over 20 years of collaboration in the USM Library consortium on which to build.  That foundation of trust and understanding allowed the library teams to move forward with speed and vision.  The library directors met with their collection management experts—Steven Douglas, Stephanie Bowe, and Gerri Foudy—to investigate resource sharing options.

Libraries access to digital content is very different than access to print.  In the print world, libraries "owned" the hard copies.  In the digital environment, libraries "license" content in a situation similar to software licenses from Apple or Microsoft.  There are restrictions on use and reuse, and the pricing is based on FTE counts.  It was naïve to believe that we could simply open up access between the two campuses.  First of all, the universities are seen as separate institutions by the vendors.  Second, the costs would have been astronomical.  The library directors sought direction from the MPowering the State Executive Committee, regarding the subject areas on which to focus.  These were:

• Microbiology;
• Bioinformatics (including Informatics, Applied Microbiology, Mathematical and Computation Biology, Biochemical Research Methods);
• Genomics (including Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Genetics);
• Bioengineering;
• Public Health;
• Intellectual Property Law;
• Health/Medicine/Psychology/Psychiatry Law; and
• Environmental/Natural Resources/Land Use Law.

The libraries compared their collections and databases, determined overlap and deficiencies, and set forward on a path to equalize the collections in those areas as completely as possible. Due to longstanding, cordial relationships with vendors, the libraries team was able to expeditiously develop an acquisition plan and budget. When the MPower initiative was funded, the libraries received about $750,000. On September 1st most of the new resources were made available.

Access

Because there is no common identity management system across the USM, offsite users will still need to log in to their individual campus libraries to authenticate and gain access. When on campus, no login is necessary. If any researcher is interested in accessing additional resources from the other campus, a joint appointment on that campus and a login for that campus will be necessary.

The Resources

Additional journals from Elsevier and Wiley were added to both campus libraries to equalize the biosciences collections. Along the same line, Embase was added to the College Park databases and UMB added Scopus (see below). Critical individual titles were also added. A partial listing of the most significant additions is below:

• Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and the arts and humanities.  It covers over 20,000 peer-reviewed journals (including 2,600 open-access titles) and 5.5 million conference papers.  Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.  You can view an author’s h-index, track citations over time with Citation Overview/Tracker, assess trends in search results with Analyze Results, analyze an author’s publishing output with Author Evaluator, and get insight into journal performance with Journal Analyzer.
• JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, is a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on publishing scientific research protocols in video format.  These videos add a new parameter to the communication of experimental data and research results. The journal has nine sections: General, Neuroscience, Immunology and Infection, Clinical and Translational Medicine, Bioengineering, Applied Physics, Chemistry, Behavior, and Environment.  (Coming January 2014)
• Springer Protocols is an online database of reproducible laboratory protocols in the biomedical and life sciences. Compiling protocols from the book series Methods in Molecular Biology and other sources, Springer Protocols offers researchers access to nearly 30 years of tested, trusted, step-by-step protocols for immediate use in the lab.
• Clinical Key is a new clinical tool from Elsevier that offers a wealth of content with access to over 900 e-books, 500 journals, practice guidelines, patient education information, and a variety of multimedia images and video. Clinical Key will replace MD Consult, which will be going away in October 2013.
• Intellectual Property Watch is a non-profit independent news service that reports on policy issues in international intellectual property such as copyright, trademarks, and patents.  It covers the behind-the-scene dynamics that influence the design and implementation of international intellectual property policies.  News stories and features are posted regularly and archived for searching. (Coming Soon)

Evaluation and Assessment

An evidence-based evaluation of these resources will be conducted. Usage statistics provided by the vendors will be the basic evaluation tool. Also, decreased interlibrary loan statistics may correlate with greater access to appropriate resources. Finally, in the future we hope to track and link increased research publications and funding resulting from MPower collaborations. Successful research and grant funding build on evidence-based literature foundations and knowledge services such as systematic reviews provided by the libraries.

Next Steps

As the MPower Virtual Research Library moves forward, funding will have to be requested every year in order to support the resources and the collaboration that has been formed. A report will be written detailing progress along with the proposed budget for next year. The libraries are also working on a collaborative understanding regarding future licensing of resources between the two campuses. Eventually, extending the MPower Virtual Research Library to other research campus partners will be studied.

Support

If you have any questions about the MPower Virtual Research Library please feel free to contact me by email or at 410.706.7545. For additional information about any of the resources, email the Reference Desk or call 410.706.7996.

Well, all the planets are certainly aligning for the month of October.  The semester is in full swing.  The library is full. Library faculty are never here.  And best of all, it is National Medical Librarians Month!  Under this celebratory umbrella, a number of things will be happening linked to Founders Week, our 200th Anniversary, and Open Access Week.  It just doesn’t get any better than this!

So what can you expect?

1. On October 16th at 2:00 p.m., during Founders Week, everyone is invited to the opening of our 200th Anniversary exhibit, "Evolution and Influences: The HS/HSL at 200."  Chronicling the parallel development of the library along with medical and information advances, the exhibit will be in the Frieda O. Weise Gallery on the main floor of the HS/HSL. The display will not only include the formal exhibit but also memorabilia about old library technologies, photos, and the original collection; it will run until the end of 2013.
2. "Embracing mHealth: Mobilizing Healthcare" is the title of our 200th Anniversary fall symposium to be held on October 22 from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the SMC Campus Center.  This free event focuses on trends in MHealth and integrating mobile technology into the diagnosis and management of disease, health promotion, and improving care to underserved populations.  Our keynote speaker will be Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
3. And finally, October 21-27 is Open Access Week.  This global event focuses on the potential benefits of Open Access to our research community.  Co-sponsored by the Graduate Student Association, our program will focus on issues and progress in the open access movement followed by a reception.  This event will be held on October 24th at 3:00 p.m. in the Gladhill Board Room on the 5th floor of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library.

Hope to see you at one or all of these events!

Coming in October, the HS/HSL website will have a new look and mobile functionality.  An updated responsive design will automatically adjust the website to fit on any mobile device screen. It is also optimized for high pixel density screens, such as Apple’s Retina™ displays.

A modern style and streamlined organization make the new website easy to use. Based on usage statistics that identified the most accessed pages and most clicked links, content has been rewritten and reorganized so that faculty, students, and staff can quickly access needed resources and services. The popular OneSearch has been relocated to a more prominent position on the homepage, and a new Research Support section has been created.

Because of the reorganization of content, the new website will redirect old pages to their new counterparts where possible, but there is a chance that saved bookmarks may no longer work.  Also note that the following browsers and their predecessors will no longer be supported: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3.5, and Safari 3.

Watch for the new and improved website!

The HS/HSL is considering how we communicate.  Connective Issues began in September of 2007 as an email newsletter and has remained in that format.  Now we would like to hear from you.  What topics interest you?  What news do you want to hear about, and how do you want to hear it?  Please take a moment to complete our brief three-question survey, and let us know what you think.

HS/HSL librarians are proud to be partners in improving the quality of medical education in Kenya. In July 2013, librarians Alexa Mayo and Ryan Harris traveled to University of Nairobi, College of Health Sciences (CHS) Library, to collaborate with library colleagues. During a week-long visit, they engaged with the CHS Library staff to learn how they did their work, identified unique challenges facing the CHS Library, and developed best practices to meet changing medical information needs in a digital world.

Mayo and Harris’ visit builds upon a relationship that began a year ago when the HS/HSL hosted CHS Library staff members for a learning visit here in Baltimore.  Three CHS Library staff met with about 20 HS/HSL staff in public services, IT support, resources management, and library administration.  This international library collaboration is part of the Partnership for Innovative Medical Education in in Kenya (PRIME-K), which aims to strengthen and build the clinical and research capacity at CHS.  As CHS is the country’s largest medical school, a successful program will result in improved human resource capacity for health and health outcomes in Kenya. Development of innovative library services and skills at the CHS is critical to the program’s success.

Over 6,500 new eBooks are available through OneSearch and the library catalog. The HS/HSL has joined with the other 15 libraries in the University System of Maryland (USM) to pilot a demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) program with Ebook Library (EBL). Under this program, students and faculty from all of the USM campuses will be able to access, browse, and check out these books. But don’t worry about being turned away—there is no limit on the number of people who can use a book at one time.

Demand-driven acquisitions is a way for the Library to make more books available to you at reduced costs. Under this program, the library is able to load titles into the catalog for you to discover and browse, but is only charged when a book is downloaded, checked out, or otherwise extensively used. The HS/HSL already has a DDA program in place that concentrates on health and behavioral sciences. This new program will substantially increase the subject areas in which books are available for you to use.

You will notice one difference between these eBooks and those the HS/HSL already provides. When you find an EBL title that you want to read, you will be prompted to check it out. In order to do this, you have to download it to the device on which you want to read it. You will be prompted to first download Adobe Digital Editions. This free software will manage your EBL titles for you and automatically “check them back in” at the end of a seven-day loan period. If you want to use the book further, you can then download it for an additional period.

In celebration of our 200th Anniversary, the HS/HSL will present an exhibit in the Weise Gallery titled, “Evolution and Influences: The HS/HSL at 200.” From October 14th through December 30th this installation, created in conjunction with the Campus Outreach and Public Affairs office, presents a history of the Library by contrasting its place in the history of the campus and the world at large. The exhibit traces the growth of the Library from a core collection of texts to its current incarnation serving five schools of the University of Maryland Founding Campus and housing NLM’s National Network of Libraries of Medicine’s Southeastern/Atlantic Regional Medical Library.

“Evolution and Influences” will demonstrate the innovation and metamorphosis of information exchange and availability and will explore the role of the Library in encouraging innovation in the dissemination of ideas. The Library has endured through two centuries of technological, social, and scientific advancement – this exhibit offers just a glimpse of its place at the precipice of change.

Every semester, the HS/HSL offers a series of free workshops. Registration is open to all UMB campus members and UMMC staff. This semester, we are offering two new workshops in October: Evaluating Research Impact and Discover Embase. In Evaluating Research Impact, you will learn how to quantify the impact of your research when applying for promotion or tenure. The workshop will address various measurement standards, including journal impact factor, h-index, and alternative metrics. Embase, a comprehensive medical and pharmacological database, is an ideal resource when you need a thorough review of the biomedical literature. Our Discover Embase workshop will introduce this resource and show how to search it effectively. To register for these and other library workshops, visit our Fall 2013 Workshops webpage.

Another academic year has begun, and here at the HS/HSL we are already exhausted as we contemplate all the projects we have started or will be starting during the next year. For example:

1. The opening of another video conferencing room. The Boughman/Alpern Conference Room on the main floor of the library has added videoconferencing capabilities and has room for 18-20 people. The Balis Conference Room on the fifth floor has room for 8-10. See the article below for more information.
2. Development of a Research Support Service which will include a systematic review service, bibliometric analysis, referral services, research impact analysis, and new tools to support research, such as Open Helix. Stay tuned for more information about this new service.
3. The MPower Virtual Research Library. The libraries at UMB and College Park have been funded to jointly license new resources to support the MPower initiative. As soon as the resources are fully licensed, expect a special edition of Connective Issues.
4. Our 200th Anniversary celebrations continue. This year we will be hosting two symposia. On October 22, save the date for our Mobile Health Symposium. Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life project will be our keynote speaker. More information is forthcoming. Next spring we will be co-hosting with Elsevier Publishing a symposium on measuring the impact of research. Three major exhibits will be found in the Weise Gallery. The first is "WHACK’ed: and then everything was different," in which Eliette Markhbein uses art to explore traumatic brain injury and to highlight some legendary traumatic brain injury survivors like David Bowie, Keith Richards, and Gabrielle Giffords. The exhibit opens on August 23rd. "Evolution and Influences: The HS/HSL at 200" is our own internal exhibit charting both our history and some significant advances in medical information and technology that have affected our profession. And finally, we are in negotiations with the Holocaust Museum to bring "Deadly Medicine" to the Library. This exhibit focuses on Nazi medical experiments in WW2 concentration camps.

I hope something in this list piques your interest. If you have any questions or ideas for partnerships or programs, please feel to contact me.

Wishing you much success during this academic year!

Mark your calendars for the upcoming HS/HSL 200th anniversary event, Embracing mHealth: Mobilizing Healthcare, on Tuesday, October 22 at the SMC Campus Center.

Mobile technologies are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in public and global health, clinical settings, and in personal health monitoring and assessment. This free half-day symposium promises to present exciting trends in mHealth and explore projects that are integrating mobile technologies into the diagnosis and management of disease and wellness promotion. Speakers include Susannah Fox from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Alain Labrique of Johns Hopkins University’s Global mHealth Initiative, Kathleen Murphy from text4baby, and the curator of The Smartphone Physical, Shiv Gaglani. Don’t miss it!

For more information, contact Katherine Downton, or Ryan Harris.

During the Library’s latest round of improvements, we realized there was a need for more video conferencing rooms on campus. As the need for distance collaboration grows, our users require new technology-enabled communication tools. In September we will open a second video conference room in the Boughman-Alpern Family Conference Room on the main floor of the HS/HSL as the first facility in the Balis Conference Room on the fifth floor proved to be popular and a great benefit to the campus. That room has been used for faculty interviews, NIH virtual site visits, student meetings with Governor O’Malley, collaborative meetings with the USM, and many other types of virtual meetings.

Both rooms are equipped with the most current updates of popular web conferencing products such as Skype, Google Groups, Polycom, Adobe Connect, GoToMeeting, Blackboard Collaborate, and WebEx. The rooms are designed for ease of use and have standard PCs installed as well as connections for users’ laptops or tablet devices. All you need is a room reservation and a login or URL to connect to the system of your choice. For more information about these rooms, call 410.706.7545 or contact Aphrodite Bodycomb.

NLM Mobile is a new app provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) that provides an authoritative guide to NLM mobile websites and apps. You can now find the PubMed for Handhelds app, the MedlinePlus mobile website, and other NLM mobile resources in one convenient location.

Artist and former journalist Eliette Markhbein has first-hand experience of what it’s like to suffer a traumatic brain injury. Eliette uses her art to recreate the healing framework she experienced during her recovery after being hit by a car while riding her bike. Through her work she highlights famous people who have suffered traumatic brain injury. She translates what she has experienced by deconstructing the healing process and dividing it into three artistic stages: being fractured, reassembled, and becoming whole again.

We invite you to visit the exhibit which will be on display August 26 – October 9, 2014. There will be an accompanying lecture and lunch reception on September 23. For more information, contact Aphrodite Bodycomb at 410.706.8853 or by email. This exhibit was brought to the Health Sciences and Human Services Library through a partnership with the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

Over the summer we switched providers of the database PsycINFO. It is now available through EBSCO. Although the database may look different, the contents have not changed.

EBSCO allows you to create a personal account and save searches performed in PsycINFO. Our EBSCO video tutorials on creating an account, saving a search, and retrieving a saved search can help you get started.

If you have any questions, please contact the Reference Desk at 410.706.7996.

For decades in academia, the impact of research has been measured by how many publications a researcher has authored and how often that research has been cited. This has expanded over the years to judging individual researchers based on the impact factor of the journals in which they have published. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology together with a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals publicly discouraged this practice in a widely circulated declaration in May of 2013.

Altmetrics has arisen in response to both the over-reliance on metrics like impact factor and to the shift from print-based publishing to electronic and web-native scholarly output. Altmetrics seek to expand our view of research impact, focusing not only on traditional citation counts but also on activity on the web that tracks impact in real time, rather than at the pace of traditional publishing. Altmetrics also seeks to consider the impact of research beyond academia, which could indicate the impact on practitioners in a field or on the public. Altmetrics’ tools track metrics ranging from the number of downloads or views an article gets online; to mentions on social networking sites, blogs, and other media; to bookmarks in online reference managers and comments by readers.

You can learn more about altmetrics by trying out any of these tools: Altmetric, PLoS Article-Level Metrics, ImpactStory, or PlumX.

Earlier this month, the U.S. government unveiled a redesign of the Data.gov website in an effort to increase transparency and make data on the site more accessible to researchers, application developers, and the public. A version of the new site, which is in a very early beta stage, is now available for preview. The redesign follows President Obama’s Open Data Executive Order requiring agencies to ensure public access to and machine-readability of government data.

Launched in 2009, Data.gov is a growing portal to approximately 75,000 datasets generated by federal government agencies. The site allows anyone to search for and download data on a broad range of topics, including health care. All data is openly available and comments and recommendations from the public are encouraged.

On the surface, the enhanced site includes more powerful searching, social networking elements that allow researchers to see how data is being used, and data visualization capabilities. Behind the scenes, the improved site makes extensive use of open source software for data and content management. The design team is seeking input, so take some time to explore the beta site and share your opinions!

The HS/HSL’s Presentation Practice Studio is a great space to perfect your presentation. The sound-proof studio is available for individual or group use and is furnished with a podium, camera, netbook, digital display, and an editing bay equipped with Sony Suite and Adobe’s Full Productions Suite. Whether you want to record and produce a full presentation, do professional-level editing, or have the advantage of seeing and hearing a recording of yourself before making a live presentation, the Presentation Practice Studio will suit your needs. The Presentation Practice Studio is available for all University of Maryland, Baltimore faculty, students, and staff via reservation. Library staff members are available to assist you with the studio during most regular library hours of operation.

Each semester, the HS/HSL offers a series of free workshops to UM faculty, students, and staff, UMMC staff, and Corporate Members. The workshops address a wide variety of topics. You can learn how to store and manage citations with RefWorks; get an overview of effective communication techniques in Communicating with Patients; discover the links between oral and systemic conditions in Oral Health Literacy; or learn how to search and use tools more effectively in PubMed, Discover Embase, or CINAHL in 30. These are just a few of the workshops that the Library provides. For registration and full course descriptions, visit our Fall 2013 Workshops webpage.

Can’t make one of our regularly scheduled workshops? If you request an On Demand Workshop, a librarian will cover the same material with you one-on-one, or with your group.

PJ Grier, Outreach/Access Coordinator for the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern/Atlantic Region, starts a one-year term as Chair of the DC Area Health Sciences Libraries (DCAHSL) in January 2014.

Publications

Na Lin, Head, Resource Sharing and Digital Archive, and Patricia Hinegardner, Associate Director for Resources, published "Discovering the Present, Preserving the Past: The Development of a Digital Archive at the University of Maryland" in the Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries (JERML), 9(4), October 2012.

Maria Pinkas, Metadata Management Librarian, along with co-authors Abra Schnur, Megan Wolff, Sarah Hovde, and Carol Harling-Henry, published "University of Maryland Early Dissertations for Doctor of Medicine (1813-1889): Challenges and Rewards of a Digitization Project" in JERML 9(4), October 2012.

In 1813, the founding fathers of the University of Maryland very wisely purchased the preeminent medical collection of its time from the estate of the late Dr. John Crawford for the use of the medical faculty. In 1815, the collection was opened for use by medical students. In honor of these milestone dates, we will be celebrating our 200th Anniversary for two years, from 2013-2015. The Crawford Collection, the predecessor of today’s Health Sciences and Human Services Library, is ranked as the 5th oldest medical library in the United States and is the founding library of the University System of Maryland.

Over the next two years, we will be celebrating our anniversary in a variety of ways: special programming, events, displays, and exhibits highlighting treasures from our collection, an e-history, and various events designed for our University community and beyond. Our first event will be a light luncheon and lecture by Dr. Phil Mackowiak on May 1st in the Library’s fifth floor Gladhill Board Room. See the article below for more information.

Many libraries, particularly in the Old World, have been around for far more than 200 years, making our Library a mere youth. Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans – all of them recognized the worth of collected information. It is humbling to realize we are part of that continuum of knowledge. In my 27 years here at Maryland, I have witnessed a revolution in information technology, knowledge integration, and the transference of tools into the hands of users via the social framework that has resulted in exponential growth in discovery and dissemination. Thresholds for the new and amazing are constantly changing and always in motion. It is exciting and frightening to contemplate what the future holds for the personal, academic, and scientific use of knowledge and the impact it will have on the construct of the concept of “library.” Beginning on May 1, welcome to our next 200 years! Journey with us.

Our 200th Anniversary begins on May 1st with a light lunch and historical talk by Dr. Philip Mackowiak entitled, “Dr. John Crawford, His Life, His Books and Our Library.”

Who was John Crawford?

Doctor John Crawford, a distinguished member of the School’s faculty and owner of an impressive private book collection, taught Natural History at the University in 1812. Born in Ireland, Crawford completed his medical education at the University of Leiden. His career path led him to several positions in the Caribbean and South America; his collection reflects his interest and experience in tropical medicine. After his death in 1813, faculty colleagues purchased his private library. As the founding collection for the entire University of Maryland Library System, Crawford’s books still remain intact and are the proud centerpiece of the HS/HSL’s Historical Collections.

Crawford was the first to practice vaccination in Baltimore. Perhaps more importantly, he held truly forward-thinking theories about the cause of disease. As an innovator, he is a fitting precursor to the dynamic Library which evolved from his founding.

After Dr. Mackowiak’s talk, attendees are invited to travel with library staff to lay flowers on the grave of Dr. Crawford, who is buried in the Westminster Hall graveyard.

The luncheon and talk will be held starting at 11:30 a.m. on May 1st in the Gladhill Board Room on the fifth floor of the HS/HSL. The luncheon is free, but reservations are required due to limited seating. Email to secure your spot.

The Anatomy of the Brain, by Humphrey Ridley
London: Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1695
“Containing its mechanism and physiology, together with some new discoveries and corrections of ancient and modern authors upon that subject: to which is annex’d a particular account of animal functions and muscular motion, the whole illustrated with elegant sculptures after the life.”

There are now 277 books from the Crawford Collection available through the UM Digital Archive. The collection contains books from the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. No longer hidden in a dark archive, these resources are now freely available worldwide via the Internet.

Would you like your work to be preserved with a permanent URL and made accessible across the Internet? If so, then help us build the Archive. If you have content that you would like to contribute or questions about the UM Digital Archive, please email us.

On April 2nd, the Association of American Medical Colleges, Khan Academy, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a collaboration to provide free, online resources to aid students in preparing for the revised Medical College Admission Test® (MCAT®) that will be administered in 2015.

To develop the new resources, the organizations are inviting medical students and residents to compete in creating the best educational videos on medical and pre-health topics.

Contest submissions are now being accepted until the deadline, June 14, 2013.

Contest rules, submission guidelines, and criteria for entry are available at the Khan Academy website.

The Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) and the Medical Library Association (MLA) have released a statement encouraging publishers to support mandated author compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. Authors’ failure to comply could result in non-renewal or denial of grant funding. This issue is affecting thousands of research scientists across the United States. The HS/HSL is developing services to assist researchers in complying with the mandate. For more information, contact Alexa Mayo.

What is the significance of April 3, 1998? That was the date we opened the current Health Sciences and Human Services Library building. That means in the midst of the 200th Anniversary celebration we should pause to remember the building’s 15th birthday.

At the time the building was opened, we existed in a primarily print-based environment. The building was designed to accommodate our large print collections. Of course, the intervening years have brought great changes, and just about 98% of the resources acquired by the Library these days are digital. Happily, the design of the building has easily accommodated this shift in technology and philosophy. We built a robust technology infrastructure and were one of the first on campus to embrace wireless technology throughout our building. Staff and functions have shifted and changed, and the building’s purpose has flexed with them. We have removed entire ranges of books and shelving and welcomed a larger CITS presence, the Counseling Center, Student Accounting, and Student Financial Aid. We look forward to the possibility of buying digital backfiles and welcoming the Center for Health Informatics and Bioimaging and potentially the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute into the building.

Some things we did very well. In addition to the technology infrastructure, our student, educational, and special event/meeting spaces have served us well over the years. The building is as busy as ever with over 380,000 entrances last fiscal year. Our 45 small group study rooms are extremely popular, as are other study spaces. We have more study rooms than any other academic health sciences university in the U.S., and we have enhanced them over the years. Throughout our renovations and additions we have not lost any of our 900 seats for users. Our teaching and learning spaces are used by library staff, campus units, and even outside organizations. We have maintained them at a technologically high level, and they are highly regarded and heavily used. Over the next three years, they and the Distance Education Room will be upgraded to support new teaching modalities. Our meeting spaces are also heavily in demand, particularly our Balis Conference Room, with its added video conferencing capability. That capability will be added to the Boughman-Alpern Family Conference Room as well. The Weise Gallery is constantly booked with interesting and thought provoking exhibits. And who can deny that the Gladhill Board Room is the premier and most beautiful special event room on campus?

When the Library opened, it was seen as a signature building for the campus that would convey our University’s intent and aspirations as a major clinical, research and educational institution. Just as our University has changed over the past 15 years, so has the Library. We are very grateful for the support of everyone on campus who knows what a special space the Library is.

Happy 15th Birthday, HS/HSL Building!

The Gladhill Boardroom (President’s Boardroom), previously reserved through Campus Events, will transition to being reserved through the HS/HSL. The room is available and can be reserved for campus-related business by a Dean, Vice President, or designee.

Starting May 1, 2013, contact Library Administration (410.706.0668) with questions about the room or visit our website for more information.

• Covers overs 7,000 active, high quality peer-reviewed journals
• Contains over 1,800 biomedical titles not offered by PubMed
• Covers more drug literature than PubMed
• Covers more international publications than PubMed
• Includes conference proceedings

To try Embase, visit the Library’s Databases list.

We all know how simple searching with Google can be. Sometimes you just need a quick answer. The Library’s new OneSearch tool is modeled on the ease of searching with Google. It lets you search over 50 different databases to uncover multiple types of library resources: scholarly articles, books, reviews, images, and more. OneSearch is located on the Library’s main webpage or through the database list.

It’s important to remember when using OneSearch that you are not searching “everything.” For help on doing a more complicated and comprehensive search, contact the librarian for your school or request a consultation.

We want to thank the faculty, staff and students who participated in the usability study. Your contributions were invaluable.

The University of Maryland’s President’s Outreach Council will host its fifth Annual Community Partner Art Exhibit and Silent Auction in the Weise Gallery, located on the first floor of the Library.

This exhibit features artwork created by students of George Washington Elementary and Southwest Baltimore Charter schools, where the University runs CLUB UMB, a free after-school mentoring and youth leadership program. Proceeds from the silent auction will support activities of CLUB UMB and its partner schools.

The bidding for the artwork will start on Friday, April 19th at the opening reception, and winners will be announced on Friday, May 10th at the closing reception. Everyone is invited to participate and attend the receptions.

Farewell to Megan Wolff

The HS/HSL bids a fond farewell to our longtime Reserves Associate, Megan Wolff. Megan accepted a position at the UMB School of Nursing as an Instructional Technology Specialist after completing her Master’s in Instructional Technology at Towson University.

Megan began work in Course Reserves in 2005. She later became supervisor of the department and oversaw our switch to electronic submissions, an update to our copyright policy, and the spread of e-reserves to new departments on campus that previously had not used the service. Her work was consistently of the highest quality, and she received many compliments from faculty pleased with their experience using e-reserves. We wish Megan the best of luck in her new career at the School of Nursing!

Aphrodite Bodycomb Teaches Library Financial Management Workshop

Aphrodite Bodycomb, MBA, taught a workshop at The Association of Library Financial Management Officers (ALMFO) Conference held on March 10, 2013 at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania. The workshop, titled “Forecasting Your Revenue and Expenses,” focused on using break-even analysis as a tool for pricing new products and services accurately and for negotiating the contracts. The workshop was attended by Library officers from across the U.S. and Canada.

The HS/HSL’s Strategic Plan is six years old. From my perspective, the operative word is "old." I am one of those rare people who really enjoy the strategic planning process, and it’s been my experience that strategic plans should be redone every three to five years. We started to redo our plan about three years ago and paused as Dr. Perman launched the University’s strategic planning effort. We are grateful for that pause for two reasons:

1. It was fascinating to observe the process. There are many different ways to do strategic planning, and this process allowed the participation of a rich and diverse group of the University community.
2. The plan itself. Priorities have been established. The HS/HSL’s new plan will need to dovetail with those priorities in order to move forward.

In the past, the Library’s plan has been developed within the confines of the Library staff and then vetted by the community. Not that this was a bad way of doing things, but this time we are going to try something a little different. We have begun to identify constituent groups, and we plan to spend quite a bit of time talking to those groups to tease out key elements of how the Library does, could, or should contribute to their success. By coupling these constituent group interviews with open town hall meetings, we will identify directions for our new strategic plan.

What do we hope will come from all this work? Obviously, a new strategic plan for the HS/HSL is the goal. However, this plan will provide an opportunity to articulate our vision for the Library’s continuing evolution.

How can you help? If you are asked to participate in a constituent group, please do. If invited to a town hall meeting, come. Your thoughtful responses and support for our process will mean a lot to us.

Are you planning to conduct a systematic review? If you are considering a systematic review project or would like further information, please visit our Systematic Review Service guide.

As search experts, librarians are an essential part of your systematic review team. The Institute of Medicine encourages investigators to, "work with a librarian or other information specialist trained in performing systematic reviews to plan the search strategy" (Standard 3.1.1). By working with a librarian, you will ensure that your search is as methodical and thorough as possible.

Librarians at the HS/HSL are skilled searchers with the training and expertise necessary to

• Develop comprehensive search strategies to ensure that essential studies are not overlooked
• Assist in selecting essential databases for your search
• Select and search grey literature sources to uncover literature not found in standard databases
• Manage and organize search results
• Participate in writing the search methods section of the review

At the HS/HSL, librarians serve as partners in research and many have received training at the University of Pittsburgh’s distinguished Systematic Review Workshop, which "provides a comprehensive framework and discussion of the librarian’s role in the systematic review process."

Have you noticed the new collaborative study pods on the 1st floor of the HS/HSL? These unique workstations are meant to foster sharing and group work. The rolling “umbrellas” provide a degree of privacy for your group. We will soon be surveying to find out what kind of technologies you would like to incorporate into the pods and how you envision using them.

Our first user (pictured) was Venant Saague of the Department of Medical Research Technology in the School of Medicine. We showered him with library goodies (pens and highlighters) for breaking the ice.

Students preparing for the upcoming annual Graduate Research Day on April 11th are discovering the Library’s value in the research equation. Liaison Librarians are meeting with students to retrieve relevant articles from quality databases and demonstrating efficient management of these references using RefWorks. In fact, any student, staff, or faculty member preparing to present at a professional meeting or table clinic, or defending a dissertation is encouraged to contact their Liaison Librarian.

The HS/HSL has launched several new tutorials that will help you use RefWorks’ latest version of Write-N-Cite. RefWorks: Setting up Write-N-Cite 4 will show you how to download the new Write-N-Cite, which now integrates seamlessly into Microsoft Word, and how to set it up to sync with your RefWorks account. Once you have the new version set up, the RefWorks: Using Write-N-Cite 4 tutorial will show you how to insert citations into your papers and create bibliographies. Write-N-Cite can be a huge time-saver when writing research papers.

To see all of the HS/HSL tutorials, visit the Library’s Tutorials page.

On March 5, the HS/HSL, along with libraries at the University of Puerto Rico and the University of North Carolina, hosted a course from the NIH Library entitled Next Generation Sequencing Data Analysis. The course focused on massively parallel sequencing, also known as next generation sequencing, a technology enabling high-throughput sequencing of genomes or loci of interest. The course examined the quality of sequence reads, mapping of reads, and the quality of the mapping at a single locus. The three hour session included both lecture and hands-on instruction in the use of Galaxy, an open, web-based platform for data intensive biomedical research.

Dr. Medha Bhagwat, Bioinformatics Support Program Coordinator at the NIH Library, taught the course remotely from NIH using videoconferencing technology and desktop sharing software. Sixty-six people participated in the course across the three sites. An Amazon Web Services in Education grant to the Galaxy Project allowed the course to take advantage of faster data processing speeds using AWS cloud services.

Did you know that you can link to journals that the HS/HSL subscribes to by making a simple change to Google Scholar’s settings? If you are searching on campus, this setting should already be set up. When searching off campus:

• Go to Google Scholar
• Click on "Settings" then "Library Links"
• Type "Maryland" into the search box
• Select the box for "Health Sciences and Human Services Library, Univ of Maryland (Find It @ HS/HSL)"
• "Find It @ HS/HSL" links next to articles will now take you to full-text

At the request of faculty researchers, the HS/HSL hosted a PubChem training class on February 20th. PubChem is a free resource for researching information on the biological activities of small molecules. The training focused on interpreting the PubChem database, looking up bioactivity data, and linking to the biological property information in PubMed and NCBI’s protein 3D structure resource. Dr. Evan Bolton of the National Library of Medicine, who has had years of experience working with the tool, conducted the training.

Need a space to perfect your presentation? Consider using the HS/HSL’s Presentation Practice Studio. Individuals or small groups can use the sound-proof studio (equipped with a podium, netbook, and digital display) to easily view and rehearse a presentation. Record yourself and playback your video or use the state-of-the art editing bay that includes Sony Suite and Adobe’s Full Productions Suite. The Presentation Practice Studio is available for all University of Maryland, Baltimore faculty, students, and staff via reservation. Library staff are available to assist you with the studio during most of its hours of operation.

Are you seeking a high quality app for reading and marking up articles and other files on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch? GoodReader is a very versatile file viewing app that can be used to read and annotate almost any kind of file – even video! The app can be used with most file hosting services (Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, etc.) and offers the ability to highlight, insert notes, handwrite, circle, and more. Once you are finished annotating, you can send the document right back to your file sharing account. Although there are many PDF reader apps available, GoodReader is one of the more versatile apps of its kind. This month’s Cool Tool overview also suggests similar apps that can be used on IOS and Android devices.

For many people the time between the Super Bowl (yay Ravens!) and baseball season can be a time of doldrums and depression. Sure there is basketball. The NHL is back. Lacrosse season is imminent. But for me there is nothing like the release of the annual NMC Horizon Report to cure my winter blahs. Imagine my delight when the day after the Super Bowl, the report landed in my email box.

The NMC Horizon Report purports to be an “unbiased source of information that helps education, trustees, policy makers, and others easily understand the impact of key emerging technologies on education, and when they are likely to enter mainstream use.” The Library is an information industry and has been for many years, and these annual reports are essential for me to envision the impact of technology not only on the work done by the library team, but on the work of our university community. In addition to the full report, there is also the NMC Horizon Project Short List which takes a slightly different approach in a shorter format. The report breaks down the information into key trends, significant challenges, and time-to-adoption horizon of one year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. In addition to the in-depth information about each topic, there are valuable references, discussion of relevance, and concrete examples of use.

According to the 2013 Horizon Report, two technologies with adoption horizons of one year or less are Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and tablet computing. Just Googling the term “MOOCs” delivers an enormous amount of retrieval. This concept has blown up over the last year with the involvement of universities such as Stanford in producing courses that have tens of thousands of students. Originally free of charge, increasingly the model is shifting to one with fees and for credit. It is a model for personalized learning for the masses. While many may believe this model does not apply to professional education, in truth, it inevitably will.

Another example from the report is tablet computing. One only has to look around the Library to see the deep penetration of tablets into our learning environment and into the public mainstream. More and more platforms and apps are being developed allowing users to create their own portable learning environments. And how about portable research or clinical care environments? The ease of use and market penetration has made this personal tool essential to today’s learners.

The report goes on to examine technology whose adoption is further out. It is fascinating to read about augmented reality or game-based learning and imagine how they might be used in our university environment.

There is so much more in the report to absorb and think about. I hope you have the time between now and Orioles opening day to take a look.

In support of the MPower initiative, the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, Thurgood Marshall Law Library, and the University of Maryland, College Park Libraries have worked together to increase access to electronic journals and databases on all campuses. New resources now available through the HS/HSL include:

• American Society of Microbiology Journals – This important set of 11 e-journals closes a major gap in the Library’s basic science collection.
• Elsevier Science Direct Freedom Collection – Discounted pricing enables the Library to subscribe to over 1,600 additional basic science, social science, and clinical journals.
• Wiley-Blackwell Full Collection – A licensing agreement that includes the University of Maryland, College Park and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library provides access to over 1,100 additional basic science, social science, and clinical journals.
• Proquest Statistical Datasets – This web-based research tool provides access to data from licensed and public domain datasets within an easy to use interface.
• Public Library of Science (PLoS) membership which provides a 10% discount publication fee for UMB affiliated researchers in all PLoS journals.
• BioMed Central (BMC) membership which will provide a 15% reduction in article processing fees for University authors in BioMed Central and SpringerOpen journals.

We are subscribing to new resources in support of the Library’s systematic review service:

• Embase – this important biomedical database includes over 5 million records not covered in MEDLINE and will enhance the ability to discover literature from Europe, Asia, and the developing world.
• Wiley Cochrane Library – this collection of databases includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Cochrane Methodology Register, the Health Technology Assessment Database, and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database.

Additionally, we added two important translational medicine journals, Science Translational Medicine and Clinical Translational Science.

Now that the Library’s new memberships to PLoS and BMC feature publication discounts, we encourage you to consider publishing in an open-access journal. Many of these journals are well respected and have high citation rates. PLoS Medicine, for example, is ranked as the fifth most influential general medicine journal by impact factor in Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports.

117 BMC journals have been chosen for inclusion in Journal Citation Reports. Here are the top 10:

All seven of the PLoS journals are included:

The HSHSL has a new tool to support your research, ProQuest Statistical Datasets. This web-based research tool provides access to data from licensed and public domain datasets within an easy-to-use interface. With this tool, you can scan the contents of the collection, select subjects and variables of interest, and view your data in side-by-side tables and charts. The database also allows you to change chart type and save and export citations and data.

The dataset featured above shows the number of female Marylanders under 17 and over 65 that were uninsured from 2005 to 2010. More complicated datasets are easy to assemble, but we recommend viewing the provided short video tutorials before you begin to use Statistical Datasets.

We are excited to welcome “Aging Across America,” an exhibition of photographs by geriatrician and acclaimed photographer Jeffrey Levine, MD. His photographs display themes of motion, activity, and pictures from the everyday lives of older adults. Bring your smart phone and scan the QR codes of his work for a detailed description of each piece.

The exhibit is on display in the Frieda O. Weise Gallery, on the Library’s first floor, from February 4 to March 15.

For more information, please visit the gallery webpage.

The exhibit, supported by a grant from MetLife Foundation and sponsored by the Global Alliance for Arts and Health in Washington, D.C., will visit six teaching hospitals across the U.S. The exhibit at HS/HSL is sponsored by the Library and the Geriatrics and Gerontology Education and Research Program of the Graduate School.

The Library offers a full range of services and resources to support the graduate students who are preparing for the Campus’ annual Graduate Research Conference Day in April. Assistance with searching the literature, obtaining full-text articles, and organizing and managing relevant references are just some of the services available. Students can polish their presentation skills by reserving the Presentation Practice Studio. With this year’s conference less than two months away, student researchers are encouraged to contact the Library Liaison assigned to their school now for more information on how the Library can assist them

The HS/HSL is a new content contributor to the Medical Heritage Library (MHL). Historical materials from the UM Digital Archive, including dissertations from 1813-1887, school catalogs, yearbooks, and rare books, are now available through the MHL.

MHL promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. Their goal is "to provide the means by which readers and scholars across a multitude of disciplines can examine the interrelated nature of medicine and society, both to inform contemporary medicine and strengthen understanding of the world in which we live. The MHL’s growing collection of digitized medical rare books, pamphlets, journals, and films number in the tens of thousands, with representative works from each of the past six centuries, all of which are available through the Internet Archive."

MHL was established in 2010 with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation via the Open Knowledge Common to digitize 30,000 medical rare books. MHL principal contributors include Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, National Library of Medicine, New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Public Library, and the Wellcome Library.

Each semester, the HS/HSL offers a series of free workshops for UM faculty, students, and staff, and UMMC staff. New additions to our Spring 2013 lineup include,”Embase in 30” and “Oral Health Literacy: Connecting Doctors, Nurses, Social Workers, Pharmacists, and Dental Professionals.” Other workshop offerings are available. Consider “RefWorks,” where you will learn to organize and manage citations for research, or “PubMed” to learn how to create an effective search strategy and take advantage of PubMed tools. For registration and full course descriptions, visit the Library’s Workshops page.

Can’t make one of our regularly scheduled workshops? If you request an on demand workshop, a librarian will cover the same material with you one-on-one, or with your group.

Storify is an online tool that lets you use a digital storyboard to pull in news, images, tweets, etc., as a way to tell the story of a project that interests you. It’s easy to promote your story across social media with a few clicks. As an example, we used a storyboard to highlight the University of Maryland School of Social Work’s involvement in the Promise Heights project.

Visit the HS/HSL’s Cool Tools guide where we introduce you to a new tool each month to help you find and organize information more efficiently.

In December, Project SHARE invited Jacki Flowers from the Office of Minority Health to observe a SHARE session at the HS/HSL. During the session, 12 SHARE students from the Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy learned about and practiced public speaking skills. Ms. Flowers wrote a very positive article about her observations of Project SHARE, Unique Library/School Partnership Cultivates Next Generation of Health Advocates, which was posted to the Office of Minority Health’s online newsletter. Everyone involved was thrilled to receive this national recognition.

During the fall semester, Project SHARE students focused on learning about the social determinants of health, health disparities, health literacy, and presentation skills. Throughout the spring semester, students will focus on learning the skills needed to create a dynamic advocacy campaign. Both classroom and experiential learning activities have been planned for the semester and include visits to CVS, Real Food Farm, and the National Library of Medicine, as well as welcoming many guests into our classroom.

Project SHARE students are partnering with the SE/A Regional Medical Library and B’More for Healthy Babies to exhibit at the B’more Health Expo on February 23rd at the Baltimore Convention Center. If you attend please stop by to see us and to receive information on MedlinePlus and safe sleep.

On March 6th from 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Project SHARE students will hold a poster session at the HS/HSL in Room 340 to showcase their self-selected health and wellness posters. Topics that will be covered include prostate cancer, bullying, HIV/AIDS, childhood obesity, and more. If you have a moment, stop in and see the students’ posters, hear them speak about their topics, and grab a light snack.

In May, Anna Tatro (SHARE Project Manager) will be traveling to the Medical Library Association’s annual conference in Boston to present the poster, Project S.H.A.R.E.: Building Community Health Advocates.

For more information visit our Project SHARE guide, email us or call/text 443.902.0523.

• NIH Data Sharing Repositories – lists NIH-supported data repositories that accept submissions of appropriate data from NIH-funded investigators (and others). Also included are resources that aggregate information about biomedical data and information sharing systems.
• NIH Data Sharing Policies – lists data sharing policies in effect at NIH. It includes policies at the NIH, IC, division, and program levels that apply to broad sets of investigators and data.
• CDE Web Portal – provides access to NIH-supported common data element (CDE) initiatives and other tools and resources that can assist investigators developing protocols for data collection.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has found a home at the HS/HSL, or at least a place for faculty, students, and staff to meet and learn about geospatial technology and its applications. The University’s GIS Interest Group was formed by several faculty and librarians in 2011 and has been meeting at the HS/HSL on a monthly basis ever since. The group continues to grow and attract participants from all of the University of Maryland schools. During the group’s early meetings, guest experts from the Baltimore region presented their own GIS projects and participants were able to see varied approaches to using technology to visualize and analyze community health. The group was also successful in working with Campus Information Technology Services (CITS) to make the GIS software ArcGIS widely available on campus.

While there was enthusiasm for the possibilities of GIS on campus, few of the group members had experience in using and applying the technology. In January 2013, HS/HSL responded to this need by hosting Introduction to GIS for Health, a two week course organized by the GIS Interest Group and supported by a training grant from the Regional Medical Library. The event, which was also co-sponsored by the UM School of Medicine, the Regional Medical Library, and the Mid-Atlantic Public Health Training Center, attracted participants from throughout the University and the regional public health community. Taught by GIS professional Julie Spangler, participants learned the basic principles of GIS and gained intensive hands-on experience using ArcGIS. Time was also provided during the course to begin working on projects and connecting with other professionals with similar interests.

The course was a first step in integrating GIS into research projects across campus. The GIS Interest Group continues to meet monthly, and additional training may be offered in the future. All faculty, students, and staff with an interest in GIS, maps, and geospatial analysis are encouraged to join the interest group on the second Thursday of the month in the HS/HSL’s distance education room. No experience is required! For more information, contact Katherine Downton at 410.706.7373 or by email.

It is a pleasure to announce that Everly Brown, who has been filling in as Acting Head of Reference and Research Services in addition to her position as Head of Circulation, has been promoted to Head of Public Service for Reference and Circulation.

It is a further pleasure to announce that Ryan Harris, formerly Reference Librarian, will be overseeing activities at the Reference Desk as the new Reference and Research Services Manager. We thank them both for their hard work this year and congratulate them on their new roles.

In the spring I wrote a column regarding the incredible progress that had been made in the arena of open access.  The National Institutes of Health took another step forward last week when they issued NOT-OD-12-160 which stated they will, "delay processing of non-competing continuation grants if publications arising from that award are not in compliance with the NIH public access policy." The NIH public access policy was enacted in 2008 and it requires final peer-reviewed manuscripts of articles resulting from research funded by NIH to be deposited in the NIH digital archive, PubMed Central (PMC), upon acceptance for publication. The policy also requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

While there are many journals and many publishers who will facilitate depositing the articles, it is the responsibility of the author to make sure the articles are contained within PubMed Central. Even though the policy has been in existence since 2008 there is still some confusion regarding the differences between PubMed Central (the digital archive) and the similarly named PubMed (the database formerly known as Medline).  Conversations with our faculty have confirmed this, with some assuming that because their publications are found within PubMed they are compliant with the public access policy.

We believe this step was taken by NIH because although many authors complied with the policy, many others had not.  After four years of encouraging, educating and cajoling, NIH perhaps decided it was time to get a little tougher and tie compliance to funding.

We also surmise that these types of requirements for the output of NIH funded research will continue and expand to other government agencies funding research.  The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) which has been introduced in Congress, would require that 11 U.S. government agencies funding research make publications resulting from that research publicly available via the Internet (H.R. 4004, S 2096). In addition to the NIH public access policy, it is also important for researchers to note that Section 801 of the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act requires the submission of clinical trials information from publicly funded research. 

As always, the Services faculty in the Library can offer consultations and/or classes to help wade through the information regarding these requirements.  Please contact your Library Liaison.

On a positive open access note for our campus, the HS/HSL has subscribed to both BioMedCentral (BMC) and Public Library of Science (PLOS) which will enable our campus authors to publish in the BMC and PLOS journals at a reduced cost. 

More details about the NIH public access issue and the BMC/PLOS subscriptions can be found below.

With best wishes for a remarkable, relaxing, and rewarding holiday season.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced that effective spring 2013 researchers not in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy regarding the deposition of publications resulting from NIH funding into PubMed Central will not receive the next installment of their funding.  NIH intends to hold processing of non-competing continuation awards until recipients have demonstrated compliance and all eligible papers have been received (Notice NOT-OD-12-160, Upcoming Changes to Public Access Policy Reporting Requirements).

The purpose of the Public Access Policy, which went into effect in 2008, is to make results of NIH-funded research freely available by requiring investigators to deposit manuscripts that have been accepted for publication to PubMed Central, a public archive supported by the National Library of Medicine.

Please note that PubMed Central is distinct from the PubMed database. Citation information on all articles is sent by publishers for inclusion in the PubMed database.  However, not all publishers send manuscripts on behalf of the author for inclusion in the PubMed Central archive.  Under the NIH Public Access mandate, it is the responsibility of authors whose articles result from NIH funded research to make sure that their peer-reviewed manuscripts are submitted within 12 months to PubMed Central.

Please contact your Liaison Librarian if you have any questions about the process for submitting your manuscripts or the implications of these changes.

Help make the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource by publishing in an open access journal. The HS/HSL is a new member of Public Library of Science (PLOS) and BioMed Central (BMC). These memberships provide discounted open-access publishing opportunities for faculty. The PLOS membership allows researchers to receive a 10% discount on publication fees in all its journals: PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and PLOS ONE.

The HS/HSL’s BioMed Central (BMC) membership agreement allows for a 15% reduction in article processing charges for authors whose articles are accepted for publication. BMC is a publisher of 220 open access, online, peer-reviewed journals. The portfolio of journals spans all areas of biology and medicine and includes broad interest titles such as BMC Biology and BMC Medicine alongside specialist journals such as BMC Genomics and Retrovirology.

For more information about open access publishing, contact Alexa Mayo.

To learn more about the benefits of open access publishing, visit the current exhibit in the Weise Gallery on the Library’s first floor. The exhibit uses media and artifacts to illustrate the rising cost of journals and how these costs inhibit the sharing of scientific and medical research.

Did you know that the HS/HSL licenses the Journal of Comparative Neurology for $29,722 per year, at about the same cost as a 2012 Subaru Forester 2.5XT Touring Sport Utility vehicle?

In support of the MPower initiative, the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, Thurgood Marshall Law Library, and the University of Maryland, College Park Libraries have worked together to increase access to electronic journals and databases on all campuses. New resources that will be available through the HS/HSL in January include:

• American Society of Microbiology Journals (11 additional e-journals)
• Elsevier Science Direct Freedom Collection (1600+ additional e-journals)
• Wiley-Blackwell Full Collection (1100+ additional e-journals)
• Public Library of Science and BioMed Central memberships will provide discounted open-access publishing opportunities for faculty

The Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell collections will extend our coverage in the basic sciences, social sciences, and clinical fields. They include many of the journals requested by faculty and students over the past five years.

The HS/HSL is also licensing the Embase biomedical database and the Wiley Cochrane Library. These important resources will enhance our ability to support systematic reviews.

Effective January 1, 2013, the nine specialty JAMA Archives journals are being renamed. The new titles will be:

• JAMA Dermatology
• JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery
• JAMA Internal Medicine
• JAMA Neurology
• JAMA Ophthalmology
• JAMA Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery
• JAMA Pediatrics
• JAMA Psychiatry
• JAMA Surgery

Library staff are working to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Researchers face the ongoing challenge of distinguishing their research activities from those of others with similar names. How can you attach your identity to your research output as you collaborate across disciplines, institutions, and borders? Consider ORCID, an open, non-profit, community-based effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. Visit ORCID to learn more about ORCID and to register for your unique identifier.

At the Mid-Atlantic Chapter (MAC) of the Medical Library Association’s annual fall meeting two librarians from the HS/HSL were honored with awards. Anna Tatro, Liaison & Outreach Services Librarian, was awarded the MAC 2012 Librarian of the Year Award. Anna was nominated for the award for her work as project manager of Project SHARE (Student Health Advocates Redefining Empowerment). As project manager, Anna’s leadership and dedication has helped to make the program a huge success.

Ryan Harris, Reference and Research Services Librarian, was awarded the 2012 Marguerite Abel Service Recognition Award. This award recognizes a member of MAC who has provided exemplary service to the Chapter during the past year. Ryan served as the chair of the Membership and Recruitment Committee from 2010-2012 where he helped to coordinate the successful Student Vision Program and worked on recruiting initiatives. He also served as Chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2012 MLA Quad Chapter Meeting hosted by MAC in Baltimore.

In October, the HS/HSL entered a partnership with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine New England Region (NER) designed to improve access to health information for DHMH employees. The partnership, part of the Public Health Information Access (PHIA) project funded and managed by NER, seeks to identify trusted resources that are useful to public health workers, affordable, and evidence-based, with an overarching goal of improving public health practice in state public health departments.  Further objectives of PHIA are focused on outcomes assessment, including: reinforcing understanding of NLM’s products and services, expanding access to e-resources, providing use of a citation manager, training in the use of e-resources and tools, providing article delivery, and evaluating the use and knowledge of the provided resources.

This is not the first time HS/HSL and DHMH have worked together to address the information needs of public health workers. In the past, HS/HSL and DHMH have partnered to let DHMH employees use the University of Maryland collection; however licensing agreements prohibited accessing most of HS/HSL’s electronic collections from outside of the Library.  PHIA, with funding from NER, has negotiated contracts with journal and databases vendors for access to a limited but useful set of resources that would otherwise be cost prohibitive.

The HS/HSL will facilitate the program, provide document delivery for articles that are not available electronically, and will provide instruction on the resources made available through the project.  Currently, 11 other state health departments are participating in PHIA, which could expand by three state health departments per year until 2016, when the project ends.  At this end point, the intention is that the data derived from the project will be an aid to departments of public health in including information access in their own budgets.

To plan for enhanced library services for researchers in bioinformatics, library faculty implemented a 14 question online survey in September 2012. The survey received 155 responses from University of Maryland faculty, staff, postdocs and graduate students in the schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. The survey assessed need in a variety of areas: data analysis, software tools, online resources, and desired library services.

As indicated by the survey, the most useful services for the HS/HSL to provide are campus-wide licensing of software and training on bioinformatics tools. Of those who had an opinion, 63% identified campus-wide licensing of bioinformatics as a valued library service. About 45% of the respondents indicated that they would use library-offered online training and workshops on bioinformatics tools and software.

To follow up with specific questions from the survey, the project team is conducting focus groups and individual interviews with researchers across the University. These interviews are ongoing and will continue throughout the length of the project, which ends in April 2013. If you are interested in learning more about the results of the survey or in discussing your research needs in bioinformatics, please contact Andrea Goldstein, Liaison and Outreach Librarian to the School of Medicine.

This project is funded through an award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine/Southeastern Atlantic Region.

Andrea Goldstein, MLIS, Liaison and Outreach Librarian to the School of Medicine, and Ryan Harris, MLIS, Reference and Research Librarian, attended the BioMedical Informatics course at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole this year. The course is a weeklong survey of current topics in biomedical informatics. This year’s topics included human-computer interaction, big data, natural language processing, telemedicine, and clinical research informatics, as well as a substantial focus on electronic health records and meaningful use.

The BioMedical Informatics course is open to medical educators and administrators, physicians, and medical librarians.  Applications for 2013 sessions in May and September are now available.  They are due on January 11, 2013.

In November 2010, I wrote a column asking what you value about the HS/HSL. One of my key points was that we provide an academic institutional conscience and a moral compass through our support of intellectual freedom, copyright and fair use, and advocacy for our users and their right to information and privacy. During a period when our time and energy is consumed by budget woes and complaints about resources we don’t have and can’t afford, by hiring staff with expertise in exciting new areas and programs, and by imagining and envisioning our future, it’s easy to lose sight of why we do what we do. This noise obscures and clouds our foundational work.

October is National Medical Librarians Month. Please note the use of the word librarians, not libraries. Libraries do nothing more than provide shelter for people and physical resources.  And while it is essential to consider the importance of the library as place and philosophy, it is the librarians (and other talented library staff) who provide access, develop and deliver programs, conceive of, and create services. We supply the knowledge and intellectual capital for the creative engine that moves the library forward and underpins the culture and output of a great university.

We believe that we are an integral part of the discovery, education, and service enterprises. Our expertise is knowledge management. Without our expertise, those who value ease of access would have no access. We aquire, organize, and assure access to critical resources. Web pages are designed. Content is created, linked and made findable. We partner in curricula. We consult on complex information problems. We are knowledge informaticists. We collaborate across campus, across the university, across the region, and across the country. We relentlessly pursue information on behalf of, and with our clients.

We are tireless advocates for user rights, for fair use, copyright, and access to information … and for privacy when you do acquire the information you need. This year we recognize the 10th Anniversary of the Budapest Open Access initiative and read with interest the report from "10 Years On". We are encouraged that positive progress is being made. To celebrate National Medical Librarians month we are partnering with some of our students in recognition of the open access movement (see article below).

We believe there is a direct connection between quality information and good health. Linking our citizens to understandable, appropriate health information makes them better health care consumers and partners in their own care and wellness. Through our outreach efforts in the region, across the state, and in our community, we advocate for health literacy and elimination of health disparities.

Happy National Medical Librarians Month!

October is National Medical Librarians Month. In addition, October 22 – 28th marks Open Access Week, an annual global event dedicated to raising awareness of open access to information – "the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need."

To celebrate these October events, the HS/HSL will display an Open Access exhibit in the Library’s Weise Gallery. The HS/HSL will also host a reception for the exhibit on Wednesday, October 24th from 3-4. Look for more details about the reception during Open Access Week and student-run events across campus promoting awareness of open access issues.

We are developing a comprehensive program of research support in bioinformatics. As a step in the process, we are hosting three one-hour focus group sessions with faculty and staff, which will take place in November. If you are interested in providing feedback about how HS/HSL resources and services could be enhanced to support bioinformatics, please contact Andrea Goldstein, Liaison and Outreach Librarian.

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced the winners of its Transforming Collections Microgrant during the ALA Conference (June 21-26, 2012). Maria Pinkas, HS/HSL’s Metadata Management Librarian, became one of the first two recipients of this microgrant. The Transforming Collections Microgrant program is designed to support and encourage innovative practices, emerging technologies, and innovation in collections. Thanks to the Microgrant, selected books from the Crawford Collection, the founding collection of the HS/HSL, are now available in the UM Digital Archive.

Have you noticed the new search box in the upper right-hand corner of the Library’s website? This "discovery tool" lets you search multiple types of library resources (scholarly articles, books, reviews, images, and more) with just one click. We’re looking to you to help us come up with a clever name for this tool. Submit your suggestion by November 1, and you will be in the running to win a snazzy new iPod (your choice of color). Send your ideas to Everly Brown.

This past April and May, the HS/HSL was one of 246 libraries to administer the LibQUAL+ survey. The survey is a tool to assess how well a library meets its users’ needs. LibQual+ measures library users’ minimum, perceived, and desired service levels in three areas: Information Control, Affect of Service, and Library as Place. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to respond to the survey. User response allows us to have a better understanding of our patrons needs and gives us direction and focus as we work to serve you.

In the areas of Affect of Service (customer service) and Library as Place (environment) the HS/HSL met all user expectations. The Library is perceived as a welcoming place to gather for group meetings and as an environment conducive to learning. Students, in particular, were pleased with the attention given to their needs by the Library.

In the Information Control category (delivery of information in the format, location, and time of choice) survey respondents expressed concern about not always finding the electronic resources they need for their work. Like many other libraries, the HS/HSL’s budget restraints and the high cost of some resources make providing "everything" a difficult task. The HS/HSL remains committed to finding new and creative ways to improve electronic access to resources.

M.J. Tooey, Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs and Executive Director, Health Sciences and Human Services Library, has been elected vice chair of the Lyrasis Board of Trustees. A non-profit organization, LYRASIS collaborates with libraries and information professionals to transform their institutions, operations, and technologies, enhancing efficiencies and effectiveness and leveraging strategic partnerships to expand access to content while controlling costs. The vice chair serves on the executive committee of the organization which provides strategic and fiduciary oversight for the organization. "Lyrasis, with over 1900 members, continues to grow and reposition itself to remain relevant in the swiftly changing library landscape," says Tooey. "It is an honor and pleasure to work with such a talented board and organization committed to imagining and ensuring the future of libraries and information professionals."

Each semester, the HS/HSL offers free workshops for UM faculty, students, and staff, and UMMC staff. Want to learn about some new and interesting medical apps? Consider registering for "Medical Apps for Mobile Technology in 30." This 30-minute workshop reviews a variety of different medical apps that you can use on your smart phone or tablet device. Topics covered include Drug Information, Patient Education and Clinical Tools. For the full workshop schedule and registration, visit the Library’s Workshops page.

Yunting Fu has been working with the School of Pharmacy for more than three years as their liaison librarian. During this time, Ting has developed a productive relationship with the School as a guest instructor in curriculum-based courses, a valuable collaborator on faculty research, and as a library services consultant.

In addition to providing instruction and consultation services to students, staff, and faculty, Ting is involved with the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and currently serves as the Chair of the Library and Educational Resources Section. The section unites pharmacy librarians and drug informationists nation-wide to support pharmacy education. One of Ting’s most important responsibilities as Chair is to develop and maintain the Basic Resources for Pharmaceutical Education, a list of resources required by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) for pharmacy school accreditation.  Ting will accompany the ACPE accreditation team on their site visit to the HS/HSL in late October 2012.

This fall, Ting will offer library assistance during bi-weekly drop-in sessions at Pharmacy Hall.  If you think Ting could help with your research, contact her at 410.706.8865 or by email.

The Library has expanded the number of study rooms open for reservation from three to ten. Use your umaryland.edu or umd.edu email to reserve a room today.

Guidelines:

• Study rooms are meant for groups of three or more.
• Rooms may be reserved up to three hours a day. Hours do not need to be consecutive.
• You may reserve rooms for up to three weeks in advance.
• Study rooms must be reserved at least one hour before use.
• Rooms are self-monitoring. If someone is in a room that you have reserved, kindly let them know or go to the Circulation Desk and ask for assistance.

Anna Tatro, Outreach Librarian, was invited to speak about Project SHARE (Student Health Advocates Redefining Empowerment) to the National Library of Medicine Board of Regents Subcommittee on Outreach and Public Information on September 11th in Bethesda, Maryland.

Project SHARE was funded by the National Library of Medicine Information Grant to Reduce Health Disparities (Award Number G08LM011079). Tatro serves as the Project Manager for Project SHARE and spoke to the Board of Regents about the 154 hour curriculum HS/HSL staff created and delivered to 12 students from the Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy during 2011-2012. Some of the topics covered in the curriculum include: health literacy, cultural compentence, health information outreach, and presentation skills.

This fall brings many professional presentations about Project SHARE. Tatro has been invited to speak as an outreach panelist at the upcoming Quad Chapter Meeting of the Medical Library Association being held in Baltimore (Oct. 13-16, 2012). Next up, is a poster session presented by Head of Outreach and Liaison Services, Paula Raimondo at the 4th annual Health Literacy Research Conference in Bethesda, MD sponsered by the Boston University Medical Campus (Oct. 22-23, 2012). Project SHARE is also getting national attention.  A paper, submitted by Tatro; Project Consultant and Associate Director for Services, Alexa Mayo; and Principal Investigator M.J.  Tooey, entitled "Empowering High School Students: Health Sciences Librarians Partners in a Health Advocacy Education Project” is scheduled for the session, Innovative Strategies and Programs in School Health at the America Public Health Association Annual Meeting, on October 30, 2012 in San Francisco. At the beginning of November, Alexa Mayo will present a poster at the 2012 Summit on the Science of Eliminating Health Disparities (Oct.31-Nov. 2, 2012).

A group of 12 VTMAA students begin Project SHARE on October 2, 2012 with a kick-off celebration at the Library. Project SHARE has a new intern on board, Junaed Siddiqui, who is a Masters of Sciences in Health Sciences student at Towson University with a concentration in Public Health.

More information about Project SHARE is available on our website.

After you have place a book or article request in ILLiad, you can return to ILLiad later to check its status.

• Awaiting Copyright Clearance – This is the first step in processing article requests.
• Awaiting Patron Response -The request is pending, waiting on your response to questions from Library staff. Please respond promptly to expedite the process.
• Awaiting DD Stack Searching (or Request in Processing) – This means Library staff are locating and scanning your article request from the Library’s collection. Expect delivery in less than 2 days.
• Request Sent – The request has been sent to other libraries for fulfillment because the item is not available in the Library. It may take 2-14 days to deliver the item.
• Delivered to Web – The article is in your ILLiad account now and will stay there for 14 days before it is deleted. Please retrieve it promptly.

Several months ago the HS/HSL’s Historical Librarian/Preservation Officer, Rich Behles, received a request for information from Dr. Chris Strakosch, Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Queensland, Greenslopes Private Hospital. Dr. Strakosch was researching the historic partnership that occurred between the University of Maryland (UM) and his counterparts during World War II. He contacted Behles seeking any available documentation the HS/HSL might have describing the University of Maryland’s participation in the War in the Pacific.

A lavish photographic book, The 42nd General Hospital in World War II, housed in the HS/HSL’s Historical Collections, filled the need. It traced the story of the establishment, in October 1940, of the 42nd General Hospital Unit mobilized by the University of Maryland. UM’s Professor of Medicine, Dr. Maurice C. Pincoffs, delivered the official announcement to his colleagues, and by early 1941 the University had assembled a cadre of officers commissioned in the surgical, medical, and dental services. Recruitment of nurses began in late December 1941, and within a few months all personnel were rostered and activated. They assembled for the first time at Fort Custer, Michigan, and in early May 1942, Maryland’s new unit boarded a train bound for San Francisco to set sail for their ultimate destination in Australia. After initial stops in Melbourne and Canberra, the personnel of the 42nd General Hospital settled into 16 months of duty at Stuartholme, on a hilltop overlooking Brisbane.

In response to the request from Dr. Strakosch, we digitized the entire contents of the book and uploaded it into the UM Digital Archive, facilitating an effective outreach effort to our colleagues on the opposite side of the globe.

Visit the UM Digital Archive to read The 42nd General Hospital in World War II.