Librarians from the NYAM Library attended the Medical Library Association’s Annual Meeting held at the Hilton Washington, from May 21-26, in Washington, D.C. This year’s theme was “Reflect & Connect.” The meeting was attended by Janie Kaplan, Patricia E. Gallagher, Ying Jia, Lisa Genoese and Trina Keith. Lecture topics covered at the meeting included bioethics, public health, scholarly communication, medical informatics, open access, uses of Web 2.0 in the library, among others.

Meeting participants also had the opportunity to attend the various continuing education courses and poster presentations being offered. A few of the NYAM librarians also had the opportunity to partake in these activities. Patricia Gallagher (with Stephen Greenberg, PhD, National Library of Medicine) taught a continuing education course titled “Rare Medical Books: A Hands-on Introduction” held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md. on Saturday, May 22. This course was an introduction to classic works in the history of the health sciences, with an emphasis on the physical book as well as the intellectual content of the work. On Sunday, May 23, Lisa Genoese and Trina Keith presented a poster titled “Jumping Ship: One Health Sciences Library’s Voyage from a Proprietary Integrated Library System to Open Source,” chronicling the Academy Library’s migration to our current library catalog, Koha. Overall, this year’s annual meeting was very successful and we all returned with new ideas to further advance the Library’s mission.

"Rare Medical Books: A Hands-on Introduction" taught by Patrica Gallagher with Stephen Greenberg.

Trina Keith and Lisa Genoese presenting their poster.

The Annual Meeting of Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences was held 28-29 April 2010 in Rochester Minnesota. The meeting, which is held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the American Association of the History of Medicine (and its other affiliate organizations), focused on digitization and digital preservation. The keynote speaker, Steven Puglia (Preservation and Imaging Specialist at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) discussed the many issues surrounding successful digitization, including the necessity for standards, the kinds of equipment required, decision-making about metadata, data storage, and image preservation, and the costs of making and storing images. His detailed Powerpoint presentation is available on the ALHHS homepage.

The afternoon’s speakers continued the theme, as each discussed projects which used Twitter, Podcasts, Weblogs, or Facebook to showcase digital collections: Drew Bourn, at the Stanford University Medical Center, talked about displaying images on Flickr Commons. Michael Rhode, from the National Museum of Health and Medicine, discussed the impact of their Flickr website on image use, after the site was reviewed in Wired, and their use of a blog to further acquaint the public with their holdings.

The meeting also provided an opportunity for the participants to visit either the Mayo History of Medicine Library & Plummer Library or the Mayo Heritage Hall Museum.

The ACRL/NY librarians' special interest group on information literacy met in April to hear member presentations about embedded librarianship in academic libraries, and in particular distance learning. Along with a faculty member the embedded or blended librarian is deeply involved in the process of research and teaching. The four presenters came from SUNY Stony Brook, Westchester Community College, Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), and Adelphi University. The instruction was delivered either by using Adobe Connect or Blackboard.

One of the advantages of "distance" library instruction is that students don't have to go to the campus or the library to receive it. Also, if the presentation is recorded, you can "attend" the session at your convenience. Time and distance are often the problems encountered by non-traditional students. The drawbacks reported included technological problems, in particular the resolution of the transmission, and, curiously, the same thing that was a positive, namely instructing students from afar. There seemed to be a sense of disconnection, particularly when students could only ask questions via chat that had to be monitored by a different person from the instructor. One instructor actually felt that students preferred asking questions offline, even though they were set up to do this online.

HealthCampNYC, an unconference supported in part by the NYAM Library, was held Friday, May 14 at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. The main differences between a conference and an unconferance involve format. The event, which focused on health literacy, was attended by a variety of professionals interested in health literacy including librarians, public health professionals, health literacy volunteers and coordinators, and nurses. This was, in my opionion, one of the major strengths of the gathering - being able to hear about health literacy from so many different perspectives.

Topics covered included perceptions of health literacy from different organizations, training tools, models, best practices for staff, health literacy as it pertains to technology and seniors, health literacy and its relationship to health disparities, and community outreach. Of particular interest was the community outreach workshop. Challenges of outreach were discussed. Challenges voiced included the sustainability of relationships beyond one-time events, the trust that must be established for follow up, the fact that there are lots of basic legal rights that people don't understand, as well as perception that libraries still struggling to identify their role in health promotion/community partnerships.

Academic OneFile features coverage of peer-reviewed journals and references sources in the following subject areas: physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects. It also includes full text coverage of the New York Times from 1995 to the present. General OneFile features full-text access to news and periodical articles on a wide range of topics. Health Reference Center Academic provides access to the full text of nursing and allied health journals.

If you have questions about these or any of the Library's resources, please contact your Library Liaison or call the Reference Desk at x 7315.

This is from the preface: “PolicyLink and The Food Trust conducted this inquiry to summarize the existing evidence base, carefully reviewing more than 132 studies. We found that a large and consistent body of evidence supports what residents have long observed: many low-income communities, communities of color, and sparsely populated rural areas do not have sufficient opportunities to buy healthy, affordable food”.

The Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association, developed this guide which "follows a four-step approach to aid hospital leaders in their efforts to reduce avoidable readmissions."

Both these items have been collected for the Library's Grey Literature Report and are found in the library catalog.

We had two groups of interns, 27 in all, visit the Academy's Conservation Laboratory and Rare Book Room in April and May 2010. They were engaged, inquisitive, and asked good questions. To our delight, they were also wowed by the age of some of the materials. What makes this kind of event so unique is the fact that at NYAM young visitors can see really old manuscripts, printed books and other remarkable and valuable materials up close without the glass of an exhibit case intervening. This is not often the case at other special collections. To stand so close to history is an experience not often afforded those of high school age. Judging by the evaluations which were shared with us, they had a good and educational time of it, as did we. We hope that if the program continues to be funded, that visits to the NYAM Library will become an annual part of the program.

Pictures of the event, taken by the students, are on the program's blog.

Nora Kennedy, the Sherman Fairchild Conservator of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Peter Mustardo, a conservator and co-founder of The Better Image (a private photograph conservation studio), co-taught the course, covering topics including the technical history and identification of photographic processes (from those developed in the early decades of the nineteenth century through the more modern color processes); causes of degradation; as well as proper handling and storage. Because most of the workshop participants came from libraries where bound materials are the dominant format, an entire afternoon session was spent examining and discussing treatment options for historic albums and photographically illustrated books. Another particularly valuable session was dedicated to disaster recovery — an activity far too familiar to most library-based book conservators - during which participants disassembled frozen, water-logged albums, immersed the pages in water, and then separated and dried the photographs.

In addition to three full days of excellent hands-on experience, Ms. Kennedy and Mr. Mustardo provided the participants with a detailed bibliography of scholarly resources, which will no doubt aid them in making future preservation and conservation decisions that are both ethical and informed.