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.