Over the past two years, even during the pandemic, the HSHSL building has continued to be modified and changed. And the changes are ongoing!

1. In 2020, the second and fifth floors were remodeled. Tables and seating were replaced by adding the types of furniture users had requested. The former study tables were worn out; the new ones have better power and lighting and are more easily cleaned. Surveys indicated that users preferred rolling task chairs to the hard (but durable!) study chairs in the study rooms. Done!
2. If you haven’t heard already, the Graduate Innovation District, fondly known as the Grid relocated to the third floor north of the HSHSL. It is very exciting to have them in the building and to explore innovation and discovery with them! Another great partnership.
3. When the Counseling Center, formerly located on the fourth floor of the HSHSL, relocated to the Campus Center, it created an opportunity for the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTAL) to move in. What a great new office and service to have in the HSHSL! Construction for the FCTAL is ongoing and should be completed this spring.
4. If you have been in the Library recently, you may have noticed loud, disturbing, obnoxious (one director’s opinion) noises coming from the roof of the building. Drilling, banging, and thuds are all part of the equation. After almost 25 years, the roof of the building is being replaced. The project should be completed later this spring. In the meantime, you can get some earplugs at the Information Services desk on the first floor.
5. Finally, later this spring, the entire plaza in front of the HSHSL will be replaced. The design phase is complete, and the construction will start later this spring. This will cause major disruption around the building entrance. Workarounds and patience will be required!

On our wish lists?

1. Renovation of the third and fourth floors. This will complete all five floors and will allow for expansion of the Grid and study spaces of all types.
2. Renewal of the restrooms. After 25 years, it’s time!

As they say on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when there is highway construction, “Temporary inconvenience. Permanent improvement!”  We are looking forward to all our improvements!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kinnard Leisure Collection and the Graphic Medicine Collection were unavailable. No new book titles were added, and magazine subscriptions were allowed to lapse. Thanks to your suggestions and the hard work of staff across the Library, both collections have been refreshed and are ready for your use.

Old titles were removed from the leisure book collection and more than 30 new books added. It is our goal to continue to add three to five new titles a month until the entire 100 book collection has been turned over. Magazine subscriptions have been purchased, and new issues will soon be making their way to the shelves. And more than ten new titles have been added to the Graphic Medicine collection.

The Graphic Medicine and Kinnard Leisure Reading collections are located on the first floor of the Library to the right of the main staircase. Please stop by and browse the collection. We hope you’ll find something you want to read. And as always, feel free to make a suggestion. Although not every title will be available from the rental service we use, if you select one that is, we will be happy to order it for you and let you know when it’s ready for you to use.

OSF, a project of the Center for Open Science, is a free and open source project management and collaboration tool that supports researchers throughout the research lifecycle. It’s a great way to organize and share resources with your team and others. It also integrates easily with a number of other commonly used tools, like Google Drive, Zotero, Mendeley, Figshare, and GitHub.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore is now an OSF Institution, which means you can log in to OSF with your UMID and password.

You will also be able to affiliate your public research with UMB on OSF and discover other affiliated research through our new UMB-OSF landing page. If your research is not yet public, now might be a good time to consider sharing your existing or future work. Conducting your research through UMB’s OSFI platform is a strategic way to enhance transparency, foster collaboration, and increase the visibility of your research.

For more information, you can view help guides on signing in with your institution and affiliating your projects.

Questions?

Contact: Amy Yarnell, data services librarian and Jean-Paul Courneya, bioinformationist, at data@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

If you are interested in research, we welcome you to register for the 2022 NNLM Virtual Symposium, Advancing Engagement through Research: New Trends and Opportunities.

This two-day event, taking place March 29 – 30, is an opportunity to explore the current state and future directions of medical and scientific research, and to advance the use of practices proven to be effective. A wide range of topics will be shared, including understanding scientific and biomedical research, concerns in the world of research, and the inclusion of diverse populations in research, both as a participant and as a researcher.

This event is open to new and experienced researchers, health professionals, students, health sciences and public librarians, citizen/community scientists, and the general public.

Book It Forward and help local youth discover the joys of reading! To kick off National Library Week – April 3 through April 9, 2022 – the HSHSL will be collecting new or gently used books for children and teens/young adults. Books of all genres and topics are appreciated! A collection box will be located on the first floor of the HSHSL, and all books will be donated to local Baltimore organizations. Donations will be accepted through May 2022.

Most of our current subscriptions only allow online access to articles that were published from when journals began to publish electronically – usually the mid-1990s. This means that researchers who want a copy of an older article must find it in the library stacks or request it through document delivery or interlibrary loan.

Many publishers, however, have now digitized earlier volumes of their journals and have made these “backfiles” available for a one-time purchase. The HSHSL has been working to acquire journal backfiles for our collections, using special funding we received for this purpose. Digital backfiles provide easy access to older literature both on- and off-campus, by searching the library’s Journals & E-books list, or using other search tools available through the library website, such as OneSearch, PubMed, Scopus, and CINHAL.

This year we completed the SAGE Scientific, Technical, and Medical collection and the Wiley Medicine and Nursing collection, and extended our digital holdings for The Lancet back to its first issue published in 1823. This adds the older issues of more than 490 journals to the HSHSL’s electronic collection. Over the next few years, we hope to add other backfile collections to make this important older literature easily accessible.

In March 2020, the HSHSL was celebrating Women’s History Month with a gallery exhibit featuring the accomplishments of the First Women of the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Unfortunately, a week after the exhibit opened, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Maryland and the university transitioned to mandatory telework. During the shutdown, the exhibit sat for months, unseen in a deserted gallery. Now, two years later, the HSHSL is showing a new, expanded version of the First Women of the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the HSHSL Weise Gallery.

The exhibit honors women who paved the way for progress and change at UMB. When the university was founded in 1807 as the College of Medicine of Maryland, women were not permitted to enroll in coursework. Nor were women present on the faculty or staff until much later in the university’s history. When women were finally admitted – first as students, and later as faculty members to the UMB schools – they faced intense hardship, criticism, and discrimination. They endured, nevertheless, and their remarkable contributions and achievements have paved the way for future UMB women students, faculty, and leaders.

This exhibit highlights nearly 150 years of women’s history at UMB. Its panels feature the stories of Dr. Emilie Foeking, Louisa Parsons, Dr. Lady Mary Johnson, Ruth Lee Briscoe, Dr. B. Olive Cole, Dr. Teresa Ora Snaith, Esther E. McCready, Dr. Ruth H. Young, Dr. Barbara C. Hansen, Alice Cary, and Dr. Natalie D. Eddington. In addition, two supporting exhibit cases feature works by UMB women authors from the HSHSL collection.

The exhibit will remain on display in the Weise Gallery through April 2022.

Now it’s easier than ever to connect with a faculty librarian who works directly with your school. Last month, the Library launched a Research and Education Services (RES) portal to help students, researchers, educators, and clinicians learn about how their school’s librarian can collaborate with and support them.

For researchers, librarians provide consultation and training in advanced literature searching, including searching for evidence, expert searching for systematic and scoping reviews, and finding literature to support grant proposals. Librarians can also help individual faculty, departments, and schools measure the external impact of research, and advise faculty members on how to make their research more visible.

To support student learning, librarians can guest lecture for classes or develop video tutorials focused on a specific project, assignment, or skill. Students may also schedule individual consultations with librarians for help locating resources for assignments and clinical work.

Visit our new portal or contact your school’s librarian to learn more about the many ways librarians can collaborate to support research, learning, and patient care.

Publications

Emily Gorman, MLIS, wrote “Defender of the People: Reflections of a Nonscientist Member of the IRB,” as a chapter contributor to the book Finding Your Seat at the Table: Roles for Librarians on Institutional Regulatory Boards and Committees.

Michele Nance, MS, Emily Gorman, and Everly Brown, MLIS, co-authored the book chapter “An Informed Consent Document Review Service,” which was published in Finding Your Seat at the Table: Roles for Librarians on Institutional Regulatory Boards and Committees.

Amy Yarnell, MLS, contributed to the editorial “Ten simple rules for improving research data discovery,” published February 10, 2022 in PLOS Computational Biology. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009768

Jerry Anthony joined the HSHSL in September 2021 as the HSHSL’s facilities operations specialist, a.k.a. building coordinator.  He comes to UMB with decades of facilities experience in both private industry and higher education. His job includes oversight of the HSHSL facility, building and construction projects, and building collaborative relationships with tenants and Facilities Management.

Tiffany Chavis, LCSW-C, MLIS, joined the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM), Region 1, as our new health literacy librarian in January 2022. She recently graduated with her master’s in library and information science (MLIS) from the University of Maryland, College Park. Before pursuing her MLIS, she practiced as a licensed clinical social worker for over a decade. In 2006, she completed her master’s degree in social work at University of Maryland, Baltimore, with a focus in both clinical social work and management and community organizing. Tiffany was born and raised in Baltimore City and is part of the Lumbee (American Indian) community. She will be working on a number of projects for Region 1, including supporting initiatives to address health misinformation, public library outreach, and NNLM consumer health outreach and education programs within the Region.

Christine Nieman, MSLIS, joined the NNLM Region 1 as our new data management librarian in January 2022. She is a recent graduate of Drexel University, where she completed her MLIS degree. Christine loves working with data and was formerly a laboratory technician in a USDA chemistry research lab. She will be working on a number of projects for Region 1, which includes supporting initiatives from the NNLM Center for Data Services and NNLM Evaluation Center, data management educational programs, and engagement within Region 1.

Faith Steele, MLIS, MIM, joined the NNLM Region 1 as our new outreach and education librarian in January 2022. She has worked in the library field for over 10 years in academic libraries and government agencies. Prior to coming to NNLM, she was a librarian at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington D.C.; she also served as a grants management specialist at the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Faith will be working on a number of projects, including our communications program, educational programs, and engagement within Region 1.

Linda Wise, MBA, SHRM-CP, came to the HSHSL in December 2021 as the new associate director for administration and operations, from the School of Social Work. Her background in administration and professional certification from the Society for Human Resource Management will be invaluable. As a member of senior leadership at the Library, Linda oversees the administrative and operational functions of the HSHSL, including human resources, finance, building functions, and strategic directions for HSHSL Administration.

Sarah Weirich, MLIS, joined the Resource Development and Access Division as the metadata librarian. She has a MLIS from the University of Southern Mississippi and comes to us from the American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives (NBL&A), where she was a metadata specialist. Sarah’s responsibilities at the HSHSL will focus on metadata development and management to maximize discovery of content. She will be working with the UMB Data Catalog, UMB Digital Archive, the library catalog, and other resources.