Effective Thursday, January 22nd, all UMB students will receive interlibrary loan and document delivery requests electronically and free of charge. Interlibrary loans are items borrowed from other libraries while document delivery refers to items that are held in the HS/HSL collection. Be advised that, due to the increase in the number of requests we’ll be processing, it may be faster for students on campus to photocopy items from HS/HSL holdings themselves.

Students will continue to be registered in our ILLiad request management system and will make their requests in the same way, via ILLiad. For more about registering and using ILLiad, please visit the ILLiad Information page of our web site.

We are excited to offer free services to UMB students and ask for your patience as we navigate this new territory. The turnaround time for document delivery requests may be longer depending on the number of requests we receive. Also, libraries we borrow from on your behalf will send PDF articles directly to you to expedite the process, so you may find a lack of uniformity in some aspects of your documents. Overall, we expect the changes to be very positive, and we look forward to serving you in 2009. Be sure to contact the Resource Sharing department with any questions or concerns: 410.706.3239 or rs@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

SciFinder is now available on the web! Unlike earlier versions of SciFinder, which required users to install the SciFinder Scholar client, the new web version requires no installation and can be accessed from any computer with a compatible browser.

To begin using the web version, you must complete a one-time registration form and include your “umaryland.edu” email address. If you are a previous user of the SciFinder client, you will also need to uninstall the client to allow for better access to the web version. The client will cease to function after March 20, 2009, when the Library switches to the web-based version of SciFinder. If you would like to register and begin using the new version now, please visit the SciFinder page of our web site.

The new features of SciFinder include:

• Up to 10 previous searching history are available for download.
• Index terms are linked for faster exploring
• Files are available in PDF format for saving
• “Keep Me Posted” lets you set up alerts for references of interest.
• Direct links to data make it easier to share information.

Need Help?

For more information about or assistance with SciFinder, please contact the liaison to the School of Pharmacy, Yunting Fu, at 410.706.8865 or yfu@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

In January the HS/HSL administrative team meets for a midyear strategic plan review. We look at our priorities, progress, and challenges for the fiscal year. The economic climate for the January meeting will be markedly different than it was during the initial planning held last June. We approach every year with optimism in spite of our perennially bad budget situation. We acknowledge the reality of the situation and move on. We’re used to financial hardship. We make progress in areas where we can make a difference – our programs and services. Innovation and responsiveness are the hallmarks of our success.

Along with everyone else at UMB, our open positions are frozen and we won’t be filling them. The furlough policy affects us as well. There is a temptation to think of this as “down time” and an opportunity to “tread water” until things gets better. While the HS/HSL does need to survive, we also believe we can thrive. In the upcoming year we will expand our collaborative spaces in support of teaching and learning; we will investigate pilot projects for a repository and digital historical archive; we will explore discovery tools to help users find resources and information effectively and efficiently; and we will seize grant and outreach opportunities whenever possible. Survival mode is not good enough. We need to cast our vision beyond the recession and build a foundation for our future success.

Happy New Year to all!

Original Suggestions:

1) There is no “sign in” bar on the home page, please add one. This will definitely improve the efficiency of the website when searching/borrowing/reviewing/renewing books…

2) Having a link to sign in on the main page would make the site so much more user friendly to staff. I help about 15 physicians here in the Medical School. We seem to all have a book or two out at a time and in order to renew loans you must first log into your account. It is not obvious to most that they must first click on Library Catalog before they can go to the sign in link.

Response:

Thank you for sending in your comments concerning the Library Catalog’s My Account. We have added a new link on the Library’s homepage in the Services menu called My Account (Renew Books). This account can be used to renew books and check due dates. We appreciate your taking the time to let us know how we can make improvements to our website.

Thank you again for your feedback.

Although the Library has long offered literature search services to faculty and staff, we are now enhancing that service with the option to have your search results delivered via RefWorks. RefWorks is a web-based personal citation manager. Thanks to support from all of the schools on campus, it is available free to UMB students, faculty and staff. Receiving search results in RefWorks will make it much easier for you to sort and organize citations and to locate full-text.

Here’s how it works. Once a literature search has been completed, it can be exported to a RefWorks folder and shared using RefShare. You will not need a RefWorks account to view the article citations and, with this new delivery method, you can access full-text articles that the Library subscribes to via the Find It buttons. Literature searches are provided to UMB faculty and staff for a small fee. You may also have your results delivered by email or in print.

Request a Literature Search

The Library is very close to achieving its goal of 100% of all current journal subscriptions being available online.

As of this month, UMB has online access to every Sage journal currently available through the Sage Premium package. In total, students, faculty, and staff have online access to 435 NEW titles.

Working with the publisher over the summer, we were able to make this collection available by substituting the electronic journals for our print subscriptions to the titles. A few of the new Sage online only titles include:

• Pathology
• Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology
• Journal of Oncology Pharmacy Practice
• Journal of Transcultural Nursing

If you wish to recommend a book or journal or digital resource for purchase, please use our Recommendation Form.

During the 2009 Spring Semester, the Library is offering a series of free workshops on a variety of topics to all faculty, staff, and students. Workshops are offered most Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Please visit the Spring 2009 Workshop Schedule on our web site for workshop descriptions and dates, and to register.

From February 24th to 26th, we will feature Evidence-Based Practice Week with a series of workshops that review the principles of evidence-based health care and social work and offer strategies for finding the best clinical and practice evidence. We will cover primary and secondary sources, including the Cochrane Systematic Reviews, Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL, Campbell Collaboration, Trip Database, and other best evidence databases.

The Library will also be offering several workshops “On Demand.” These workshops, while not part of our regular schedule, are available for you to request as a one-on-one consultation or a group session. Workshops “On Demand” include Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL, Science Citation Index, Staying Current with the Literature, and Introduction to Library Resources.

For the second consecutive year, the Library collected non-perishable food items as part of its Food for Fines program. This year more than 500 pounds of non-perishable food items were collected for the Maryland Food Bank between December 1st and December 19th. For each food item donated, the Library waived $1 in overdue fines. In all, $698 in fines were forgiven. The program was a terrific success with well over 700 food items being donated to needy Maryland families.

In addition, the staff of the Library made a separate monetary contribution of $312 to the Maryland Food Bank. This money was raised through the annual library staff holiday raffle. According to the Maryland Food Bank, every $1 that is contributed allows them to provide 3 meals – so, the staff donation translates to an additional 936 meals that the Maryland Food Bank can provide. HS/HSL staff donated additional canned goods that were incorporated with the Food for Fines donation.

Congratulations to Erika!

To thank our users for participating in a library usage survey, the HS/HSL is awarding an iPod Shuffle on a quarterly basis to four randomly selected participants. The winner of our first drawing is Erika Ruddie, a second year PharmD student who also teaches an aerobics class at the Athletic Center. Erika plans to give her new iPod Shuffle a workout by loading it with high-energy music for her class.

The library usage survey is conducted twice a month, now through September 2009, during random two-hour periods. We appreciate the valuable input of everyone who completed questionnaires during past survey periods. If you enter the library while a survey is in session, remember—it only takes a few minutes to complete the questionnaire, and your participation will earn you a chance to win one of three remaining iPod shuffles!

HS/HSL’s Finals Week Events for the Fall 2008 semester was a huge success! Around 600 students dropped in to participate over the two-week period. Some students came solely for the caffeine; others came for a real break in their studies. We offered a variety of games to play, with Wii and Jenga being the most popular.

Many thanks to the USGA for providing the funds for coffee and snacks and to the Student Center for promoting our events; we couldn’t have done it without you.