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

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

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

We look forward to hearing what you have to say.

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

Let us know what you think about the new website!

Send us an email, or text message 410.695.6362.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions may be directed to Katherine Downton or Ryan Harris.

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

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

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

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

UMB Foundation
620 West Lexington Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Or

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

We thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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