Welcome to the 2010-2011 academic year and your health sciences and human services library. There are so many possibilities for new years around the university – new calendar years, new fiscal years – but nothing feels quite like the start of a new academic year. The pace of the campus picks up, and the energy returns. Here in the HS/HSL, the phone rings more often, there are more people everywhere, and I can never find any of the Library liaisons because they are out in the schools working with faculty and staff. We have some exciting new projects to be unveiled this year, including a presentation studio and the campus digital archive. We are working on ideas for the 2011 Library symposium, and Frankenstein is coming!

I suppose that a new year requires New Year’s resolutions.  So…

• The staff of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library resolves to meet the health and human services information needs of our diverse constituents through the provision of services, resources, and products in the best format, when needed.
• We resolve to support discovery, learning, and service, as well as preserve the historical record of the Campus.

Hmmm, that sounds suspiciously like our Mission Statement. Every year we recommit ourselves to this mission and this new year is no different.

So, Happy New Year and welcome, or welcome back!

The HS/HSL has created a variety of subject guides to assist you in using helpful resources such as e-books, databases, and websites. These resources have been carefully selected by HS/HSL librarians and staff and are a great starting point for a class assignment or research project.  As we begin the Fall semester, some of the subject guides that may be helpful to students are Research Essentials , which provides tools to help you begin searching for literature and writing a paper, Library Services for Distance Students , which will help students taking online courses gain access to library resources, and the Writing and Citing subject guide, which recommends online tools for citing resources  in a variety of styles, including APA and MLA.  To see these and an array of other guides the HS/HSL offers, please visit the Subject Guides page of our website.

The folks that bring you the esteemed scientific journal Nature are offering Scitable, “a free science library and personal learning tool…that concentrates on genetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms.” Topic Rooms cover gene expression, inheritance and transmission, and nucleic acid structure and function, to name a few. Scitable also offers group collaboration and study space, portfolio space, glossaries, and more.

Every semester the HS/HSL offers a wide range of library workshops to help you use library resources and technology more effectively. All workshops are free to UMB faculty, staff, and students. Sample topics include RefWorks, PubMed, Medical Apps for Your Smart Phone, and Grant Proposal Writing. This semester the HS/HSL is offering several new workshops, including Nursing Apps for Your Smart Phone and Medline Plus for Consumer Health Information.

We will also be offering a series of special workshops during Google: Beyond Searching Week (October 19th – 21st), where you will learn about Google Tools, such as Docs, Alerts, and Reader, that can help you gather and present information.  For the full list of workshops, with descriptions and online registration, please visit the Library’s Workshop Schedule.

Can’t make one of our regularly scheduled workshops?  Sign up for an On Demand Workshop. On Demand Workshops are offered to individuals or small groups who cannot make one of our scheduled workshops or would like instruction on a topic that is not included in the regular schedule.

August 23, 2010 – January 3, 2011

Holiday Schedule

Winter hours will begin on Monday, January 3, 2011

The HS/HSL is currently hosting selected paintings, sculpture and drawings from the Wounded in Action art exhibit.  This national exhibit has been developed by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) and will be on display at the HS/HSL’s Weise Gallery and the SMC Campus Center until November 12, 2010.

In support of this exhibit, the Library will host a special workshop offered by the Southeastern Atlantic Regional Medical Library entitled "Combating Information Fatigue: Health Information Resources for Veterans" on October 6th from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.  This workshop will cover resources for finding information on general health conditions; mental health resources, including those for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); family issues; substance abuse; amputations; and support groups for veterans and their families.  To register, visit the Library’s Workshop Schedule.

For additional information regarding veteran’s health, take a look at the Wounded in Action guide created by HS/HSL librarians.  The title of the Wounded in Action guide will change to Veteran’s Health when the exhibit is concluded in November.

Shop UMB, located in the lobby of the HS/HSL, offers a selection of University of Maryland, Baltimore gift items. For a limited time, all merchandise is half off (excepting UMB cookbooks). Items are on display in a showcase in the Library’s lobby and include umbrellas, aprons, sweatshirts, note cubes, tote bags, and more, all sporting the distinctive UMB seal.

Request and purchase your item at the Circulation Desk while supplies last.

Yani Yancey will be working at HS/HSL for the next year as part of the National Library of Medicine’s Associate Fellowship Program.  Yani spent the first year of the program at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, where her projects included creation of a web-based preview for the MedlinePlus redesign and development of an institutional policy for using social media.  She received her Master’s of Library Science from the University of Maryland, College Park where she worked as a graduate assistant at McKeldin Library.  She looks forward to working with the Services Division staff and being involved in community outreach efforts here at UMB during the second year of her fellowship.

Libraries of all sizes and descriptions are increasingly facing space constraints. In an effort to help with this problem, the Congress of Academic Library Directors (CALD), an organization of academic libraries in Maryland, has instituted a shared distributed journal project.

Under this model, libraries identify complete runs of journal titles in their collection, promise to maintain them, and provide rapid interlibrary loan to other participating libraries.  Other libraries that own the journals are then free to discard journal backfiles to free space in their stacks.

While the HS/HSL has the space and is committed to maintaining all of its journal collection in our building, we have contributed nineteen titles to the collection as a service to other institutions in Maryland.

The HS/HSL offers a variety of tutorials on our own YouTube Channel and subject guides on our website to help students navigate the complex world of research options. We encourage faculty to link directly to these resources from their Blackboard classes so students will need to look no further for these useful tools.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2010 runs from September 15th through October 15th. Begun in 1968 as a week-long celebration and expanded by Congress in 1988 for an entire month, America celebrates the culture and traditions of those who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico, and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. September 15th was chosen as the starting point for the celebration because it is the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on September 16th and September 18th, respectively.

The HS/HSL website offers an updated guide to health resources in Spanish, Recursos de salud en español, with links to reliable consumer health resources in Spanish.