In the words of the immortal Britney Spears, "Ooops, I did it again." October was National Medical Librarians Month and for yet another year, due to schedules chock full of everything we do, the HS/HSL faculty and staff managed to let the month slip by without any kind of acknowledgement. As I pondered just how busy the month was and how we had missed an opportunity to promote our value to our community, I started to wonder just what you value about the library? We can tell you how valuable we are. For example, in a recent preliminary Return on Investment (ROI) study done here at the HS/HSL we determined that for every dollar spent by the library, approximately $21 are returned. I could write a whole column about this study but will refer you to the white paper where you can see some of the methodology and other data in addition to some other interesting reports.

But more importantly, what do you value?

• Do you value the virtual library and resources we make available and findable, some so seamlessly you probably don’t even realize we have paid for and licensed them for you?
• Do you value the collaborative spaces and comfort of our physical library?
• Do you value the personal touch of the library faculty liaisons that support each of the schools?
• Or maybe it is service on the campus IRBs?
• Or do you value the community outreach and cultural engagement through our in-house gallery, our on-the-road exhibits, our focus on health literacy and our collaboration with your efforts when you need us?
• Do you value our preservation, through our historical and special collections, of the history of this institution?
• Finally, do you value us just because our core values provide institutional conscience and a moral compass through our support of intellectual freedom; copyright and fair use; advocacy for our users and their right to information; and privacy?

I hope one of these has resonated with you. Maybe there are others. Please let me know, and a belated Happy National Medical Librarians Month to one and all.

SciVerse ScienceDirect now offers a dedicated image search that provides links to over 8,000 images within the source articles so users can easily understand the context. Save time by not having to scan complete articles to find relevant images. This resource can be used to enrich lectures and presentations.

Image searching is available from the Quick, Advanced, and Expert search forms.

• Locate images to enable better understanding of a particular concept or theory
• Save time because you can find relevant images fast
• Find related images easily as well (based on keywords)
• Enrich presentations and course materials by "speaking" through images

This brief online guide provides image searching instructions for SciVerse ScienceDirect.

The Ebsco Image Collection provides you with instant access to more than 180,000 images relating to people, natural science, places, history, and flags from over 3,300 journals.

You can also focus your search using the Image Quick View Collection types available:

• Black and White Photographs
• Color Photographs
• Diagrams
• Illustrations
• Charts
• Graphs
• Maps

The Pubmed Images database allows you to search millions of scientific images from NCBI full text resources, including images from PubMed Central. You can search the Images database with terms or detailed search parameters, such as image height, width, and caption. The complete list of search fields is available from the Images Advanced Search page.

Also, the PubMed Abstract display for PubMed Central® articles is enhanced to include an image strip. The image strip displays thumbnails of the article’s first several images.  The image strip also includes a See all images link to display all the article’s images in the Images databases, as well as a free text link to the article.

Although Halloween has passed, Frankenstein and his monster are making their way to the Health Sciences & Human Services Library!  Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature, a travelling exhibit developed by the National Library of Medicine in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office, will be on display in the Weise Gallery on the main floor of the HS/HSL from November 22, 2010 – January 22, 2011.  During the exhibit, the Library will host an exciting series of events, including a film and a brownbag lunch lecture series by local experts.

The exhibit explores the conception of Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus (1818) in the early 19th century, the Frankenstein myth in popular culture and film, and the moral questions that arise as medical student Victor Frankenstein attempts to assume the role of god by creating a new life from human remains.  These ideas are taken a step further through exploration of present-day issues in biomedicine and bioethics.

EXHIBIT EVENTS:

Frank’s Big Movie Night: Young Frankenstein

Join us for the comedy classic, Young Frankenstein
Thursday, December 2, 7:00 p.m.
SMC Campus Center, Ballroom 210B
Snacks will be provided.

Brownbag Lecture Series:

Raising the Dead: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the AICD
Philip Mackowiak, MD, MBA
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Chief of the Medical Care Clinical Center, VA Maryland Health Care System
Tuesday, November 30, 2010, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Davidge Hall

The Real Frankenstein’s Monster: The Creation of Social Alienation in the 19th Century
Michael Reisch, PhD, MSW, MA
Daniel Thursz Distinguished Professor of Social Justice, University of Maryland School of Social Work
Thursday, December 9, 2010, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
HS/HSL 5th Floor, Gladhill Boardroom

From Frankenstein to Face Transplants
Stephen Bartlett, MD
Professor and Chair, Department of Surgery, University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center
Tuesday, December 14, 2010, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
HS/HSL 5th Floor, Gladhill Boardroom

For more information about the exhibit visit the National Library of Medicine website and the HS/HSL Weise Gallery website.

The HS/HSL has compiled a guide of resources to accompany the exhibit.

Questions? Contact the HS/HSL Reference Desk at 410.706.7996.

PubGet is a search engine similar to PubMed that provides results in PDF when available from the HS/HSL. While PubMed displays the abstract and provides links to full-text, PubGet users save time with the PDF links provided on the results screen. Users can search by keywords, author, title, journal, subject, and more.

One caveat: PubGet does miss some full-text articles available via HS/HSL subscriptions. Always use the Find It button if you don’t see the PDF you want.

Try out PubGet.

Connections: Emergency Preparedness for Librarians and Emergency Management Personnel, a free program sponsored by a grant from the Regional Medical Library of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern Atlantic Region housed at the HS/HSL, will be held at the SMC Campus Center on Thursday, November 18th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The conference will feature keynote speaker Rebecca Hamilton, State Librarian of Louisiana, who will share her experiences leading the state libraries in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2008. Other speakers include Amy Major from the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security, Richard Muth, Director of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, and Greta Marlatt and Jodi Stiles, managers of the Homeland Security Digital Library. Also included in the program are Cindy Love from the National Library of Medicine’s Disaster Information Management Research Center and Robert Rowan, the Associate Vice President, Facilities and Operations at the University of Maryland Baltimore.

During the morning program, library personnel from across the state and emergency management personnel will explore ways of working together to develop continuity of operations plans. The two groups will also have the opportunity to network and learn how to assist each other before, during, and after an unexpected regional or statewide disaster. The morning program will be followed by a continuing education program from the Medical Library Association entitled, “Emergency Preparedness Planning: Ten Steps to Continuity Planning”.

For more information about this event, please visit the conference website.

Winter hours will begin on Monday, January 3, 2011

Patricia G. Hinegardner, MLS, AHIP, has been appointed Associate Director for Resources, Health Sciences & Human Services Library, effective November 1, 2010.

As Associate Director for Resources, she will lead the faculty and staff of the division, launching initiatives involving discovery tools, the next generation catalog, and a digital archive. She has worked at the HS/HSL for over twenty-five years, having served in a variety of roles including expert searcher, coordinator of online services, educator, liaison, and most recently as the web services librarian and project manager for Maryland Health -> Go Local. She is a distinguished member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals and has served on or chaired committees in the Medical Library Association, the Mid-Atlantic Chapter (MAC) and the Maryland Association of Health Sciences Librarians (MAHSL). She has contributed to the profession through meeting presentations, book chapters, and journal articles as well as serving as co-editor of the MAHSL website. She received a master’s in library science degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Western Maryland College, Westminster, MD. She succeeds Beverly Gresehover, who retired as Associate Director for Resources in August 2010.

The Library is hosting the NIH hands-on virtual bioinformatics class, Correlation of Disease Genes to Phenotypes. This course focuses on the correlation of a disease gene to the phenotype and demonstrates how bioinformatics resources such as literature, expression and structure information can help provide potential functional information for disease genes. Learn how to determine what is known about a disease, the gene(s) associated with it, and its genetic testing.

DATE: December 7, 2010
TIME: 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
LOCATION: HS/HSL Lower Level

TO REGISTER: Contact Alexa Mayo.
Register early.  Class size is limited to 18.

Students of LBSC 762 at the University of Maryland College Park’s iSchool traveled to a class at the Library on November 1st and enjoyed dinner, a tour, and the opportunity to meet and chat with a panel of health sciences librarians who have a wide variety of roles and job descriptions. The course in health science librarianship is taught by a team of librarians from the HS/HSL.