Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
RE-ENVISIONING SPACE ANNUAL REPORT 2009-10 he Medical Library’s Annual Report has grown larger and denser over the years, despite efforts to Tkeep it concise. This year we have redesigned our Annual Report in keeping with the changing ways people read information and the University Librarian’s request that all annual reports be short and to the point. With this in mind, we introduce our newly formatted annual report, highlighting the virtual and physical space changes in the Medical Library. As we begin the second decade of this century and look at the future of medical libraries, the word that comes to mind is space. Library space continues to change and evolve, including both virtual and physical spaces. Our liaison program has reached out to medical center departments to emphasize the importance of bringing our knowledge of searching, technology and the use of the library to our community, into their space. We have reached out to the world with training sessions in Uganda, and by hosting librarians from Africa and Asia. 2 The electronic collection is expanding as more print materials are digitized. Our participation in the creation of the Medical Heritage Library using the large Kirtas scanner has augmented this process. The changes in the Medical Library's physical space keep it in the loop of medical center activity. These new library spaces are very popular places to gather: our new collaborative and group meeting rooms, a new place to seek help with computer hardware, and the exceptional Cushing Center. Although this year has challenged us financially, we advanced and remained focused on our mission by staying vital to our users. Is space our final frontier? Not a chance – we are ready for the challenges ahead. As always, the Medical Library staff are to be thanked for demonstrating an eagerness to learn, flexibility as the nature of our work changes, and a commitment to “best practices” for our patrons.
R. Kenny Marone Associate University Librarian Director of the Medical Library VIRTUAL SPACE ✧ OUR EXPANDING DIGITAL WORLD
✧ RESOURCES AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
✧ ASSISTANCE 24/7
✧ A LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS Our Expanding Digital World Medical researchers and clinicians need and expect information to be available as soon as possible and in the most convenient format. The Medical Library has responded by focusing on the acquisition of electronic materials, including the expansion of our e-journal and e-book collections. The library now provides access to 17,544 biomedical online books, a 45% increase over the past year. In fact, 96% of the collection budget was spent on online resources, including e-books, e-journals, and databases which can be accessed by physicians, staff and students both on and off campus.
ot only is the library purchasing electronic materials, but staff continue to digitize print Nmaterials from the collection to ensure that researchers both at Yale and around the 4 world can use these unique materials. The library is a partner, along with Harvard, Columbia, the National Library of Medicine, and the New York Public Library, in a grant from the Sloan Foundation to the Open Knowledge Commons in Boston, to digitize parts of our collection to create the Medical Heritage Library. This past year, staff have been working on a newly acquired Kirtas scanner to carefully digitize over 350 books chosen for this project, and they continue to add more.
The Library’s Bicentennial Collection was digitized this year, with over 800 photographs of faculty, classes, departments and buildings–just in time to help the Yale School of Medicine celebrate its 200th anniversary. Resources at Your Fingertips The newly designed Medical Library home page premiered September 2009 after many months of planning and work. Public reaction to the new site was overwhelmingly positive. Hits on the library web site reached an all-time high of 9,255,278, a 5% increase from the previous year. As always, the library web site continues to be one of the most popular sites in the Yale-New Haven Medical Center. The specially designed library home page for mobile devices has also made our web pages convenient for those accessing our resources using their iPhone, Blackberry or one of many different mobile devices. 5
Ownership of Handheld Mobile Device s researchers, clinicians and students continue to rely on their Amobile devices for information, librarians have been working hard to ensure that the library obtains the best mobile medical applications iPod Touch for their use. The Library Mobile Devices page (http://www.med.yale.edu/ iPhone Palm library/services/computing/pda.html) offers assistance and instruction Android on products and how to use them. We expect that the popularity of these Blackberry resources will continue to rise, and the library will be at the forefront of No Device providing access and help to Yale healthcare professionals faced with a multitude of clinical mobile resource choices. Mobile Device Survey for Yale School of Medicine 2011 (n=52) Assistance 24/7 With all of the resources that the Medical Library ibrary staff have also been working diligently to create web offers, it is no wonder that students, clinicians Lsites designed to meet the needs of distinct populations and researchers often need assistance in how within the medical campus. The Medical Library’s liaisons to the medical departments have focused on designing sites that to use them. Library staff may not be available are meant to be “portals” to the most popular and important 24/7, but the library can and does provide resources used by their departments. This past year, new pages assistance at all hours. Web-based tutorials for were created for the Pediatrics and Ob/Gyn departments, in some of the library’s most popular resources addition to the Department of Surgery, and research groups are available online at all times, and have within the new Smilow Cancer Center. Web sites that highlight the best resources for particular topics were also created by become trusted teaching tools for many of our librarians who wanted to make it easier for Yale medical staff researchers and students. This past year alone, to find information on the NIH Public Access Policy, health 6 76 different tutorials were downloaded more statistics, and resources to enhance teaching and learning for than 60,000 times. the educators at the Yale School of Medicine. There are currently 41 of these information portals available through the library’s Some of the tutorials created this past year web site, and they were accessed 16,900 times during the focused on: past year. More portals continue to be designed by our liaisons. ! How to use “Yale Links,” the library’s link resolver or connection to an article’s full text ! Requesting books using our Borrow Direct service ! Using the new features of OvidSP, one of our Medline search interfaces This year, medical librarians initiated an instant messaging service, allowing them to be available to answer questions from users immediately, regardless of where they were located. School Nurse Grant Having been awarded a grant from the National Library A Library Without Walls of Medicine to provide school nurses in Connecticut with Globalization has become a popular term for describing information and training on the best resources available how intertwined our lives are with others from around to meet their information needs, medical librarians: the world. It is a term that can also be used to describe ! Trained 153 school nurses the work of the Medical Library. This year, staff continued ! Provided school nurses with 25 free to work on maintaining the HINARI journals database. interlibrary loan requests HINARI is a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative ! Answered 26 e-mail questions from which, in cooperation with health science publishers, school nurses provides free or low-cost online access to the biomedical ! Conducted workshops at 3 professional conferences journal literature to developing countries. ! Created a Connecticut School Nurses 7 Information Resources web page, which was accessed 43,592 times
ach year medical students have the opportunity to travel to distant Eplaces to research a variety of health issues. International clinical clerkships bring medical students to places such as Uganda, Zambia, Argentina, Bolivia and South Africa. In addition, many departments have faculty with ongoing international research collaborations. While they may be working outside of the United States, these students and clinicians are still able to access library materials and resources; and our interlibrary loan department helps ensure that they obtain any documents or books difficult to get while abroad. Ugandan clinicians at Mulago Hospital, the teaching hospital for Makerere University School of Medicine in Kampala, benefited from the expertise of a Yale medical librarian who traveled to Uganda to provide training and assistance with online searching (pictured). While there, he taught 13 sessions for 176 attendees. PHYSICAL SPACE ✧ SPACE INVADERS
✧ WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
✧ ATTRACTING PEOPLE TO OUR SPACE
✧ REHOUSING CUSHING'S LEGACY
✧ BRIDGING THE DISTANCE Space Invaders Medical Students, Residents, and Fellows hile the Personal Librarians Program has become a fixture Wwithin the Medical Library Outreach Program, our work continues to expand. Librarian-taught classes have been integrated into the medical students’ curriculum over the past years, and this year This past year alone, librarians provided the “thesis research seminar” was introduced to physician assistant educational sessions to more than 10,000 students and medical students. In addition, the library’s liaisons to the faculty, residents, students, and staff. medical departments continued their work educating residents and house staff, participating in: ! Departments’ brown bag lunch series 9 ! Monthly fellows lectures ! Journal clubs
Faculty, Clinicians, Researchers, and Staff hen we think of library spaces, we think of everything that goes on within the library Wbuilding, but much of the librarians’ work actually takes place in spaces elsewhere on campus. Librarians do make house calls, even if it means crossing an ocean. There are a variety of ways in which our librarians have become embedded in their departments: Librarians reached ! Participated in their departments’ ! Served on departmental committees over 500 new residents, fellows morning rounds ! Arranged permanent office space within their and students ! Presented at Grand Rounds departments to meet with their constituents, by conducting ! Taught workshops on new NIH policies such as they do at EPH and Nursing orientation sessions ! Provided one-on-one consultations within ! Initiated an “instant messaging” service to department offices and even the operating improve communication creating a virtual room suites presence in our departments What's Old Is New Again The Medical Library is fortunate to have a large and unique collection of rare medical books, medical journals, pamphlets, prints, and photographs that are available to researchers and often displayed within the library as well.
he library prepared four exhibits in the Medical edical Library exhibits are digitized and added to the TLibrary Rotunda highlighting: MCWML Digital Library. In addition, the library also continued to host art work by Yale staff and maintain exhibits ! The preservation of the medical historical in the library’s Reading Room and building lobby. These drew collection. 10 numerous visitors from the main campus for a popular exhibit tour. ! The work of Yale medical illustrator Armin B. Hemberger. Our extensive collection of inoculation and vaccination for smallpox ! The unique collection of Harvey Cushing. were chosen for interpretation by a graduate student visiting from the University of North Carolina as the third recipient of the Ferenc ! The Historical Medical Posters collection. Gyorgyey Research Travel Grant provided by the Library.
V. Vorchov and A. Marchencho, "The Ministry of Health Warned" (1988)
Yale historian David Blight spoke to an audience of over 200 in the Historical Library on two recently discovered slave narratives and the story of emancipation sponsored by the Associates of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. Attracting People to Our Space Library staff transferred hundreds of feet of bound journals to the Library Shelving Facility in Hamden to make room for the reorganization of materials in the historical stacks.
ollaborative learning continues to be important to students and researchers, 11 Cbut finding appropriate space to work together can be difficult. As this need for collaborative space increased and the need to photocopy print articles decreased, the library took this opportunity to convert the photocopy room into wonderful new group study rooms. The Betsy Cushing Whitney Group Study Center was unveiled in April and contains three distinct spaces: two group study rooms and a larger collaboration suite. All three spaces have comfortable seating and LCD monitors that can be hooked up to researchers’ computers.
The Computer Support Center Renovated stack space became the home of Information Technology Services' Computer Support Center, a convenient, centrally located resource for faculty, staff and students. The Library hosted 200 neurosurgeons in Rehousing Cushing's Legacy the Cushing Center for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Neurological Surgeons held in New Haven.
One of the most exciting developments this past year was the creation of the Cushing Center within the Medical Library. Designed by architect Turner Brooks, the Center is a great example of 12 collaboration between the library and the Department of Neurosurgery. While Dr. Dennis Spencer, Chair of Neurosurgery, spearheaded the restoration of the Cushing Brain Tumor Registry, library staff assisted with the planning, particularly with the preservation and security of the collection. he registry is comprised of actual brain and tumor specimens Tfrom Dr. Cushing’s patients and thousands of photographs in addition to Cushing’s highly regarded rare book collection, including the rare Persian manuscript, the Farah! namah, written by Yazdi. This work is a study of natural history in Persian and illuminated with detailed multicolored illustrations of animals, birds, plants, stones and humans. Bridging the Distance Staff attended or presented at national and international conferences:
! International Congress of Medical ! Evidence-Based Practice Institute, Librarianship, Brisbane, Australia Hanover, New Hampshire ! Medical Library Association Annual ! Horizons Conference, Burlington, Meeting, Washington, D.C Vermont ! Asian Society for Cardiovascular ! IOWA EBP Conference, Iowa City, Iowa Anesthesia, Tokyo, Japan ! NAHSL Annual Meeting, Rockport, Maine ! New England School Nurse Conference, ! AAMC Minority Career Fair, Boston, Mystic, Connecticut Massachusetts 13 ! National Association of School Nurses ! Columbia University Reference Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois Symposium, New York City ! American Library Association Annual ! International Symposium on Electronic Conference, Chicago, Illinois Theses and Dissertations, Austin, Texas
Benefactors (Gifts of $250.00 or more) Sara Wilford Michael Carey Jack Barchas Carolyn Dedrick Sharon Bonney Martin Gordon Irwin Braverman Glenn Gorlitsky Harold & Mimi Steinberg Hildegard Leslie Harold March James Lin Charitable Trust W. Scott Peterson Herbert Sacks Robert Marcus Johnson & Johnson Seth Rosenthal Gilbert Solitare Ross Zbar Marlene Stone Licking Memorial Lee Strohl Coffin Fund Gerard Burrow Hospital Robert Bazemore Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
Sterling Hall of Medicine 333 Cedar Street, P.O. Box 208014 New Haven, CT 06520 (203) 737-4065 http://www.med.yale.edu/library/