Welcome to friends and colleagues old and new. Although the summer was not exactly quiet, a new academic year brings energy and excitement. Over the summer, we merged our Circulation and Reference desks to create the new Information Services desk. We also took advantage of the summer months to begin expanding our Innovation Space. And to kick off the year in the Frieda O. Weise Gallery, we are hosting a new exhibit, Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection. The exhibit has been greatly enhanced thanks to our friends at the School of Nursing. And finally, to add to your new academic year energy, we invite you to view a short video, produced by the HS/HSL, that tells you who we are. Can you tell we’re excited to be here?

After a year-long preparation, the HS/HSL’s Reference and Circulation desks merged on July 21. The new Information Services desk is located at the front of the library in the former Circulation area. The new desk is a convenient one-stop place for reference, circulation and computing assistance. Need help with searching a database, want to know how to print, or need a book on reserve? Come by the Information Services desk where we are ready to assist.

The desk is open for service from:

8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday – Thursday
8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday & Saturday

The Library Genie is coming back! Last year he asked for your 3 library wishes and you responded. We can happily say that 3 library wishes were granted.

1. You asked for early morning hours. HS/HSL is now open at 6 a.m. Monday-Friday!
2. You asked for later hours on Saturday and earlier hours on Sunday. HS/HSL now closes at 8 p.m. on Saturdays and opens at 8 a.m. on Sundays!
3. You asked for more large monitors in the study rooms. We installed 5 more monitors!

The Library Genie will be accepting wishes from October 1 to 31.

• Are there any new technologies you would like to see the Library offer?
• What about resources and services the Library could provide?
• How could the Library better assist you with your research, education or clinical needs?

The Library is kicking off “Technology Brown Bag,” a new lunch time event. Each month we will explore new and emerging technologies that support research and education. These events will provide insight about new tools, demonstrate how they work, and open the floor for informal discussion. The latest Tech Brown Bag covered GitHub.com, a tool for document management, collaboration and learning. The next Tech Brown Bag will explore 3D printing in the health sciences and will have a special guest, Dr. Gene Shirokobrod, a faculty member from the UMB School of Medicine who co-founded a local company that produces a 3D printed physical therapy device, arc. This event will take place on Thursday, October 29 in the HS/HSL Distance Education Room from noon to 12:45.

Each event is free and open to the public. No reservation is required.

Here are some helpful hints on how the HS/HSL can help you as the school year begins.

• Want early access to the Library? From 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., Monday through Friday, you can enter the Library via the SMC Campus Center. Make sure to have your OneCard for identification. Library services begin at 8 a.m. when the front doors unlock.
• The Library has four scanners that are free to use. Use them to scan book chapters or articles that you can save on a thumb drive or email to yourself. Scanners are located on the first floor of the HS/HSL.
• Need assistance with research on a topic? Contact your school librarian to set up a research consultation.
• Want a quiet place to study? The Library has study rooms on the 2nd through 5th floors. Some rooms can be reserved for up to three hours a day. All other rooms are available on a first-come-first-serve basis. Many rooms are equipped with digital displays that allow you to project content on your laptop.
• Always bring your OneCard with you to the Library. Use it to print and check out books. The 14-digit barcode on the back of the card allows you log onto library computers.
• The Library has a Presentation Practice Studio. Use this room to practice, record, and develop presentations, and to refine public speaking skills.
• Want to learn about 3D Printing? Sign up for an orientation to the HS/HSL’s Innovation Space. Once you attend the orientation, you can use the space to work with 3D modeling software and print 3D objects.
• Want to explore library resources? Sign up for a workshop or view library tutorials.
• Need help while in the Library? Contact the Information Services Desk. The staff is available to help you in person, via chat and email, or on the phone.

MPowering the State was established a few years ago by the University System of Maryland Board of Regents to promote innovation and impact through collaboration between the University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland, College Park. MPowering the State provided one-time funds, to be reviewed and renewed annually, for shared library collections supporting this collaboration. The University Libraries at College Park, and the Health Sciences and Human Services Library and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at UM Baltimore employed these funds to establish the MPower Virtual Research Library, an interdisciplinary collection supporting advanced biosciences research and education between these universities.

As you know, The State of Maryland has recently faced significant financial challenges, which have affected every state entity, including the University System of Maryland. Funding for the MPower Virtual Research Library is one of the casualties. Fiscal year 2016 brings substantial reduction in support, and is the last year in which our libraries will receive MPower funding. The three library directors have informed their Provosts and the System that none of our libraries are able to fund these resources in the future due to flat or reduced collections budgets. We are looking at ways to collaboratively fund some of the resources but any funding there will necessitate hard decisions regarding reductions in other areas.

The MPower Virtual Research Library has substantially benefited the research and teaching of many faculty, students and librarians at our institutions.  It was an opportunity to develop a biosciences knowledge infrastructure supportive of collaboration across these major USM research institutions. Loss of access to these resources may have considerable negative impact.  Faculty, students and other researchers should consult with library faculty at their institutions to determine alternative resources.

In February 2013, The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a memorandum to all agency and department heads directing federal agencies with more than $100 million in annual research and development spending to establish plans for increasing public access to peer-reviewed scientific publications and digital data resulting from federally funded research.

Following the NIH Public Access Policy’s lead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, will now require authors of peer-reviewed journal articles arising from agency funding to be deposited into a central repository using the NIH Manuscript Submission System. All articles must be electronically accessible to the public within 12 months of publication. For the CDC, the policy applies to all manuscripts published after July 15, 2013. For AHRQ, publications from research funded from February 2015 onward must be submitted. Beginning October 2015, digital data arising from these funding agencies must also have a data management plan available.

Faculty librarians at the HS/HSL can assist researchers in determining their compliance status and provide support in taking steps to deposit federally funded research articles into the central repository. Please visit our website for detailed instructions on the process or contact us at nihcompliance@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection is on display in the Health Sciences and Human Services Library through October 10, 2015. The exhibition explores a unique archive of 2,588 postcards and over 100 years of images of nurses and the nursing profession from around the world, investigating the hold these images exert on the public imagination—then and now. Additional information about the display is available at the Library’s Weise Gallery webpage.

There will be a special luncheon and lecture followed by a tour of the exhibit. Guest speakers include Jiwon Kim and Dan Caughey, Exhibit Educators from the National Library of Medicine. The luncheon will be held on Wednesday, September 30 from 11:30 a.m. to1:00 p.m. in the Gladhill Boardroom. RSVP by emailing events@hshsl.umaryland.edu by September 25. Seating is limited.

This traveling exhibition was developed and produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Curated by Julia Hallam, PhD.

Coordinating exhibit items located in the gallery were provided by the University of Maryland School of Nursing’s Living History Museum.

The National Library of Medicine has created the resource called “Community Health Maps: Information on Low Cost Mapping Tools for Community-based Organizations“. If you are interested in the usefulness of data mapping in public health, but have concerns about high cost or complex technology, check out this blog.

Community Health Maps contains a mixture of mapping apps and reviews, best practices, and experiences of folks who have successfully used mapping technologies in their work in public health. The blog is intended to help community organizations identify and apply low-cost and easy-to-use online mapping tools.

Examples of what you can find on the Community Health Maps blog include:

• A guide for using iForm for Field Data Collection. iForm is an app that can be used on iPads, iPhones and Android devices. Using iForm and iFormBuilder, you can go to different locations, gather data, and view it in tabular or map format.
• A review of CartoDB, an online cloud based platform for storing and visualizing spatial data.
• A two-part article on the accuracy of the GPS in Smartphones. Will the use of your phone’s GPS be sufficient for your project?

Selecting oral health care books for children is now easier thanks to a recently released booklist created by an Interprofessional team. The project which was spearheaded by the HS/HSL and the Maryland Dental Action Coalition (MDAC) brought together an interdisciplinary team consisting of a pediatric dentist, school nurse, pediatric nurse practitioner, early childhood teacher, dental hygienists, dental and dental hygiene students, library professionals and health education specialists who reviewed more than 50 oral health books for children up to 6 years old.

Dental caries is the most common chronic children’s disease in the U.S. This recommended list was developed to provide guidance to those who purchase oral health books for children & to increase access of oral health information to children and their families. The ultimate goal is to provide another tool for decreasing dental disease by increasing oral health literacy and encouraging oral hygiene in young children.

The booklist will assist healthcare providers, parents, educators & childcare providers in selecting oral health books for children within the categories of oral health care, visiting the dentist and general information about teeth.

All of the books are available for browsing or checkout from the Health Sciences & Humans Services Library. This should be especially helpful during National Children’s Dental Health Month in February.

The list of 22 recommended books, complete with annotations, is available at: http://guides.hshsl.umaryland.edu/dentistry/DentalBooksForChildren along with additional details about the project.

The HS/HSL will be offering free workshops throughout the fall semester. Workshops are taught by librarians and cover a wide range of subjects, including database searching, 3D printing, citation management, and research impact. Here are a few of this semester’s workshop offerings. Literature Searching: An Overview for Students will discuss strategies for selecting a research topic, searching for and managing literature, and synthesizing information. Introduction to 3D Modeling will show you how to find existing models and how to create models from scratch. Leveraging Research Impact Data for Tenure and Promotion introduces you to tools like Web of Science and Scopus to measure and evaluate the impact of your research to present to funding agencies and promotion and tenure committees. To see the full workshop schedule and to register, visit our website.

Can’t make one of our regularly scheduled workshops? You can request a Workshop on Demand. A librarian will arrange to meet with you or your group to review workshop material.

 

The HS/HSL recently updated the PCs and the monitors in its three library classrooms. Some of PCs and monitors that were removed were donated to Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy (VTTMAA). VTTMAA provides an academic program that encourages students to enter careers in health. The rest of the equipment will be given to the Office for Community Engagement at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The Office for Community Engagement will use them to assist the Baltimore community at its UMB Community Engagement Center soon to be located at the BioPark on North Poppleton St.

 

This June, the HS/HSL welcomed Brian Zelip as our new Emerging Technologies Librarian. Zelip graduated from the University of Illinois’ Graduate School of Library & Information Science in May with a concentration in data curation. As the Emerging Technologies Librarian, his main focus has been managing the Library’s Innovation Space. He provides orientations to new users and has been teaching workshops on 3D printing and modeling. As the Emerging Technologies Librarian, his role will be to collaborate with library patrons and staff around new uses of technology through teaching, consultations, and special events.

The movie, Robot and Frank, describes the future in which the elderly have a robot as their companion and also as a helper that monitors various activities that relate to both mental and physical health. People’s lives in the movie are not particularly futuristic other than a robot in them. And even a robot may not be so futuristic to us much longer either. As a matter of fact, as of June 2015, there is now a commercially available humanoid robot that is close to performing some of the functions that the robot in the movie ‘Frank and Robot’ does.

A Japanese company, SoftBank Robotics Corp. released a humanoid robot named ‘Pepper’ to the market back in June. The Pepper robot is 4 feet tall, 61 pounds, speaks 17 languages and is equipped with an array of cameras, touch sensors, accelerometer, and other sensors in his “endocrine-type multi-layer neural network,” according to the CNN report. The Pepper robot does not clean the house or take care of the children. It was designed to be a companion to humans. The Pepper robot was priced at ¥198,000 ($1,600). The Pepper owners are also responsible for an additional ¥24,600 ($200) monthly data and insurance fee. While the Pepper robot is not exactly cheap, it is surprisingly affordable for a robot. This means that the robot industry has now matured to the point where it can introduce a robot that the mass can afford.

Robots come in varying capabilities and forms. Some robots are as simple as a programmable cube block that can be combined with one another to be built into a working unit. For example, Cubelets from Modular Robotics are modular robots that are used for educational purposes. Each cube performs one specific function, such as flash, battery, temperature, brightness, rotation, etc. And one can combine these blocks together to build a robot that performs a certain function. For example, you can build a lighthouse robot by combining a battery block, a light-sensor block, a rotator block, and a flash block.

By contrast, there are advanced robots such as those in the form of an animal developed by a robotics company, Boston Dynamics. Some robots look like a human although much smaller than the Pepper robot. NAO is a 58-cm tall humanoid robot that moves, recognizes, hears and talks to people that was launched in 2006. Nao robots are an interactive educational toy that helps students to learn programming in a fun and practical way.

Noticing its relevance to STEM education, some libraries have acquired robots and are making them available to library patrons. Westport Public Library provides robot training classes for its two Nao robots. Chicago Public Library lends a number of Finch robots that patrons can program to see how they work. Faculty and students at University of Texas Arlington Libraries can check out several Telepresence Robots.

But robots can fulfill many other functions as well. For example, robots can be very useful in healthcare. A robot can be a patient’s emotional companion just like the Pepper. Or it can provide an easy way to communicate for a patient and her/his caregiver with physicians and others. A robot can be used at a hospital to move and deliver medication and other items and function as a telemedicine assistant. It can also provide physical assistance for a patient or a nurse and even be use for children’s therapy.

Humanoid robots like Pepper may also serve at a reception desk at companies. And it is not difficult to imagine them as sales clerks at stores. Robots can be useful at schools and other educational settings. At a workplace, teleworkers can use robots to achieve more active presence. Universities and colleges can offer a similar telepresence robot to online students who want to virtually experience and utilize the campus facilities or to faculty who wish to offer their office hours when they are away from the office. Not all robots do or will have the humanoid form as the Pepper robot has. But as robots become more and more capable, we will surely get to see more robots in our daily lives.

When faced with the task of creating library education materials in support of Human Resources “onboarding” program, a team from the HS/HSL put on their creativity hats. After spending a number of sessions brainstorming all the things the library does, they wondered if a video might be one way to capture the Library’s breadth of expertise, resource access, and importance as an intellectual and cultural hub for UMB. In just over two minutes of upbeat music and flashing images, this new video captures the essence of the HS/HSL— including the longest continuous staircase in Baltimore City.

Tonya Anderson, MBA, Persia Drummond and Erin Zupanc graduated in the 3rd cohort of the UMB Emerging Leaders Program in May.

Mary Ann Williams, MSLS, served on the interprofessional review team that recently created the “Oral Health Books for Children” list in collaboration with the Maryland Dental Action Coalition (MDAC).

Posters and Presentations

C. Steven Douglas, MA, MLS, AHIP and Eileen Harrington, Health & Life Sciences Librarian at the Priddy Library at the Universities at Shady Grove were awarded Honorable Mention for their poster “A Place at the Table: Health Sciences Librarians and Consortial E-Book Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) Selection, Purchasing and Management” at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA) meeting in Austin.

Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS presented “Back to the Future Part III: Libraries and the New Technology Frontier” for the South Central Regional Library Council of New York and “Users, UX, and Technology: Going Hi-Tech with Your Classroom AV System” at the Code4Lib MD/VA/DC Regional Meeting at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Bohyun Kim, and Everly Brown, MLIS, presented “Making a Makerspace Happen: A discussion of the current practices in library makerspaces and experimentation at University of Maryland, Baltimore” at the American Library Association Annual Conference in San Francisco.

Sheila Snow-Croft, MLIS, MA, presented a poster, “From Problem to Prevention: Evidence Based Public Health” at the North Carolina Public Health Conference Association’s Fall Educational Conference in Winston-Salem.

Nancy Patterson, MLS, presented posters on “Health Literacy Outreach to Disadvantaged People in Their Own Environment” and “Health Literacy 101: Increasing Literacy Reduces Health Disparities” at the Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy in Savannah.

The HS/HSL has just completed its two-year 200th anniversary celebration. The two-year celebration commemorated the purchase of Dr. John Crawford’s collection to establish the Library in 1813 and the collection being made available for student use in 1815. The two years have flown by.

Looking back, here are some highlights.

• Dr. Phillip Mackowiak kicked off our celebration in May 2013 with a great talk on Dr. Crawford’s contribution to medicine. Afterwards, we walked to Westminster Graveyard to lay flowers on Dr. Crawford’s grave.
• We hosted excellent programs and exhibits. To name a few:
  • Evolution and Influences: The Health Sciences and Human Services Library at 200. The exhibit is now permanently mounted on the wall in the fifth floor hall.
  • WHACK’ed…and then everything was different. Artist Eliette Markhbein, a traumatic brain injured patient herself, traced her journey and exhibited her portraits of famous people with TBIs.
  • Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. This amazing exhibit created by the U.S. Holocaust Museum explored eugenics and Nazi abuse in their search to create a “master race.”
• We hosted visitors from Nairobi, Kenya, and Shanghai, China. Library faculty, Alexa Mayo and Ryan Harris also traveled to Nairobi as part of our exchange session with colleagues there.
• We celebrated the “Sweet Sixteen” birthday of our building.
• We introduced “Research Connection,” a suite of services to support research success at UMB through programs such as impact analysis, systematic reviews, and support for the NIH Biosketch.
• We launched a new HS/HSL strategic planning initiative that helped us learn a tremendous amount about our community’s needs, perceptions, and the value placed on the Library’s expertise, resources, and place. The plan will be published in Fall 2015.
• We launched our Innovation Space with 3D printers, a 3D scanner, and plans to expand.
• Our symposia series explored diverse topics such as scholarly communication, research impact, mHealth. We also launched “What’s Next?” our new series to explore the edges of health, healthcare, and the human condition.

What lies ahead?
In these fast moving times, it is hard to predict our “next big things.” However, solid guesses would include:

• A reduction in resources – With a flat resources budget, our ability to sustain our collections will be impossible. We will need to be creative in other areas such as interlibrary loan and document delivery to meet user needs quickly and conveniently.
• The completion of our strategic plan in fall 2015.
• E-publication of the history of the HS/HSL.
• Monitoring and adoption of new and emerging knowledge technologies.
• Physical changes to the library building, including expansion of the Innovation Space, a move to one service desk, changes in hours of operations, new furniture and perhaps some new uses for library spaces.
• An increasing focus on pedagogy and instructional design, data management, scholarly communication, and collaborative efforts, both at UMB and across the USM.

Thank You!
First, thanks to all who attended our programs, visited our exhibits, and supported our harebrained schemes. Thanks to all our private funders. The majority of our programming was provided gratis or funded by generous donors to the HS/HSL. And finally, very special thanks to the HS/HSL team who put together programs, edited copy, kept me from going over the edge, and served on a VERY effective Task Force 200, which planned all the events during our celebration.

Thank you…and onto our next 200 years!

As we brought our 200th Anniversary Celebration to a close, we began a new speaker series that looks to the future. The purpose of “What’s Next…?” is to invite speakers to UMB to discuss exciting new developments shaping the future of health, health science, and the human condition.

On April 15, the HS/HSL hosted its first “What’s Next…?” lecture, featuring Dr. Ellen Jorgensen. Dr. Jorgensen is the co-founder and Executive Director of Genspace, a non-profit community lab. Her lecture entitled “Biohacking, You Can Do it Too” discussed the biohacker movement, the development of Genspace, and the importance of community labs in education and research. If you were unable to attend the lecture, click here to view the recording.

Be on the lookout for future announcements from the HS/HSL about upcoming lectures in our “What’s Next…?” series.

After listening to your suggestions at our Student Town Hall and through our Library Genie survey, we understand that you want more library hours. We are happy to announce that we can now offer early morning study from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., Monday through Friday. For access to the HS/HSL before 8:00 a.m., simply enter through the SMC Campus Center with your UMB ID badge. Library services and access to classrooms begin at 8:00 a.m., when the HS/HSL’s front doors open. Occasionally, computers and printers will not be available during early morning study hours due to routine network updates.

Summer Hours

May 17 – May 31

Monday – Thursday	6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Friday	6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Saturday	8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Sunday	10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
May 23-25	CLOSED

 

June 1 – Aug 16

Monday – Thursday	6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Friday	6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Saturday	8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Sunday	CLOSED
July 3-5	CLOSED

 

Each April, Library Journal releases a study outlining the cost of journals indexed in the Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) citation indexes and predicating price increases for the following year. Librarians at the HS/HSL use this information to help guide the addition and cancellation of journals to keep us within our resources budget. Library Journal‘s pricing information also includes a breakdown by discipline. According to the study, the price of Health Sciences journals increased 7% in both 2014 and 2015, with the average price rising from $1,488 in 2013 to $1,694 in 2015. The report predicts that this trend will continue, with journal prices increasing between 6% and 7% in 2015.

One way that many libraries, including the HS/HSL, have extended their budgets is by participating in publishers’ offers of subscription bundles called “big deals.” Under this model, libraries commit to maintaining their current subscriptions with a publisher. In exchange for this commitment, the publisher allows the library to access many more of its titles for a relatively modest fee. HS/HSL currently participates in big deals with Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Sage, and Taylor & Francis, giving the UMB community access to considerably more journals than single subscriptions would allow. However, with steady increases in journal prices and a library resources budget that remains flat, our continued participation is unsustainable. Preliminary analysis indicates that if the Library is forced to discontinue big deals in favor of single subscriptions to only the most highly used journals, UMB researchers will have access to approximately one-fourth of the in-scope journals that are currently available.

Five preeminent medical libraries, including the HS/HSL, are collaborating on a project to digitize state medical journals. The Medical Heritage Library (MHL), is a digital resource on the history of medicine and health developed by an international consortium of cultural heritage repositories. The MHL has received funding in the amount of $275,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for its proposal, “Medicine at Ground Level: State Medical Societies, State Medical Journals, and the Development of American Medicine and Society.” Additional funding has been provided by the Harvard Library.

This project will create a substantial digital collection of American state medical society journals, digitizing 117 titles from 46 states, from 1900 to 2000. The HS/HSL holds close to 95 of the titles.

State medical society journals document the transformation of American medicine in the twentieth century at both the local and national level. The journals have served as sites not only for scientific articles, but also for medical talks (and, often, accounts of discussions following the talks), local news regarding sites of medical care and the medical profession, advertisements, and unexpurgated musings on medicine and society throughout the twentieth century. Once digitized and searchable as a single, comprehensive body of material, this collection will be a known universe, able to support a limitless array of historical queries, including those framed geographically and/or temporally, and offering new ways to examine and depict the evolution of medicine and the relationship between medicine and society.

The other four participants are: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia; the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University; the Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health at The New York Academy of Medicine; and the Library and Center for Knowledge Management at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF).

The HS/HSL opened its Innovation Space on Tuesday, April 21. We welcome all UMB students, faculty, and researchers who are interested in experimenting with 3D printing and 3D scanning. The HS/HSL will be developing the Innovation Space as a vibrant and collaborative hands-on learning space on campus and will be offering workshops and hosting talks in the future. The Innovation Space is equipped with two 3D printers (MakerBot Replicator 2X and Afinia H480), a 3D Systems Sense 3D scanner, Lynda.com video tutorials, a large DNA model, two molecule kits, and a button maker. The cost for 3D printing is $3.00 for up to an hour of 3D printing and $1.00 for each additional hour.

The Innovation space is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Reservations can be made online. More information about the Innovation Space and detailed information on how to use the equipment for 3D printing and 3D scanning is available in our online guide. Never seen a 3D printer in action? Check out our 3D printer live video stream. Please contact ispace@hshsl.umaryland.edu or 410-706-7996 if you have any questions.

At the HS/HSL Innovation Space, faculty can create instructional tools, such as 3D models of molecules or of human anatomy in order to improve classroom instruction and expedite a student’s learning process. Researchers can strengthen their grant proposals by including the HS/HSL Innovation Space facility, equipment, service, and staff-expertise. They can also quickly prototype a physical model of a medical or healthcare-related invention to test out the feasibility of further entrepreneurial pursuit, commercialization, and mass production. Students can explore novel technology that has a significant impact on health sciences, benefit from interdisciplinary learning and collaboration opportunities, and prototype physical models for their ideas and concepts for study, research, and experimentation. Below are some examples of what is currently taking place in the Maker Movement and 3D printing technology. We look forward to meeting many UMB students, faculty, and researchers in this new space.

• The National Institutes of Health recently launched NIH 3D Print Exchange in 2014, so that researchers can share 3D print files, thereby acknowledging the important role of 3D modeling and printing technology in biomedical and scientific research. Scientists are already bio-printing human tissues and attempting to 3D print a human organ itself.
• A Baltimore-based startup company, Verve, launched a Kickstarter campaign for their 3D printed device for posture and pain relief called ARC and raised over $7,000 in less than 24 hours. The company includes Dr. Gene Shirokobrod, a UMB faculty member in the School of Medicine.
• A surgeon in Sinai Hospital of Baltimore performed a total knee replacement surgery using 3D printing technology to cast an implant and manufacture the jigs – plastic cutting guides – that direct incisions.
• Pharmacists are exploring a way to use 3D printing to produce medicine to make it more affordable and customizable to the needs of individual patients.
• A man in Massachusetts created a prosthetic hand for his son who was born without fingers using a 3D printer at only a fraction of the cost for a commercial prosthetic hand.

Modernization projects such as the Innovation Space initiative are made possible by the generosity of donors through the UMB Foundation. If you would like to support projects such as these please visit https://umaryland.givecorps.com/causes/714-hshl or contact us at (410) 706-7545.

María M. Pinkas, MLS, has been re-appointed for a second term as Chair of the Continuing Education Committee of the Association of Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), a Division of the American Library Association (ALA).

Presentations & Publications

Richard J. Behles, MLS, co-authored “Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell: Alumnus and Medical Historian for the Ages,” in the spring University of Maryland Medicine Bulletin.

Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS, was the closing keynote speaker for the 2015 Library Technology Conference at St. Paul, MN. Her keynote address was “Libraries Meet the Second Machine Age.” Slides are available here.

Emilie Ludeman, MSLIS, Katherine Downton, MSLIS, and Andrea Goldstein Shipper, MSLIS, co-authored “Developing a Library Systematic Review Service: A Case Study” in Medical Reference Service Quarterly. 34 (2), 2015.

C. Andrew Youngkin, MLA, AHIP, authored “Hangout at the Library: Video Conferencing and More with Google+” in Library High Tech News. 32 (3), 2015.

Every year I look forward to the publication of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report, which makes predictions regarding trends at the intersection of education and technology. This year was no different, but I have to say that upon my initial read of the 2015 report, I was somewhat disappointed. I didn’t see anything new or exciting to think about. Upon a second reading, I became a little more engaged. Many of the foci in this year’s report are themes that have been explored for many years. My interpretation now is that we’ve got to get going on these things!

I have always read the report with an eye towards what it means for the HS/HSL. This year I pulled out the following areas. My comments follow each area.

Advancing Cultures of Change and Innovation. As we have worked on our new HS/HSL strategic plan, we have learned a lot about what our users value. We are honing in on our unique contributions to collaborations, research, and advancing the economic success of our community. We have to do more to catalyze these areas through effective information use and knowledge creation.

Cross-institutional Collaboration. For over two decades, through the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions library consortium, we have worked to collaborate on the cross-institutional acquisition and sharing of resources. We are taking that further through the inclusion of other higher education institutions in Maryland for projects such as shared information repositories.

Open Educational Resources. The library community has been advocating for public and open access for a decade. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are another logical step. These resources are created by and for educators, and their use is free with proper attribution. There are several initiatives at the USM level, and the HS/HSL has been exploring a partnership with the School of Pharmacy to produce an open pharmacy textbook.

Redesigning Learning Spaces. We have a wonderful physical environment, and we continue to look for ways to enhance it. Our strategic planning exercise has reinforced the desire for collaborative spaces in all shapes and sizes. We have redesigned our largest teaching lab to include new state-of-the-art technologies.

Digital Literacy. For over 30 years, library trainers have championed concepts of information and digital literacy. Our instruction continues to evolve to meet the needs of our students and faculty in a digital age with a focus on new learning tools and technologies and the pedagogy that sits on top of them and truly makes them effective.

Makerspaces. Later this spring we will be introducing 3D printers in the HS/HSL. They will provide UMB faculty, staff, and students with access to tools to create and learn. Our big question is, "What is the next thing we could add to truly develop a ‘makerspace’ for UMB?" Are there other tools, training, or courses we should be investigating?

While I feel the 2015 Horizon Report reflected many themes from earlier reports, the fact that these themes are still on the "horizon" means we need to seize opportunities to make them happen. Let’s get to work!

As the HS/HSL’s 200th celebration draws to a close, we are launching a new symposium series, "What’s Next…?" In this series, we hope to invite innovative thinkers to discuss the exciting developments shaping the future of health, health care, and the human condition.

On April 15, join us at 11:30 a.m. in the Elm Ballroom at the Southern Management Corporation Campus (SMC) Center as we launch the series with a luncheon featuring Dr. Ellen Jorgensen, a noted expert on bio-hacking and citizen science. Her TED Talk from 2012 was invigorating, exciting, and thought provoking. While there is no charge for the luncheon, registration is required so that we can plan accordingly. Reserve your space by emailing events@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

See you on April 15. Make sure you get your taxes in so you can join us!

UMB Experts is a searchable database of expertise across disciplines at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Use UMB Experts to identify collaborators and their work by searching profiles of the University’s research faculty. Build collaborative teams and productive research relationships searching by name, department, or concept. Using Expert Community, search for colleagues at other institutions. UMB researchers with profiles within the system will soon be able to access their profiles for editing by using their UMID and password. Notification will be sent as soon as this option becomes available.

Using the Visualization feature, create diagrams of institutional or co-author networks.

If you have questions about UMB Experts, please contact Na Lin, Project Manager.

The Health Sciences and Human Services Library and the Office of Research and Development are collaborating to offer UMB Experts.

Join members of the HS/HSL Strategic Planning Team at noon on Friday, March 27 in the Gladhill Board Room on the 5th floor of the HS/HSL for a Brown Bag Town Hall Meeting focused on the Library’s new strategic plan and future directions.

We really need to hear from you, so bring your lunch and come with your best ideas, concerns, and hopes for the Library’s future. Dessert and beverages will be provided. See you at noon on March 27.

As part of the Library’s strategic planning listening tour, we hosted an open town hall for all UMB students. In the town hall, we received valuable feedback, both suggestions for change and confirmation that students are pleased with library staff and resources. We heard ideas about adjusting library hours on weekend and weekday mornings, allowing for badge entrance to the Library, providing additional bioinformatics training, and offering coding or programing classes. We are already in the process of adding additional LCD monitors in upper floor study rooms and will have HDMI cables available to check out. As the Library considers student’s suggestions, and those gathered in the Library Genie survey, we will keep you posted.

Five hundred years ago, Andreas Vesalius was born in Brussels, Belgium. He came to be known as the Father of Anatomy, and his seven volumes entitled De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (Latin for “On the fabric of the human body in seven books”) are legendary for their attention to anatomical detail. These volumes are illustrated with woodcuts that not only detail dissection but also illustrate the anatomical theater of the 16th century at the University of Padua. Over the centuries, these woodcuts have evolved with the artists producing them.

On February 27, the HS/HSL was delighted to unveil a wonderful interpretation of Vesalius by noted Baltimore Realist artist, Joseph Sheppard. The 5 foot by 4 foot painting, donated by Mr. and Mrs. Henry A. Rosenberg, Jr., depicts Vesalius in the anatomical theater at Padua, performing a dissection before a large audience. The painting’s ceremonial unveiling featured remarks by HS/HSL Executive Director, M.J. Tooey, UMB President Dr. Jay Perman, Mr. Rosenberg, and Mr. Sheppard. Mr. Sheppard’s remarks were a mini master class in Renaissance Art and his interpretation of symbolism within the painting. The large painting, with its riot of color, can be seen on the fifth floor of the Library as you exit the elevator. As one of the guests remarked, "It looks as though that wall space was always waiting for that painting."

In early April, the renovation of Classroom LL05 will be complete. Once it’s up and running, the University community will have access to a room with 26 new class computers and a fully redesigned height-adjustable presenter’s station with a touch screen panel.

The classroom will also feature a high-definition widescreen, flanked by two smaller LCD panels for displaying complementary images. An 80" LCD confidence monitor will be available for the presenter, along with two cameras with pan tilt and zoom capabilities. This technology will facilitate videoconferencing in the room.

The library staff is looking forward to teaching in this state-of-the-art classroom. If you are interested in booking this or other HS/HSL rooms, please go to the Library’s Reserve a Room page.

Visiting scholars from the Information Center at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SUTCM) spent three days at the HS/HSL sharing ideas, focusing on best practices in health sciences librarianship, and exploring information service philosophies. HS/HSL faculty librarians offered the scholars new strategies for actively supporting researchers. A highlight of the visit was a presentation by the visiting scholars of SUTCM’s web-based database of information on traditional Chinese medicine dating back thousands of years. We look forward to a continuing dialog with our colleagues from Shanghai.

Mary Ann Williams, MSLS, Research, Education & Outreach Librarian, serves as the School of Dentistry librarian and is an invited participant in Colgate’s Bright Smiles, Bright Futures advisory committee.

Bright Smiles, Bright Futures (BSBF) is a comprehensive oral health education program designed to teach children good oral health habits at an early age. BSBF began serving Baltimore City & Baltimore County this March. This program targets underserved children through an in-school curriculum, mobile dental vans, and community awareness activities geared to teach young children and their families the benefits of good oral health. The advisory committee will assist with the planning of the BSBF Baltimore program, act as a network to other professionals and community organizations, and advise Colgate to program elements that best fit the needs of the Baltimore community.

In order to get a better handle on resource usage – who and why – a survey will appear when users log in to resources during the month of April. The survey will pop up randomly three times every day at different times throughout the month and will ask:

1. whether the user is faculty, staff or student
2. with what school or unit the user is affiliated
3. the purpose for the use (research, assignments)

M.J. Tooey, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Executive Director of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, explained, "We are hoping this survey will not be too intrusive, but it is critical during these times of budget and resources cuts to get a good picture of who is using HS/HSL resources."

What is a Hackathon?

At the Library’s student town hall meeting last month, a student suggested hosting a hackathon event at the Library. ‘Hackathon’ is a term that has become more popular recently, but to many it is still somewhat obscure. ‘Hacking’ refers to programming activity that builds a useful software application for a practical purpose. ‘Hackathon’ signifies a hacking marathon. ‘Hackfest’ and ‘codefest’ are the synonyms of ‘hackathon.’ The hackathon guide "GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) Hack-in-a-box" from the Digital Public Library of America states that a hackathon is a short, concentrated event between half a day to two days long in which small teams of participants with diverse skill sets design and build something, often by programming. Hackathons focus on collaboration and practice more than perfection. Often, people use hackathons to build quick prototype applications that they can develop into a mature applications later on. Hackathons are organized by many different groups, ranging from hackers, local meetups, hackerspaces, software companies such as Yahoo! or Facebook, to colleges and universities. Libraries often sponsor hackathons by providing a space or organizing a hackathon with a library-related theme.

Hackathon in Libraries

Over the last few years, many libraries have hosted hackathons. The Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University in the U.K. hosted a one-day hackfest celebrating the release of 25,000 texts from the Early English Books Online project into the public domain in March, 2015. This hackfest encouraged the participation of students, researchers from all disciplines, and members of the public with an interest in the intersection between technology, history, and literature who are interested in working together to develop a project using the texts and the data generated from them. In February 2015, York University Libraries in Canada hosted the Stacie Library Dungeon Hackfest with the theme of "hacking for a better world." The New York Public Library Labs partnered with Readium Foundation and held two one-day hackathons named "Open Book Hack Day" in 2014 and 2015. At the "Open Book Hack Day" hackathons, participants explored ways of liberating public domain documents onto the open web; making it easier to get open-access e-books; and improving open e-book access/distribution for libraries, startups, and publishers alike.

Hackathon in Health Sciences

Hackathons are also used in the health sciences. From January 5 to 7, the National Center for Biotechnology Information hosted a genomics hackathon focused on advanced bioinformatics analysis of next-generation sequencing data. This event targeted students, post-docs, and investigators already engaged in the use of pipelines for genomic analyses from next-generation sequencing data. Four different working groups built pipelines to analyze large datasets within a cloud infrastructure. Japan’s National Bioscience Database Center and Database Center for Life Science have been organizing an annual BioHackathon since 2008, mainly focusing on standardization and interoperability of bioinformatics data and web services for improving integration, preservation, and utilization of databases in life sciences. The D.C. Public Library organized two Accessibility Hackathons to bring together young adults with disabilities and companies that develop accessibility solutions. The Accessibility Hackathons provided opportunities for collaboration and mentorship in the development new adaptive technology solutions.

The greatest benefit of a hackathon is the dedicated time and space outside of daily work, study, and projects where like-minded people can meet to share ideas, hone programming skills, and prototype ideas into working applications. Hackathons also offer participants the chance to tackle a problem of their own choosing, rather than one that has been assigned. The HS/HSL is open to the possibility of partnering with a campus or local group to host a hackathon. Please get in touch with us if you are interested in collaborating.

Paula Raimondo, MLS, AHIP, has been appointed Chair of the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) Educational Policy Task Force.

Kimberly F. Yang, JD, MLS, is Co-Chair of the Library and Information Science (LIS) Section Strategic Planning Task Force for the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). She has also been appointed to the Honors and Awards Committee of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association.

C. Andrew Youngkin, MLS, AHIP, FMLS, will serve as the Chair-Designate for MLA’s Credentialing Committee. His appointment will begin June 1, 2015.

Presentations & Publications

PJ Grier, MPA, MLS, co-authored the article "On the Trail of an EHR," in Journal of Hospital Librarianship, 15;1, 99-108, DOI: 10.1080/15323269.2015.982039.

Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS, authored a book Understanding Gamification, published by American Library Association TechSource (2015). The book has also been released as the February/March Issue of Library Technology Report. The full-text is available to HS/HSL patrons. On February 18, 2015, she also gave a webinar, “Beyond the SEA Webinar: Get Started with Coding,” for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Southeastern/Atlantic Region.

Kimberly F. Yang, contributed the chapter "From nonprofits to libraries: Information-gathering, communication, and relationship-building skills that transcend fields," in Skills to Make a Librarian: Transferable Skills Inside and Outside the Library.

In this issue I would like to take a look at the second element of what we consider when we talk about the HS/HSL. A few months back I wrote about Expertise, and in this issue I would like to examine Resources.

This year due to a flat budget, continued 6-7% increases from our vendors, and a reduction to our MPower budget, we were forced to cut about $250,000 from our resources budget. The cuts were distributed in this way:

1. Textbooks and monographs will no longer be licensed or purchased, regardless of format, with the exception of reference, reserve, or essential titles.
2. All remaining print-only journals have been cancelled. The cancellation list can be found here.
3. Journals that are licensed individually rather than as part of a bundled package with a cost per use of greater than $4.00 and overall usage of fewer than 300 full-text downloads in 2013 will be cancelled. The cancellation list is found here.
4. For the past three years the School of Pharmacy (SOP) and the HS/HSL piloted co-licensing campus-wide access to a collection of e-textbooks (Access Pharmacy). Due to escalating costs, publisher unwillingness to “unbundle” core texts from the package, and budget constraints, the Library and SOP mutually agreed to discontinue this product.
5. The MPower Virtual Research Library funding was reduced by 40%. This project supported co-licensing of several biosciences resources shared by faculty from UMB and College Park. Clinical Key, Essential Science Indicators, the Global Health database, and several individual bioinformatics journals were cancelled.

These cancellations have caused us to refocus with great energy on the effectiveness and responsiveness of our interlibrary loan (ILL) program. Early in 2014 we made our ILLs free to faculty. In late August we launched a new system using the campus login and password for ILL requests. We have also joined a program that supplies most requests within 24 hours. A recent comment in our e-suggestion box suggests we are on the right track:

“I just wanted to make a comment regarding my experience using ILLiad. Specifically, I would like to express my appreciation for how quickly my article and book chapter requests are fulfilled, often the same day or day after I request them, and I request A LOT. Such unfettered access to articles not directly available through HS/HSL makes my research much less stressful, more productive, and more enjoyable. To whomever (or whomevers) are getting the articles for me so quickly, THANK YOU!”

We will continue to focus our attention on making this service the best it can be.

This spring we will be embarking on a “zero-based collection development” strategy because the budget crystal ball is indicating we will be making further cuts. This means we will be taking apart our journal bundles and building the collection from the bottom up based on usage and cost per use until we reach our spending limit. Not a pleasant prospect, to be sure.

In my opinion, libraries are moving into a post-resource ownership era, where acquiring information for our community will happen in real time any number of ways – licensing content, acquiring “just-in-time” or on demand, borrowing, open/public access advocacy. Budget vagaries and uncertain publishing paradigms challenge us, but we will strive to get you the information you need.

Over the month of October, the Library Genie asked for your top three library wishes. We have heard your requests and are looking at ways to grant your library wishes!

Overwhelmingly, the top request was for longer hours. There were requests for the return of Clinical Key and Access Pharmacy, two cancellations due to our recent resource cuts. Another resource request was for off-campus access to UpToDate. While we would also be happy to have this, the UpToDate subscription is purchased by the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Other library wishes were: coffee, access to food, Writing Center hours in the Library, login from the homepage, updated water fountains, quiet areas, lounge area, more monitors, name the Library, Mac lab, blankets, fax, napping stations, refurbished table tops, consistent clocks, more trash cans, free printing, collect textbooks, more weekend Reference hours, temperature regulation, more journals, new chair cushions, scan id instead of showing it to a guard, and more outlets to plug in to.

The Genie is looking into possibilities for granting some of your wishes. We’ll keep you posted!

You are in the process of submitting an article for publication. The publisher requests that you provide keywords to accompany the abstract. You want to use MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms since these are standard terms used in many health sciences databases. How do you quickly translate your content into appropriate MeSH terms? The answer is MeSH on Demand.

The National Library of Medicine has released MeSH on Demand, a tool that can be used to find relevant MeSH terms by inserting a section of text. On the MeSH on Demand web page, text such as a phrase, an abstract, or a grant summary can be entered, and the “Find MeSH Terms” button will retrieve appropriate MeSH terms. For example, entering the text: “Spontaneous activation of JNK-1 and PI-3 kinase can be induced in lupus-like chronic GVHD in the P->F1 model,” will retrieve the following MeSH terms: Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases, and Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinases.

Get relevant keywords quickly, try MeSH on Demand today.

The HS/HSL will be closing at 4:00pm on Wednesday, December 24th.

The library will be closed for the holidays from Thursday, December 25th through Sunday, January 4th.

We will reopen on Monday, January 5th.

If you have large sets of research data that you want to share, consider publishing them in a data journal. Data journals are typically open access, peer-reviewed publications. Data creators submit their datasets to be peer-reviewed and published. The work is then citable by others and can be tracked for impact. Open access data journals include biomedical, public health, and psychosocial coverage.

The list of data journals is rapidly growing. The following are a small number of data journals that researchers on the UMB campus may find useful:

F1000Research is an Open Science publishing platform for life scientists, offering immediate publication and transparent refereeing. Peer review is as formal as that of a traditional journal, but the reviewer names, affiliations, and comments are published with the article.

Genomics Data is an open access journal that considers articles on all aspects of genome-scale analysis.

GigaScience publishes datasets from life and biomedical sciences research. The journal links standard manuscript publication with a database that hosts all associated data and provides data analysis tools and cloud-computing resources.

The Journal of Open Psychology Data features peer-reviewed papers describing psychology datasets with high reuse potential. Data papers may describe data from unpublished work, including replication research, or from papers published previously in a traditional journal. The data and papers are citable, and reuse is tracked.

Open Health Data features peer-reviewed data papers describing health datasets with high reuse potential. The publishers are working with specialist and institutional data repositories to ensure that the associated data are professionally archived, preserved, and openly available. Open Health Data also encourages the deposition of grey literature, such as research study protocols, data management plans, consent forms, participant guidance documents, and white paper reports.

Scientific Data, a Nature publication, is an open-access, peer-reviewed publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets. The journal’s primary article type, the Data Descriptor, is designed to make data discoverable, interpretable, and reusable.

For additional information on sharing and managing data, take a look at HSHSL’s Data Management Best Practices Guide.

A recent article in JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association recommends that researchers and clinicians collaborate with a medical librarian when writing review articles. Engaging Medical Librarians to Improve the Quality of Review Articles was co-authored by a librarian and physicians and discusses the importance of utilizing librarian expertise when writing review articles. The article describes several ways that librarians can aid in this process, such as refining a research question, developing search strategies, using controlled vocabulary, selecting appropriate databases, and using software tools to organize and manage content.

Faculty librarians at the HS/HSL can help you conduct a literature search, develop the methodology for a systematic review, or utilize software to manage your content. We provide a variety of options to maximize your research success through our Research Connection program.

The JAMA article concludes that medical librarians play a critical role in producing thorough and unbiased review articles and systematic reviews. The faculty librarians at the HS/HSL are here to help.

The HS/HSL strategic planning team has spent most of the past year building our strategic planning knowledge base through strategic listening, food events, surveys, and follow-up conversations with anyone who will talk to us. We’ve accumulated quite a bit of data. Soon it will be information. Then, knowledge. And finally, a new strategic plan! There’s some work to do to get to that point.

Some quick things that we have learned:

From the students: They really want 24 hour library access and love our space. So much so, they wouldn’t mind if we provided blankets!

From the faculty: For the faculty, it’s all about the resources and the expertise we provide to help them with systematic reviews, impact analyses, and research and grant proposals.

From the staff: Here is where we found the greatest need. We discovered that staff don’t know all the things the library team can do to help them personally or in support of their work. Clearly, we have some opportunities.

Overall, we have found a great appreciation of the Library as a neutral, cultural space for exhibits and programs where all are welcome.

Thanks so much to everyone who contributed ideas or suggestions. We truly appreciate it!

In May 2015 we will conclude the two-year celebration of the establishment of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, and we are going out on top! After two years of top-notch symposia, workshops, parties, and exhibits.

Save the date! On April 15th mark your calendar for our final symposium – “What’s Next…?” – where we will examine health and well-being from individual, institutional, and societal perspectives. We’re putting together some great national and local panels to probe into where we are going and how our world will look in another 10 years. Stay tuned. So get your taxes done early, and plan on coming.

Our final exhibit is a brand new one from the National Library of Medicine entitled, “Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Disease.” This exhibit has been at the National Library of Medicine at NIH for a number of years. It is finally going on the road, and the HS/HSL will be one of the first libraries to host it. Whet your appetite for the exhibit by visiting the NLM site.

And if you haven’t done it already, take the elevator to the fifth floor of the HS/HSL and turn left to see a wall-mounted exhibit highlighting the library’s history.

On October 14th the HS/HSL hosted a student break to celebrate National Medical Libraries Month. We rolled out the popcorn machine and hot pretzels and waited for UMB students to show up. We were delighted with the number of UMB students who came to chat with us and share some savory snacks.

Since its release in early September the HS/HSL’s Project SHARE Curriculum has had over 2500 page views and 100 downloads of the entire curriculum. Developed as the result of a three-year Health Information Resource Grant to Reduce Health Disparities (G08LM0011079) from the National Library of Medicine the curriculum empowers high school students as community health advocates, and promotes improved health in communities.

Consisting of six modules – Overview of Health Disparities; Quality Health Information; Taking Charge of Your Health; Smart Food Choices; Crafting and Delivering the Message; Promoting Health and Wellness in Your Community – each module has downloadable lesson plans, assignments, handouts, experiential learning activities and is aligned with national education standards.

Build a community around student health advocacy by letting us know how you are using the curriculum. Your feedback will help us to improve the curriculum and make it more useful. And your shared experiences could inspire others who are developing student health advocacy programs of their own.

A biohackerspace is a community laboratory that is open to the public. A biohackerspace is a biotechnological version of hackerspace where the public is encouraged to come learn about biotechnology and experiment with DNA, bacteria, and cells. Like makerspaces, biohackerspaces provide people with tools not usually available at home. Biohackerspaces, however, contain tools such as microscopes, Petri dishes, freezers, and PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) machines rather than 3D printers, CNC milling machines, and laser cutters. Biohackers tinker with bacteria, cells, and DNA rather than computer code, electronics, plastic, and other materials for DYI-manufacturing. Genspace in Brooklyn, founded by molecular biologist Ellen Jorgenson in 2010, was the first biohackerspace in the United States. Since then, more biohackerspaces have opened, such as BUGSS (Baltimore Underground Science Space) in Baltimore, BioLogik Labs in Norfolk, BioCurious in Sunnyvale, Berkeley BioLabs in Berkeley, Biotech and Beyond in San Diego, and BioHive in Seattle.

According to Meredith Patterson, a notable biohacker who advocates citizen science, scientific literacy is not understanding science but doing science. In her 2010 talk at the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics’ symposium, “Outlaw Biology? Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio,” Patterson argued, “scientific literacy empowers everyone who possesses it to be active contributors to their own health care; the quality of their food, water, and air; their very interactions with their own bodies and the complex world around them.”

Biohackerspaces democratize access to biotechnology equipment and space, and enable users to share their findings. In this regard, biohakerspaces are comparable to the open-source movement in computer programming. Both allow people to solve the problems that matter to them. Rather than pursing scientific breakthroughs, Biohackers and the advocates of the DIYbio movement are looking for solutions to small but important problems. Large institutions, such as big pharmaceutical companies, may not pursue solutions to such problems unless they are sufficiently profitable. For example, China experienced a major food safety incident in 2008 involving melamine-contaminated milk and infant formula. Testing milk for the presence of melamine in a lab costs thousands of dollars. After reading about the incident, Patterson created an alternative test, which costs only a dollar and can be done in a home kitchen. To solve the problem, she spliced a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish gene into the bacteria that turns milk into yogurt and then added a biochemical sensor that detects melamine. If the milk turns green when combined with this mixture, it contains melamine.

Biohackers pursue a variety of projects ranging from making bacteria that glows in the dark by injecting a luminescent gene to identifying neighbors who fail to clean up after their dogs by comparing DNA from dog excrement with that of saliva samples taken from the neighbors’ dogs. You can also test if the food item that you bought at a supermarket is what it is advertised to be; work on creating bacteria that will decompose plastic; check if a certain risky gene is present in your body. If you are an investigational journalist, you may use your biohacking skills to verify certain evidence. If you’re a citizen concerned about the environment, you can check the pollution level of your city or neighborhood and find out if particular pollutants exceed legal limits.

DIYbio enthusiasts pursue most of these projects as a hobby. But some projects hold the potential to solve serious global problems. For example, Biopunk, a book by Marcus Wohlsen (p. 56) describes a DIYbio approach to develop an affordable handheld thermal cycler that rapidly replicates DNA as an inexpensive diagnostics for the developing world. Used in conjunction with a DNA-reading chip and a few vials containing primers for a variety of disease, this device called ‘LavaAmp’ can quickly identify diseases that break out in remote rural areas.

The DIYbio movement recognized the potential risk in biohacking early on and created codes of conduct in 2011. The Ask a Biosafety Expert (ABE) service at DIY.org provides free biosafety advice from a panel of volunteer experts, along with many biosafety resources. Some biohackerspaces have an advisory board of professional scientists who review the projects that will take place at their spaces. Most biohackerspaces meet the Biosafety Level 1 criteria set out by the CDC.

While the DIYbio movement and biohackerspaces are still in the early stage of development, they hold great potential to drive future innovation in biotechnology and life sciences. The DIYbio movement and biohackerspaces try to transform ordinary people into citizen scientists, empower them to come up with solutions to everyday problems, and encourage them to share those solutions with one another. Not long ago, we had mainframe computers that were only accessible to a small number of professional computer scientists locked up at academic or corporate labs. Now personal computers are ubiquitous, and many professional and amateur programmers know how to write code to make a personal computer do the things they would like it to do. Until recently, manufacturing was only possible on a large scale through factories. Many makerspaces that started in recent years, however, have made it possible for the public to create a model on a computer and 3D print a physical object based on that model at a much lower cost and on a much smaller scale. It remains to be seen if the DIYbio movement and biohackerspaces will bring similar change to biotechnology.

Alex Mayo, MLS, AHIP, received the 2014 Award for Professional Excellence by a Health Sciences Librarian at the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association’s (MAC-MLA) annual meeting. This award is presented to a MAC member for outstanding contributions in health sciences librarianship.

Andrew Youngkin, MLS, AHIP, Sheila Snow-Croft, MA, MLIS, and Tony Nguyen, MLIS, AHIP won first place for their poster “Social Media Communication: An Evaluation of its Impact and Value in Promotion and Public Awareness” at the Southern Chapter of the Medical Library Association’s (SC-MLA) annual meeting.

Presentations & Publications

Alexa Mayo, and MJ Tooey, MLS, AHIP, FMLA presented “Advancing the Success of the Research Enterprise: Introducing Research Connection” at MAC-MLA’s conference in Alexandria, VA and at the SC-MLA’s conference in Mobile, AL.

MJ Tooey published “The Impact of Institutional Ethics on Academic Health Sciences Library Leadership: a Survey of Academic Health Sciences Library Directors,” in the Journal of the Medical Library Association.

C. Andrew Youngkin, MLIS, AHIP, National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) Southeast/Atlantic Region, HS/HSL, authored “The Flipped Classroom: Practices and Opportunities for Health Sciences Librarians” in Medical Reference Services Quarterly.

Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS was invited to present a talk, “Heuristic Evaluation in Reverse for UX Improvement”, at the Fall program of ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Maryland Chapter and MILEX (Maryland Information Literacy Exchange) in Baltimore, MD.

Posters

Multiple HS/HSL and RML representatives presented posters at MAC-MLA: M.J. Tooey, Alexa Mayo, Everly Brown, MLIS, Andrea Shipper, MSLIS, Gail Betz, MLIS, Kimberly Yang, JD, MLS, Mary Ann Williams, MSLS, Andrew Youngkin, Sheila Snow-Croft, and Tony Nguyen.