On April 10th the HS/HSL hosted the symposium Are You Connect.ed? Social Networking Tools for Collaborating, Teaching & Learning. Our simple goal was to introduce attendees to social networking technologies and the possibilities for use in our various communities. By all accounts it was an incredibly successful day, with literally hundreds of people attending presentations, classes, vendor sessions and playing in a technology sandbox.

Andy Carvin, our keynote speaker and NPR’s senior strategist for social media and senior product manager for online communities, commented that we shouldn’t get caught up in labels and terms like social networking or Web 2.0. The "web" is the "web" – it doesn’t have versions. And he prefers "social media" to the term "social networking," as it allows us to think more inclusively about this wide variety of social tools. I think he is right. We use terms to compartmentalize and organize ideas, but this can be a narrow way of thinking and may even slow us down. Users of social media need to evolve – to become people who go with the flow – and I have vowed to erase these terms from my vocabulary!

Other things I learned:

• Focus on what you want to accomplish. Don’t just use social media because you can. Use it because it enhances and supports your goals.
• Experiment. We won’t always get things right the first time, and we will have to modify and occasionally admit that things aren’t working as well as we hoped. Failure is an option and taking risks is important.
• Go where our users are. For a good while to come, we will need to exist in communities that are in multiple places with multiple needs and multiple learning styles. We need to meet our community wherever we can.

Over the course of the next few days and weeks we will be linking the presentations, making the social networking sandbox available, posting podcasts, and meeting with colleagues to build some next-step partnerships. As libraries evolve to more closely meet the needs of our communities, some of these social media tools may be just what we need. We look forward to this evolution.

Social media enables students and patients to become educators and influence policy, and educators and clinicians must learn to facilitate their contributions by becoming an active presence in online communities. This was the underlying theme of the HS/HSL’s "Are You Connect.ed?" symposium on April 10th.

The keynote address was given by Andy Carvin, NPR’s senior strategist for social media and senior product manager for online communities. In it, he discussed how today’s educators might harness social media for teaching and learning, much as they had past technologies. A podcast of his address is available online.

During the morning session, a panel of experts presented these issues. In addressing teaching and learning, Greg Walsh reviewed how instructors could work together in an online community of practice and could teach through gaming and student-generated content.

Dr. Jean Jeudy focused on the clinical setting, emphasizing that online tools create a synergy by bringing together community and knowledge with patients and clinicians. Dr. Jeudy pointed out that social media can help alleviate patients’ fears by enabling them to work with teams of specialists and to find support groups using the "wisdom of the crowd."

Additionally, social media allows clinicians to learn in virtual hospitals and to participate in peer review by community in order to advance scholarly communication, thus lessening the information lag caused by distance or the traditional scholarly communications model.

Melanie Moran, the final speaker of the morning, discussed how students are already using social networking to tell their stories through short videos posted to YouTube, and urged the audience to harness social media as a way to communicate information about their institutions or organizations to their user communities.

Symposium attendees appreciated how they could apply these technologies in their work. Vinay Vaidya, MD found the day’s sessions both "practical and useful" and deemed iTunes U and YouTube in particular to be "rapid, low cost solutions" for using IT in education and clinical environments.

If you missed the event, you can access podcasts, presentations, and the social networking sandbox on the Are You Connect.ed? site. To hear what others are saying about the day, see Clarence Lam’s excellent article in Campus Connections. Photos of the day are also available on the HS/HSL’s Flickr page.

We hope you will be pleased to learn that the HS/HSL has recently created a presence on each of these social networking sites. You can find information about new events on our Facebook page, view pictures of Library events, construction, and the like at our Flickr site and check out our videos at You Tube (in the works).

The HS/HSL is excited about these new avenues to connect to you, our users. Feel free to virtually drop by, become a fan on Facebook, or comment on what we post.

We’re here for you!

As of March 4, 2008, the HS/HSL ceased its membership with the open access journal publisher BioMed Central. The change in our membership status does not affect our access to BMC journals.

As structured, the membership required the Library to fully subsidize UMB affiliate and faculty publications. That model proved unsustainable given the Library’s funding levels. Additionally, the BioMed Central membership was unique in our Library, in that it was the only instance where the Library funded faculty publications. Besides being cost-prohibitive, we believe it is more appropriate for that funding to come from grants or departmental research budgets.

UMB faculty and researchers may want to investigate writing publication costs into their grants. In particular, the NIH is encouraging researchers to include publication costs in grant applications to help defray the additional labor required by the NIH Public Access mandate. Another option may be to work with your department to establish funding streams that help offset article publication costs.

Any articles submitted to BioMed Central before March 4, 2008, will be subsidized if published.

As always, the HS/HSL’s goal is to support our researchers by purchasing or licensing the best and most appropriate resources. For more information, or to offer comments or suggestions, please contact Eric Rector, Head, Collections Management via email, or at 410.706.1345.

HS/HSL librarians are reviewing a resource that could help students and clinicians prepare for USMLE steps 1-3, board certifications, and other professional exams. It’s called Exam Master, and we encourage you to take a peek, too.

Exam Master content includes practice tests and review materials for USMLE, PANCE, NAPLEX, and NBDE, as well as certification reviews and medical subject reviews in anatomy, biochemistry, cytology and histology, medical microbiology, pathology, physiology, and psychiatry.

Trial users need to create a login, and should contact the vendor’s helpdesk with problems or questions. The trial is available through May 31, 2008.

While it’s doubtful we’ll be adding Exam Master to the Library’s resources this year, we are interested in your assessment of it as a potential future offering. Please send your comments and suggestions through the Library’s resource request form.

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), a network of health related libraries and organizations across the U.S., has developed a national preparedness plan to ensure the continuity of health information services anywhere in the country should an emergency or disaster occur. The plan encourages Network libraries to develop a comprehensive emergency plan that covers service provision and resource recovery. It also establishes procedures for communication with back-up partners and the regional Network office before, during and after a disaster.

To assist Network libraries, the planning team developed the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness and Response Toolkit, which contains links to disaster plan templates, recovery companies and more.

The regional Network office for the Southeastern/Atlantic Region (SE/A), housed at the HS/HSL, has developed a standing advisory committee comprised of a member from each state in the region. The SE/A staff have also developed a web resource of regional and local emergency resources. Future plans include training Network members on developing continuity of service plans and assisting with the establishment of back-up library relationships.

By preparing for potential disasters, Network libraries will help to mitigate the impact of disasters on the health care team by ensuring access to needed health information. For more information about the NN/LM plan, contact Janice E Kelly, Executive Director, National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern/Atlantic Region.

Original Question:

I find it hard to believe the limited electronic resources available. Every article I have requested through free of charge ILL has been denied. The articles were all after the year 1990, so not something too obscure. At my past University, this was never a problem and articles requested did not cost anything to be obtained. The $8 fee seems a bit high…

As I work on my PhD, these limited resources are hindering my completion. I am extremely disappointed in this aspect of the University of Maryland. I would think Interlibrary loan articles should be covered under student fees.

Response:

Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns. We value the input we receive directly from the community we serve and take it to heart. Our goal is to be an asset – not a hindrance – to our students as they pursue their education.

In reviewing your specific interlibrary loan requests, the reason for those cancellations was that the journal titles requested were not held in the USMAI system of 16 libraries across our 14 campuses. If they were, they would be provided free of charge as part of our consortial agreement. When we receive a request with the billing option, "Obtain at No Charge," we search USMAI holdings only and cancel the request if the article cannot be obtained through the consortium. When we borrow outside of the USMAI libraries, we will pay up to $20 per request so the $8.00 fee we charge for that service is actually subsidized.

You are correct that many universities are funded at a level which enables them to provide interlibrary loan service at no charge across the board. We aspire to be among them one day. Currently, the portion of instructional resource fees that the library receives covers only a fraction of our expenses. Thus, it is necessary for the HS/HSL to charge fees for certain services.

Thank you for your valued input and the chance to answer these important questions.

Each semester the Library offers a series of workshops covering a wide range of topics. Registration is free to all UMB students, faculty and staff. While the semester is coming to an end, the Library is still offering many exciting workshops, including:

African American Community Health April 29, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

African Americans see diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease affecting their friends and families every day. Free online resources from the National Library of Medicine and other reliable sources are available to help. This two hour class will provide participants with some basic health information as well as information specific to the African American community.

The Library will also be offering summer workshops this year, so be on the lookout for our summer workshop schedule.

As the Library continues its move towards providing online access to all the journals needed by our students, faculty and staff, we are also investigating which journals, if any, we should receive in print to support researchers and clinicians in the event of an emergency.

Over the next month department heads will be contacted with more information about the “Core Print” project, and will be asked to pass some information onto their faculty, including a brief survey designed to collect input about those titles necessary to receive in print as well as electronic form.

Over the summer, the Library will review the data collected and will follow-up with researchers to assure a good understanding of their needs for hardcopy journals. During this time, we will also be investigating how to continue providing access to electronic content in emergency situations.

For more information, or to offer comments or suggestions, please contact Eric Rector, Head, Collections Management via email, or at 410.706.1345.

Has the HS/HSL positively influenced your health? Has this or another library provided resources that helped you learn more about an illness or provided information that improved your emotional, mental, or physical well-being? If so, consider telling your story in a contest sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and Woman’s Day magazine.

Sorry guys, but this contest is restricted to women residing in the United States. Up to four women will have their essays of 700 words or less featured in an issue of Woman’s Day. For more information, see the official rules. Entries can be emailed to womansday@ala.org between February 12 and May 11, 2008.