84 UMB students, faculty, and staff entered our Naming Contest and submitted a total of 233 entries! Students made up 75% of the participants. With 23%, the School of Social Work had the largest number of submissions. Another 20% of those offering ideas were from the School of Pharmacy. Enough with the stats, let’s get to the winner…

We had a tough task selecting just one name out of the many great suggestions. However, one name stood out above the rest. The new name of the HS/HSL E-Newsletter is Connective Issues. Congratulations to Kevin Bunin, second year student, from the Dental School! Kevin went home with a brand new iPod nano and a $15 iTunes gift card.

Thank you to everyone who entered and helped make the contest a success!

Describing our users as being "remote" is actually a misstatement. In many cases, the Library, its resources and services, are what is "remote." We are faced with the constant challenge of reaching our entire community of users which also includes the State of Maryland, the southeastern region of the country, and even the nation. The HS/HSL has one of the longest standing library liaison programs in the United States. This program has recently been revitalized and expanded. Liaisons provide consultations, office hours and visits, serve on curriculum committees, work with students – this is what I like to call inreach. We are reaching "in" to our immediate community at UMB, working to become a vital partner in research, education, and service.

Aggressive outreach is our new passion! In addition to our own outreach projects such as Maryland Health → Go Local, we are looking for more opportunities to collaborate with schools and departments on grants and contracts where our expertise may be needed. We believe quality health information can have an impact on health disparities, patient safety, and health outcomes. Our goal is to become not just the "only publicly funded health sciences library in the state of Maryland" but to become the "public health sciences library in the state." It’s just a small change in wording, but it says alot about the seriousness of our intentions for both inreach and outreach. Do you have any ideas about partnerships? We’re here and ready to act.

If you’ve been in the Library recently you may have heard the sound of jackhammers as construction begins on the new Campus Center next door. Sometimes even the earplugs don’t help as it seems the entire library building vibrates!

In January, we will prepare the second floor for construction of Student Records and Registration office space. However, for that to begin, many changes must be made in the Library.

Here’s what you can expect to see:

1. A reorganization of space on the main floor. This will include a move of current periodicals from the second to the first floor; realignment of workstations, scanners and printers, expansion of the gallery, and a possible move for the reference desk.
2. The beginning of the great collection shift. Literally every book and periodical in the library will be touched as we weed and remove books from the collection, and as we shift entire collections up a floor.

Library staff are working very hard to make these changes in ways to minimize the affect on our users. Things may seem somewhat chaotic for the next few months. If you have any questions, just ask a staff member.

Tired of overdue fines? Our users have been asking for courtesy reminder notices for some time and we are happy to now be able to offer them.

The HS/HSL will email a notice 5 days before an item is due (paper notices are not available). The notice will show your due date(s) and the number of renewals that you have used. We hope that this service will help our users avoid fines.

Please note that reminder notices are a courtesy. All borrowers are still responsible for returning materials by their due date/time without notice from the Library.

By setting up a personal account in an OVID database you gain access to your saved searches as well as to the Expert Searches that have been compiled by HS/HSL’s experienced literature searchers. The latest addition to the list of Expert Searches is "Health Care Disparities". We hope that this disparities search strategy will help keep our campus community aware of research on the quality of and access to health care services by various groups of people.

Within the Expert Searches you will also find a variety of evidence-based practice searches, including one for locating Meta-Analyses in both Medline and CINAHL.

NIH has confirmed that its Research Project Grant Program (R01) transition to electronic submission will begin February 5th.

It is expected that with the R01 transition new applications will be submitted at Grants.gov and within eRA Commons.

The timeline for future NIH electronic submission transitions includes the Resource & Career Development Programs.

Contact the UMB Office of Research & Development for additional information and training.

This past spring, the Library developed a survey to assess how well the Library’s journal collection meets the information needs of campus faculty. Dr. Donald Gill, Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Medicine and Darryl Roberts, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing assisted in the development of the survey questions.

Responses were received from 168 faculty members. 41% of respondents were extremely or very satisfied and 34% were somewhat satisfied with the Library overall. Respondents identified 645 distinct journal titles that they use frequently in their work. Of the 645 titles identified, the Library provides access electronically or in print to 71% of these titles; when delayed access titles (embargoed) are included the number rises to over 80%.

Journals noted as most used by respondents: New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science, Journal of Neuroscience, JAMA, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cell, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Neuron, and Pediatrics.

Analysis of the data continues; additional findings will be reported in future issues.

Web of Science and Science Citation Index have a new feature that allows you to view graphs for publication activity and citation activity broken down by year. With this feature, you can learn the average citations per journal article and average times cited per year. You can also see an author’s H-Index (a researcher?s rating) and quickly remove self-citations.

To try out this new feature: Go to the Web of Science from the HS/HSL homepage. Enter the author’s name in the General Search author field and optionally include his/her institution. Finally, click on the Citation Report button.

Caveat: Our subscription dates back to 1987. Any works published before that date will not be included in the results and will throw off the H-Index score and citation summary.

Learn more with Thomson ISI’s tutorials

For additional assistance, Ask Us!

You can learn the suggested quality of a scholar’s productivity by determining an H-Index. The H-Index shows an author’s relative impact on his/her discipline by locating where the number of citations equals the paper’s rank. If a researcher has an index of 23, he/she has published 23 papers with 23 or more citations each. This rating becomes meaningful when compared to others within the same discipline. It is important to remember that scores will differ across disciplines.

Read the article where this rating system was originally proposed:

Hirsch, J.E. 2005. An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102(Nov. 15):16569-16572.
Abstract.
Preprint Full-text.

Want to know your rating? You can see it by using the Web of Science database. Use the instructions provided in the above Citation Reports article.

As we enter this holiday season, please consider the HS/HSL as a giving opportunity. Charitable donations to the HS/HSL are tax deductible and are used to support services, resources, and programs not funded by our state appropriation. Donations can be made online by going to http://giving.umaryland.edu and selecting the Health Sciences and Human Services Library as your intended recipient.

If you would rather mail a check, please make it payable to: The University of Maryland Baltimore Foundation with a note that it should go to the HS/HSL

HS/HSL, 601 W. Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD 21201.

If you have any questions about making a donation to the Library, please contact Executive Director, M.J. Tooey, at 410.706.7545. Thanks in advance for remembering us!

Have you had a chance to see that MD Consult has gone through some recent changes? The homepage has a new look: Simply enter your term(s) and search. New options also make it easier to limit a search within a couple of clicks. The Advanced Searching option has tips on how to improve your search.

More highlights…

Enhanced Book Searching:
The reference book searches on MD Consult are now full-text searches and include short excerpts within the results.

Book Image Searching:
Can’t decide between pleural effusion and pleural effusion with atelectasis? Use the new image search and compare feature to make a diagnosis. You can now search for images in all MD Consult books. Select up to 4 at one time and compare to determine which one fits your needs.

Fall term ends December 22, 2006.
We will resume regular hours on Tuesday, January 2, 2007.

The Library has had a successful liaison program with the individual schools on campus for many years. The liaisons also work collaboratively with their individual schools to provide community-based health information outreach.

Stefanie Warlick is the Library’s Liaison to the School of Nursing. Stefanie received her Masters Degree in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science. During her time at UNC, she worked as a Graduate Assistant in the Health Sciences Library.

Please email Stefanie at swarlick@hshsl.umaryland.edu or call 6-8865 to discuss how she can help support your instructional needs or outreach projects. OR You can drop by and see her in the Reference area of the library on Wednesdays between 11-12 and 3-4.

For a complete list of library liaisons and their contact information, go to http://www.hshsl.umaryland.edu/services/liaisons.html