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.