Join us on April 10, 2008!

Explore social networking technologies in collaboration, teaching, and learning at the Library-hosted Social Networking Symposium.

Breakfast will be served at 8:30 a.m. and will be followed with a keynote address in the School of Nursing auditorium. Keynote speaker, Andy Carvin, National Public Radio’s senior product manager for online communities will present. Mr. Carvin hosts a PBS blog, learning.now, serves as a field correspondent for the vlog, Rocketboom, and has a personal blog, Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth.

After Mr. Carvin’s address, join us for presentations on how social networking technologies are employed in an academic and clinical environment by an esteemed panel that includes Dr. Jean Jeudy, Assistant Professor, Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, School of Medicine, UMB, Melanie Moran, Assistant Director for Web Communications, Department of Public Affairs, Vanderbilt University, and Greg Walsh, Senior Instructional Technologist at Black & Decker, e-Learning Consultant, and UMBC Adjunct Professor.

The afternoon will begin with a Brownbag Lunch Discussion entitled Privacy in a Web 2.0 World, presented by Raylene Thompson, Center for Information and Technology, the Catholic University of America, and will continue with presentations and hands-on sessions of social networking technologies. Throughout the day, exhibitors will be demonstrating their products in the Library’s Weise Gallery and presenting more in-depth resource introductions in the Library’s Family Room. A reception in the Gladhill Boardroom will wrap up proceedings.

Please mark your calendars and plan to join us!

Visit the official Are You Connect.ed? website for complete details and updates. For more information, contact Alexa Mayo.

The last few months have been heady ones for the open access movement. First, the NIH Public Access Policy was signed into law. Second, the European Research Council Scientific Council issued its statement on open access. And finally, in mid-February, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University voted "to give the University a worldwide license to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit." These articles will be deposited in a repository maintained by Harvard and will be freely accessible through search engines such as Google.

Harvard’s bold move has caused quite a stir in the publishing, scholarly communications, and library communities because, well, Harvard is Harvard. When an elite research university and its faculty actively support a major open access initiative and opts to control its own scholarly capital, the initiative obviously has traction and momentum.

What does this mean for the HS/HSL and UMB? Right now, we are actively observing Harvard’s project. There are still many questions about just how this will work. (For a taste of the issues, see blog comments in the Chronicle of Higher Education and The Scientist.com.) We currently support open access through workshops on public access and copyright, the generation of a UMB copyright addendum to publisher agreements, our scholarly communication web page, and our partnership with the Office of Research and Development in support of the NIH Public Access Policy.

Long term, the open access conversation needs to take place at the highest levels of UMB. From a practical standpoint, the development of a UMB repository requires a philosophical and financial commitment. Librarians are uniquely positioned to develop repositories because of their training and skill in building scholarly databases and using sophisticated metadata tools, as well as their understanding of the scholarly publishing process. However, these projects require funding and staffing. Perhaps philosophical support is actually the bigger issue as universities, including UMB, examine what scholarly publication means, especially in an academic community dependent on promotion and tenure. In addition, this is not the type of project that can be started and stopped – support must be ongoing and enduring. These conversations need to happen sooner rather than later, and the Library staff would be delighted to be part of them.

As of April 7, 2008, all peer-reviewed articles arising from NIH funds are required to be submitted to PubMed Central no later than 12 months after date of publication. The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH-funded research. It requires investigators to submit journal articles from NIH-funded research efforts to the digital archive PubMed Central.

When submitting articles for publication, authors of articles that arise from NIH funding must inform the journal that the article is subject to the policy. They must also be sure that the publication agreement allows the article to be submitted in accordance with the policy. Selected journals submit articles directly to PubMed Central. See http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm for a list of these journals. For other journals, authors will need to negotiate their copyrights to allow submission.

The Library’s Scholarly Communication web page has information to support the policy including publication transfer agreements. Workshops on the article submission process to PubMed Central are offered through the library.

For more information, see the NIH’s Public Access FAQ or Ask Us!

Get to know Library resources on Tuesdays from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. and Wednesdays from 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. through the end of April. We are once again awarding prizes to workshop attendees this semester. To be eligible for these prizes simply attend a workshop and fill out an entry form.

Prizes include:

• Library Coffee Mug ($4 value plus discounted refills at the Tower Cafe)
• Library Print/Copy Card with a $10.00 value
• 1 GB USB Drive ($15 value)
• Grand Prize – Reserved Study Room During Finals Week! Get your own quiet study space. HS/HSL will supply the room as well as coffee and bagels to help you get through your finals. Coffee & Bagels ($25 value) — Room to Study (priceless)

Upcoming workshops include:

• NIH Public Access Mandate: Submitting to PubMed Central, Monday, March 24th
• Psychosocial Instruments, Tuesday, March 25th
• RefWorks, Wednesday, April 1st
• Locating the Evidence, Wednesday, April 2nd
• Finding Drug Information, Tuesday, April 8th
• PubMed Advanced, Wednesday, April 9th
• SciFinder Scholar, April 15th

Register now!

Now Library "friends" can become fans! Chat with reference staff to get live research help, search for our books and journals using WorldCat, search PubMed without opening a new browser, receive invitations to Library events, stay updated with newsfeeds about the latest workshops and happenings, view photos of renovations, and more.

Being a fan is another way to keep track of the Library home page. If you happen to forget our web address and lack access to your bookmarks, you can still easily access the Library from your Facebook account. In addition, you’ll get updates about Library programs in your profile and have the opportunity to share in discussions about enhancing your library experience.

Become a fan of the HS/HSL!

Please join us in welcoming our new Cataloging Librarian, María Fernández, to the HS/HSL.

María has a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. She has held positions as a high school librarian, a public library director, and an academic librarian at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, where she served as Cataloging Librarian, Reference Librarian, and a Library Instructor.

We are confident that María’s varied experience will be an asset as the Library explores the future of the library catalog.

We are pleased to announce that users now have the option to print on both sides of the paper, thanks to the addition of a duplex printer. Print jobs can be sent from computers on any floor in the library building, cost 10 cents per side, and can be picked up in the first floor copier room. Don’t forget, the Library also has a color printer, scanners, and software for creating PDFs from scanned materials.

We are in the final stages of developing a suite of databases with full-text online journals for alumni and associates (volunteer and clinical faculty) that we call Resources Plus!. We are releasing it for testing purposes and are inviting alumni and associates to use Resources Plus! and serve as beta testers.

Here is a link to registration forms to beta test Resources Plus!: http://www.hshsl.umaryland.edu/alumni/beta.html

Membership is free during beta testing, which runs through June 2008. During that period we will ask our beta testers to give us feedback on Resources Plus! so that we may make improvements to it. After this initial testing period, Resources Plus! will be available to UMB alumni and associates for an annual membership fee. Beta tester participants will receive a discount.

If you have any questions about Resources Plus!, please contact Alexa Mayo.

This past year the Library has been providing access to two anatomy databases – Primal Pictures and NetAnatomy – in a pilot project designed to give UMB students and faculty the opportunity to explore these new tools for teaching and learning. We are now in the process of evaluating usage and collecting feedback from interested parties. Once the information is collected, we will pass it on to UMB Departments so they can decide if they would like to fund continued access.

Primal Pictures is a dynamic interactive multi-media overview of human anatomy, featuring 3-D animations showing function, biomechanics, and surgical procedures. NetAnatomy is a web site designed to teach human anatomy to students of the health professions including undergraduate medical, health sciences, and nursing students.

If these resources are important to you, we would like to hear about how they impact your teaching and learning. Please send your comments and suggestions to Eric Rector, Head, Collections Management.

In January 2007, the HS/HSL and the Social Work Community Outreach Services (SWCOS) formed a partnership to spread the word about consumer health information and health resources to members of the greater Baltimore community. We received an award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine to train professionals and members of the general public to use MedlinePlus and Maryland Health → Go Local.

During 2007, the partnership trained almost 1,000 individuals to use these valuable resources. Approximately half of those trained were health or social services professionals, and the other half were members of the general public. The training took place at large events, like the African-American and Native American Heritage Festivals, and at smaller, community functions like the Washington Village Pigtown Center meeting. Members of the partnership worked with groups of elderly citizens, Schweitzer Fellows, and parents of elementary school students; they trained members of the Baltimore County Health Department and the Peoples’ Community Health Center. By all accounts, the training was a success. Attendees were enthusiastic about Maryland Health → Go Local and MedlinePlus. Many said they would recommend the class to a friend.

While the project ended in December 2007, the Library continues to seek campus partnerships that will allow us to increase awareness of the excellent health information resources available to the Baltimore community and the state of Maryland.

For more information, please contact Paula Raimondo, Head, Liaison & Outreach Services.

In honor of Dr. John Crawford, founder of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, and in celebration of Irish American history, the Library is highlighting aspects of his life on our digital display in March.

Dr. Crawford was born in northern Ireland on May 3, 1746. As the son of a clergyman, his upbringing infused him with a refined sense of conduct and a respect for all creation. These principles were essential in framing his outlook on life and helped energize his professional practice.

At the age of seventeen, Crawford began his formal education at Trinity College in Dublin. This experience nurtured his desire to study medicine. Later, as ship’s surgeon aboard the East India Company’s Marquis of Rockingham, he was afforded many opportunities to observe the local flora and fauna, which inspired his radical opinions about parasitic microorganisms or "animalculae" as the root cause of diseases. At the time his ideas were dismissed by his contemporaries, most of whom supported the theory that disease resulted from the atmospheric vapors of decomposing effluvial matter.

As a faculty member in our School of Medicine, he published A Lecture, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on the Cause, Seat and Cure of Diseases. Unfortunately, his beliefs would not receive their proper acceptance until many decades after his death on May 9, 1813. As an avid book collector, Crawford owned a private library of over 600 volumes.

Following his death, colleagues on the faculty purchased his library from his family’s estate and established the University of Maryland Library. Dr. Crawford is buried in the Westminster Hall cemetery, but his legacy lives on through his original book collection and the Library it founded.

For more information, see Dr. John Crawford’s Biography on the Library’s website.