Is there anything more depressing than darkness at 5:00 in the afternoon? Short cold days. Coats, scarves, mittens, boots. Hot cocoa. Yummy soups. Cookies. And of course, a warm welcome in the HS/HSL! As with almost everything in life, where there is a downside there is also an upside. And so it goes at the HS/HSL.

Again, this year there was a budget shortfall for our journal collection. This year the deficit was around $300,000. While Academic Affairs and the HS/HSL were able to come up with $150,000, we still had to cut hundreds of journals. You can read more about it later in this issue; however, this ongoing erosion of our journal collection does not bode well for research and education at UMB.

On the positive side, we have had such a fun fall semester. Our new first floor layout is a hit and our gate count is through the roof! A remodel of the second floor will take place this spring. The 1807 Exhibit was outstanding. We had a very successful “I  the HS/HSL” contest in October, with a very clever video as our winner – see the article later in the issue. We always get great ideas for the Library from the Library Genie. And our Future of Research event on November 20 was a great success. You can read all about it in this issue.

And so 2019 draws to a close. Looking back on the year, I think the positives have outweighed the negatives. I hope your year has been the same, with good things outweighing bad. May 2020 bring you happiness and success, however you measure it. Wishing you only the best!

We celebrated National Medical Librarians Month with a social media contest to award a $100 Visa gift card for the most creative entry.  We appreciate all of those who contributed to #iheartumbhshsl, but there could only be one winner, and that was School of Dentistry (SOD) student Greg Poku-Dankwah.  He submitted a snappy original song and dance video in homage to the Library.  We cannot stop singing it!  We asked Greg a few questions about his video.

What was your inspiration to make the video?  “The prize, of course, but I am in here almost every day. I love the library, I even have my own spot on the second floor.”

How long did it take you to make the video? “About 30 minutes.”

Did you have any help?  “Well, I procrastinated until the last day, none of my friends were around, so I had to ask random strangers. I disturbed a few people on the quiet floors, but a fellow SOD student was happy to help.”

Take a listen to our new theme song!

 

We also hosted a student snack break to cap off the month. Students enjoyed 150 soft pretzels with cheese or mustard, popcorn, and blazing hot apple cider.

We have exciting news to share about the Library’s second floor. Look for new carpet and paint on the north side of the second floor, new tables and chairs in the tower, large group tables and more banquettes in the open study area. All tables will have access to power. There will also be new carpet and different chairs in the second floor study rooms. Chairs are arriving in February!

In spring 2020, the PubMed.gov database will transform into a modern hub with a fast, reliable, and intuitive search that connects people to the world’s leading sources of biomedical information. The new interface will continue to provide the search features you rely on and integrate enhanced navigation and display tools, including a built-in citation button, the ability to share articles via social media, and a responsive mobile experience.

Once the new PubMed is the default, all links to PubMed will be redirected and run in the new system. This includes searches from the MeSH Database, the NLM Catalog, Clinical Queries, the Single Citation Matcher, and the Batch Citation Matcher. Following the launch, users will continue to have access to the old PubMed system for several months.

If you would like to test out the new PubMed in preparation for the spring 2020 launch, you can visit the PubMed Labs test site. The system is constantly being updated and improved, so your feedback and suggestions as you explore the site are greatly appreciated. To make sure you still see links to the full text of articles through the library’s subscriptions, you can install the LibKey Nomad browser extension. This browser extension for Chrome will display a PDF download button on any website where it can detect available journal articles, including journal websites and library databases.

While journal prices have increased on average 7 to 10 percent a year, the HS/HSL’s resources budget has remained essentially flat for the past decade. This means that every summer faculty librarians spend time evaluating the HS/HSL’s journal collection based on data (cost per use) and the need to ensure we provide a balanced collection addressing and supporting UMB’s mission. Each year we identify journal subscriptions that we will have to cut to keep our spending within budget. For the past few years, fortunately, we have received one-time funding that has allowed us to avoid cancellations.

This year, however, a budget shortfall makes it necessary to take apart one of our large journal packages. One way many libraries, including the HS/HSL, have extended their budgets is by participating in publishers’ offers of bundled packages or “big deals.” Under this model, libraries commit to maintaining their current subscriptions with a publisher. In exchange, for a relatively modest fee, the publisher will allow the library access to many more of its titles. The HS/HSL currently participates in big deals with Elsevier, Wiley, and Sage, giving the UMB community access to considerably more journals than single subscriptions would allow. However, steady increases in journal prices while the Library’s resources budget remains flat have made our continued participation in all of these deals unsustainable.

The Wiley package was identified as the least well-performing on a cost-per-use basis. Consequently, the package is being “unbundled,” as have the Springer and Taylor & Francis packages in the past. This means that Wiley titles were evaluated on a cost-per-use basis along with all of the other non-bundled titles. In order to keep within its budget, the HS/HSL is not renewing over 1,100 titles.

The cancellation of the Wiley package was a difficult decision to make. Without the favorable pricing that comes with participation in the publisher’s bundle, the UMB community will lose access to over 1,000 Wiley journals, including 376 that had 20 or more uses last year. But the HS/HSL must remain within its resources budget.

Access to the cancelled journals will be lost on January 1, 2020. Individual articles from any journal not subscribed to by the HS/HSL are available through Interlibrary Loan.

If the HS/HSL resources budget remains flat and journal costs continue to rise, we will unfortunately need to make more cancellation decisions next year.

On November 20, more than 90 people came to the SMC Campus Center to hear researchers and research funders look into their crystal balls and envision the research landscape over the next decade. Co-sponsored by the HS/HSL, the Welch Library at JHU, the Institutes for Clinical and Translational Research at both UMB and JHU, and Elsevier, The Future of Research event was based on a report and survey conducted by Elsevier with Ipsos Mori entitled “Research Futures: Drivers and Scenarios for the Next Decade”. An overview of the report by Adrian Mulligan of Elsevier set the stage for the day’s discussions.

Panels of experienced researchers, early career researchers, and funders explored the report’s findings and speculated on alternative scenarios. The audience got involved through real-time polling using actual questions from the survey. Their reactions, questions, and responses were lively and thought provoking. At the end of the day, an interactive session at about the perfect research world, barriers to achieving it, and support needed to propel researchers towards success got everyone moving around.

Over lunch, Dr. Jessie DeAro from the National Science Foundation gave a keynote address on the importance of diversity on research teams. Dr. DeAro gave a new slant to the idea of diversity in research by delving into the some of the challenges and rewards of having teams that are diverse in terms of not only culture, gender, or ethnicity, but also of individuals’ roles in the research process.

Following the event, panel members and attendees had the chance to mix, mingle, and continue their discussions at a reception in the HS/HSL’s Gladhill Board Room.

In October, the HS/HSL partnered with the School of Pharmacy and Walgreens Pharmacy for our second annual flu clinic. This year, the clinic inoculated 265 campus members over two days.

Like last year, attendees appreciated having a convenient place to receive the flu shot on campus. The clinic also gave pharmacy students an opportunity to practice inoculating patients with guidance from faculty and professional pharmacists.

Feedback from the campus community was overwhelmingly positive:

“What an amazing service to offer on campus! The clinic was run extremely well and was very organized.”

“It couldn’t have run more smoothly! It was excellent in every way.”

We look forward to running the clinic again in 2020!

Building on the success of three past events, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) continued its efforts to improve consumer health information on Wikipedia with its fourth #citeNLM Edit-a-thon, held on November 20, 2019. Using trusted National Library of Medicine resources, like PubMed, MedlinePlus, and Genetics Home Reference, editors from around the country worked to add citations to existing Wikipedia articles related to mental health, including gender dysphoria, compassion fatigue, aquaphobia, and Peter Pan syndrome. In total, the 108 editors at 9 unique events made 244 edits, edited 98 articles, created 4 new articles, and added 548 references for the #citeNLM campaign.

To learn more about Wikipedia and stay up to date on future edit-a-thons, visit the NNLM Wikipedia project page at nnlm.gov/wiki. You can also follow the campaign on Twitter with the hashtag #citeNLM to ask questions, see photos and conversations from past events, and share your Wikipedia experience.

Over the past year, the staff at the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM), Southeastern/Atlantic (SEA) collaborated with other regional offices to develop national programs that support the initiatives of the National Library of Medicine. By enhancing our collaboration, we were able to launch a number of programs that benefit our network members:

• Wikipedia Edit-a-thons – This provides an opportunity to engage communities in addressing societal needs and accelerate biomedical science, technology, and innovation. SEA staff collaborated with WebJunction to help public librarians plan and offer Wikipedia Edit-athons at their libraries as well.
• Consumer Health Curriculum – In collaboration with the Public Libraries Association, the NNLM developed curriculum to enhance the skills of public librarians and help them provide consumer health information to their library’s users. Additionally, the staff increased the number of public libraries as network members by 152%.
• All of Us Community Engagement – In support of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, the NNLM fosters community engagement by offering reading club book kits, toolkits tied to national health observances, and the Game of Health—all of which help health consumers become more aware of health topics and their family health history.
• Research Data Management – Through NNLM RD3: Resources for Data-Driven Discovery NNLM SEA is collaborating with other regional medical libraries to train librarians in research data management.
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – NNLM SEA promoted the launch of a webinar series to understand the various subordinated and marginalized intersectional identities and claim responsibility for our privilege.

Over the past year, the NNLM SEA staff exhibited at over 31 conferences and community events reaching over 10,000 attendees. Additionally, the NNLM SEA has supported over 300 educational sessions that reached almost 14,000 attendees over the past year. As we look forward to 2020, we hope to offer programming tied to the launch of the new PubMed, collaborations to offer Library Carpentry workshops, and outreach to community based organizations that support the HIV/AIDS populations.

Earlier this year, students from Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Art and their art instructor, Martin Goggins, visited the Weise Gallery as one of the stops on a campus walking tour led by Brian Sturdivant, director of UMB Strategic Initiatives and Community Partnerships. At the time, the Gallery was showing Nature’s Spring Sonata, an exhibit of paintings by Maryland first lady, Yumi Hogan.

Hogan’s art inspired the students to create the collection of works in our current exhibit. The students’ artworks include both formal studies of nature, as well as abstract renderings—visions of the natural world in which observation becomes intuition.

As they were creating these works, the students were learning about the impasto process, a technique that involves applying thick layers of paint or pigment that stand out from the surface of the work. Some of the students have incorporated impasto elements in their art. Their colorful, imaginative works will be on display in the Library’s first floor Weise Gallery through January 24, 2020.

Final exams are a stressful time! HS/HSL offers students the opportunity to take a short study break by collectively working a on a 1000-piece puzzle. The puzzle is available in the Innovation Space on the Library’s first floor, near the main elevators.

The holidays are rapidly approaching, which means lots of parties and lots of food.  And for many of us, lots of overeating. To help you prepare for the ailments that can occur from attending these parties, Historical Collections is highlighting advice from a recent book donation.  The book, The Library of Health, published in 1920, was donated by Kathryn Lothschuetz Montgomery, retired associate professor and chair of the Department of Partnerships, Professional Education, and Practice at the School of Nursing. According to its extended title, the volume provides a “complete guide to prevention and cure of disease, containing practical information on anatomy, physiology and preventive medicine; curative medicine, first aid measures, diagnosis, nursing, sexology, simple home remedies, care of the teeth, occupational diseases, garden plant remedies, alcohol and narcotics, treatment by fifteen schools of medicine, beauty culture, physical culture the science of breathing and the dictionary of drugs.”  

Below are some helpful definitions and treatment suggestions for common food ailments from the 1920 volume.  We at the Historical Collections do not endorse trying any of these treatments:

Cramps in Stomach.—Make mustard poultice, with white of egg instead of water, and apply same to bowels, and give Squibbs’ Mixture. Hot water bags often afford relief. Paregoric and also laudanum relieve pain, but must be used with great caution.

Diarrhoea.—Take half ounce of blackberry root and boil in pint of water about fifteen minutes, strain and give teaspoonful every hour or two until relieved; or fluid extract, dose five to ten drops in a little water; one-half to one teaspoonful of paregoric in water.

Other remedies are:
1. An infusion of chamomile, prepared by steeping four to six heads of chamomile flowers in a cup of boiling water for an hour, and giving a teaspoonful hourly. Avoid solid food until bowels are all right.
2. Tablets of chalk mixture, of subnitrate of bismuth, or of pepsin; paregoric, laudanum.
3. Give starch injection with half a teaspoonful of laudanum for adult; for child only a few drops, and one drop of the wine of ipecac every hour, especially if vomiting be present, or half a grain of gray powder (mercury and chalk) every hour or two.
 4. A good blackberry cordial, such as the following, is often found to be a preventive and specific for summer complaint, diarrhoea, etc.:

Ripe blackberries 2 quarts
Sugar, white 1 pound
Cloves and allspice 1/2 ounce of each

Boil all together.  When cold, press out and strain the juice and add a pint of good brandy. This makes a pleasant drink, and may be taken in quantities from a teaspoonful to a wineglassful every two to four hours. Be careful not to take too much astringent medicine and thereby check the diarrhoea too suddenly.

Heartburn.—Give five drops of the tincture of nux vomica half an hour before each meal.

Indigestion.—An exclusive diet of fruit for several days is found efficacious in most cases of indigestion. This diet is excellent in dyspepsia and constipation.

Indigestion, Acute.—Dyspepsia, heartburn, a functional derangement of the stomach with pain, a sense of distension and gas, regurgitation of food, headache, and frequently perspiration. Regulation of the diet is of great importance, and for the acute symptoms bismuth 10 to 20 grains, essence of peppermint, one-half teaspoonful in water, bicarbonate of soda, and if pain is severe one or two teaspoonfuls of paregoric in hot water. The after treatment consist in keeping the bowels open and you may take the following:

Subnitrate of bismuth 2 1/2 drachms
Fluid Extract cascara 4 drachms
Compound tincture cardamom 6 drachms
Glycerine 4 drachms
Peppermint water 4 ounces

Sour Stomach—Heartburn.—Symptoms.—This common and distressing complaint results simply from undue acidity of the stomach caused by errors in diet or by dyspepsia. It produces a burning sensation in the stomach and under the breast-bone, often accompanied by nausea.

Treatment.—Take the following mixture, after meals, when the trouble occurs:
Baking soda ½ teaspoonful
Water ½ cupful

Sick Stomach.—Tablets of lime water; tablets of subnitrate of bis- muth; aromatic spirits of ammonia.

To read more from the 1920 volume, see the Library of Congress’ digitized version.  Or stop into Historical Collections on the fifth floor of the HS/HSL to see the impressive volume for yourself! 

Historical Collections wishes everyone a healthy and safe Holiday Season!

New Staff

Amy Yarnell, MLS, joined the HS/HSL in November as the data services librarian. She comes to us from Indiana University – Bloomington where she earned her MLS with a specialization in digital humanities. She is excited to join the Services team and looking forward to helping the campus community with their research data needs.

 

Publications & Presentations

Meg Del Baglivo, MLS, Patricia Hinegardner, MLS, and Na Lin, MLS, presented an ALCTS webinar entitled “Research Data Discovery: Developing a Data Catalog.”

Meg Del Baglivo, MLS, and Steve Douglas, MA, MLS, AHIP, presented their poster “Providing Access to Electronic Medical Journals: It’s Not Just Flipping a Switch” at the annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association in Durham, NC.

Emily Gorman, MLIS, AHIP, and Gail Betz, MSLIS, are among the co-authors of “A Comprehensive Review of Methods to Measure Oral Oncolytic Dose Intensity Using Retrospective Data,” published in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy.

M.J. Tooey, MLS, AHIP, FMLA, taught her CE course “Leadership Considered” at the annual meeting of the Southern Chapter of the Medical Library Association in Savannah, GA.

M.J. Tooey and Alexa Mayo, MLIS, AHIP, presented “Building a Foundation for a Culture of Resilience” at the annual meeting of the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) in Phoenix, AZ.

Lauren Wheeler, MSLIS, and Mary Ann Williams, MSLS, presented their poster “Rising Up to Users’ Needs: Redesigning a Health Literacy Workshop for Health Professionals” at the annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association in Durham, NC.

Mary Ann Williams, MSLS, was an invited speaker at the annual meeting of the Local Health Information Coalition of Harford County, MD. Mary Ann’s talk was entitled “Health Literacy: It Takes a Village.”

Tara Wink, MLS, was a presenter at the session “Accidental Partnerships: Making your Serendipitous Collaborations More Strategic” at the Library Marketing and Communications Conference in St. Louis, MO.

As of 2019, if you add up all the years of professional service of the 26 librarians currently on staff, the total comes to almost a half millennium of expertise—449 years, to be exact!