Welcome to 2010. Some people look upon the dawning of a new year as a time for fresh beginnings, resolutions, opportunities. All of those are of course important. I look forward to the dawning of a new year because I know that the new edition of the Horizon Report will be coming soon. And arrive it has! The 2010 Horizon Report is a joint project of the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. (Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., & Stone, S. (2010). The 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.) This annual report identifies emerging technology trends "likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry on college and university campuses within the next five years." The report ranks the trends in terms of time-to-adoption. This year the number one trend with an adoption timeline of one year or less is mobile computing. And, based on requests and inquiries we are seeing at the HS/HSL and in our profession, this trend is spot on. Mobile technology is here.

A few years back, the medical library and publishing communities were wrestling with the issues of providing medical literature in developing countries. In countries where electricity was sporadic and computers were scarce, this was a daunting task. Efforts such as the U.N.’s HINARI project, which provided free access to information in these countries, faced an uphill battle. However, the expansion of reliable wireless technologies and the ubiquitous presence of cell phones and mobile devices (over 4 billion cell phones worldwide according to some estimates) have gone a long way toward solving information access disparities. Clearly, we are expanding the use of mobile devices beyond telephony. Our preferred information devices are in our hands.

On April 21, I hope you will join the library staff for this year’s day-long symposium, @Hand: Mobile Technologies in Academia + Medicine, where guest speakers and panelists will explore developments and challenges of using mobile technologies in our campus environment.

The HS/HSL collected a bumper crop of 1,071 food items to donate to the Maryland Food Bank with our 2009 Food for Fines Program. Thanks to all who participated, our donation increased by 53% from 2008!

The new HS/HSL Guide, Course Reserves, provides information about the Library’s Electronic Reserve service. The Faculty guide includes submission dates and policies, a FAQ, and a printable Reserve request form. Students will find links to E-Reserves and Blackboard, information on checking out reserve books, and HS/HSL YouTube tutorials on accessing E-reserve articles and finding call numbers in the USMAI catalog.

This month RefWorks is releasing a beta version of its new interface and UMB will be one of the test sites. You will still be able to access the current, familiar version of RefWorks, but look for a link to try out the new version. RefWorks is hoping for input from their users before the release is final. Check the HS/HSL homepage, for an update when this new version becomes available.

The Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HS/HSL) will be offering a series of workshops free of charge to UMB faculty, staff, and students; UMMC staff; and HS/HSL Corporate Members during the 2010 Spring Semester. New workshops this semester include Medical Apps for Your Smart Phone in 30 Minutes, Public Health on the Web, and Google Alerts in 30 Minutes.

The Library will be offering Grant Proposal Writing Thursday, February 25th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. This workshop presents an overview of the grant and funding processes. Each component of the grant writing process will be addressed: documenting the need; identifying the target population; writing measurable objectives; developing a work plan, an evaluation plan and dissemination plan. For the full course schedule, descriptions, and registration, click here.

The Library also offers On Demand Workshops for individuals or small groups who cannot make one of our scheduled workshops or would like instruction on a topic that is not part of the regular schedule. For a full listing of On Demand Workshops, click here.

Did you know you can receive RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for Tables of Contents and search alerts from select journals and databases? If you currently use an RSS reader, such as Google Reader or the one provided within your RefWorks account, feeds of journal content and citations on a particular topic are easy to set up.

You can also find RSS feeds at many popular websites such as the New York Times, Google News, CNN, and more.

For more information on RSS feeds, check out the new HS/HSL Guide called Cool Tools. This guide links to tutorials, database instruction guides, and lists of popular RSS feeds so you can familiarize yourself with this time saving research tool.

On April 6th, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m., the Library will be hosting a workshop entitled RSS Feeds with Google Alerts in 30 Minute. Please visit the Library’s Spring Workshops page to attend this or other workshop offerings.

For additional assistance with setting up RSS and search alerts, Ask us! or contact your Library Liaison.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) announced that it will partner with an notable list of scholarly publishers to offer free full-text articles to more than 200 biomedical journals and 65 reference books for use by hospitals, libraries and responders in Haiti. Known as the Emergency Access Initiative (EAI), it features an impressive list of books and journals including many emergency medicine titles. This program is meant to act as a replacement and/or supplement for libraries and hospitals affected by the disaster so that they can continue to serve healthcare personnel.

A part of the initiative includes a PubMed filter to search for the program’s free full text articles. Begin your search at the PubMed main page. When your results appear, you will see the filter Emergency Access – Free Articles with this icon

More information about the Emergency Access Initiative can be found at the NLM’s EAI site, or by contacting the National Library of Medicine at 1.888.346.3656. More health resources for Haiti can be accessed at the NLM’s Disaster Information Management Resource Center.

Barbara H. Pappas has begun an internship with the Resources Division of the HS/HSL. Barbara is pursuing her MILS degree at Southern Connecticut State University. During her time at the Library, she will be learning about – and helping with – electronic resources management, cataloging, and web services.

Join us in welcoming Barbara!

The Frieda O. Weise Gallery at the HS/HSL is now featuring an exhibit, sponsored by the UMB Outreach Council, of artwork by students of Diggs-Johnson Middle School and George Washington Elementary School. A portion of the artwork themed "Optical Layers" can be viewed with 3-D glasses available in the gallery. Please stop by to view the art or even participate in a silent auction fundraiser. Silent bids for the student artwork can be entered any time during the exhibit, up through the closing ceremony, to be held on Friday, February 19th. For more information, visit the Weise Gallery web page.

A researcher from the Sons of Confederate Veterans C.S.S. Shenandoah Camp in Anchorage, Alaska contacted us seeking information about the Civil War service of our first librarian, Eugene Cordell. The researcher is writing a book about the Virginia unit in which Cordell served. During his tenure with the university, Cordell founded the campus periodical Old Maryland. He recounted his military experiences in the series "Recollections of Slave Days and War Times," which appeared in segments throughout the journal between 1906 and 1912.

Born June 25, 1843, in Charlestown, Jefferson County, Virginia, Cordell embraced his hometown’s fervor for the Confederacy. Intending to enlist, he hiked for several hours hoping to join the Stonewall Brigade mustering at Harper’s Ferry, only to discover that his father had arrived there surreptitiously ahead of him, forbidding the officers from enlisting Eugene. After some time, however, his father finally acceded to his wishes and consented to his admission into the Virginia Military Institute, which was training young cadets for service. Cordell eventually joined the 60th Virginia and participated in several engagements throughout the Kanawha Valley. Wounded at Winchester in September 1864, Cordell later was captured at Waynesboro and spent two nights imprisoned in Baltimore’s Fort McHenry before enduring fifteen weeks of incarceration at Fort Delaware. Following the cease-fire, Cordell finally gained his release on June 19, 1865, just shy of his 22nd birthday.

The Library has lowered the price of color printing available at our public computers from $1 per page to 50 cents. The goal of the cost reduction is to provide faculty, staff, and students with more affordable color printing.

The Maryland Health -> Go Local (MHGL) team is happy to announce that they have been re-certified by the HON (Health on the Net) Code. The HONcode is described as "the oldest and the most used ethical and trustworthy code for medical and health related information available on Internet.” In addition, check out the newly created video that demonstrates how to search for health services within MHGL and how to easily connect to MedlinePlus for trusted health information. It takes about 3 minutes to view.

Coming this spring – The Library will be hosting an all-day symposium on mobile technologies.

Save the date!

Watch for more details in future issues of Connective Issues.