Papers in Moonlight D: Part II

On Wednesday in Moonlight D, we heard from four different librarians/groups of librarians:

Yvonne Mills represented the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center and discussed that library's effort to promote their collection using their collection development policy. It's a really cool idea and definitely something I'd like to look into a my library. The library increased the percentage of Doody's Core Titles they had in their collection and tried out a token system (with Wiley) in the process.

I shared my insights on conducting library website usability tests using free or low-cost resources; something we're currently working on at my library. I was very happy to have an opportunity to share my thoughts with my colleagues within the Southern Chapter.

Rebecca Harrington discussed how she successfully implemented a proxy system so that patrons of her hospital library could access resources off-site and made use of a number of cloud-based tools (such as LibGuides) to improve the look and usability of her library's web presence. She did all this despite a number of obstacles and challenges. Creativity goes a long way!

Although I'm not a systems librarian, I enjoyed listening to some of our colleagues from Georgia describe their state system's plans to switch to a "next gen" shared ILS. They're still in the midst of finalizing their report, but it's great to hear that they have this opportunity to move to a newer, more efficient and more robust system. There's a lot to consider when taking such a big step.

I wish I could have attended all the paper presentations! There were such interesting-sounding projects among the sessions I didn't get the chance to drop in on.

Papers in Moonlight D: Part I

I spent my time in Moonlight D for both days of papers. Many interesting thoughts, ideas, and anecdotes were shared.

Session I:

Several librarians from Georgia Regents University discussed their endeavor to develop an evaluation tool for measuring the effectiveness of embedded librarianship programs and initiatives. What really struck me was the results of their survey of health sciences librarians; a good majority of librarians consider themselves to be embedded in some form or another but not very many are assessing these efforts. There is a great need for an assessment tool. I look forward to hearing more on this topic in the future.

Lin Wu did a qualitative review of her library's Ask-A-Librarian email service, analyzing and coding each question received through the service in a single year. She shared several graphs depicted the most commonly requests and the least common requests from each major library user groups (faculty, students, clinicians, etc.). Most patrons used the email service to request (specific) articles. I was impressed by the wealth of data she gathered using this method and would like to consider doing something similar with my library's reference statistics.

Cindy Yu and Jessica Whipple from the University of Southern Mississippi present their grant-funded work to identify the information needs of public health professionals in Mississippi. After surveying working professionals within the state and inviting current students to discuss their needs in focus groups, they created a LibGuide of fantastic resources and Dr. Yu developed a public health informatics course.

Clista Clanton from the University of South Alabama Biomedical Library described a collaborative project that has enabled her institution's health professionals students to engage in hands-on interactive learning with one another. This interprofessional education program has evolved into a student-run clinic at a Mobile homeless shelter - a collaborative organization that includes future nurses, PAs, social workers, speech pathologists, and etc. Such cool and rewarding work!

Expanding Roles in Medicine

Many of us are doing wonderful work in expanding our presence in the hospital, medical schools and communities.  During the second paper session on Wednesday, October 29, Moonlight E there were a number of idea generating papers presented.  I am presenting my notes on three.

Medical Students Making an Evidence-Based Impact - Emily Brenanan - MUSC
- Evidence Based Practice Center   is a collaboration between the Library and Quality Improvement Dept in the Hopsital
- To make EBP more relevant to the students a 12 week interprofessional EBP course was motified for a semester long course for medical students
     - 10 clinical topics choosen based on current hospital needs
     - 2-6 PICO questions available per clinical topic
     - Clinical scenarios are developed based on the clinical areas of need and assigned to small groups of students.
     - Student groups create the PICO, do the search of the litearture, appraise findings and present to the hospital quality improvement.
     - Librarian oversees all aspects to ensure quality work, by meeting with student groups, monitoring RefWorks account, etc.
     -  Finished projects will be turned into order sets in the Electronic Health Record

Curriculum 2.0 Redesign: A Library's Participatory Approach to Evidence Integration - Megan Clancy - Vanderbilt
- Librarians involved in two weeks of new curriculum, began this Fall 2014
- Spend time teaching about indexing and controlled vocabulary to help students understand how PubMed searches differently then Google and what they will receive as results.
- Using JAMA Evidence as base for teaching Evidence-Based Medicine

Construsting a Role on a College of Medicine's Rural Clinical Rotation - Rick Wallace -
- Required community rotation for medical students
- Librarians visit every six weeks to review statistics data, etc
- One hour evidence training class
- Students are required to participate in health fairs
  - Library became involved in health fairs to help distribute information
- Information grant received to support clinic in the area

Poster Session II

The 2^nd poster session of our conference was just as varied and interesting as the first. Authors had interested members around their posters asking questions and dialoguing about how they could use information from the poster in their setting. Again, I didn’t have a chance to speak to everyone, but made sure to make note of who I’d email later with questions. In this post I’ll cover 2 of the posters that I found most interesting.

 

The poster titled “Is having your library in the cloud enough? Impact of new library space in a large hospital system” was very interesting and could be useful to hospital libraries or academic libraries with small branch campuses. I spoke with Carrie Figueredo who told me that they found that even though services were offered to all hospitals in the system having a physical space greatly increased the usage of library services. They focused on the opening of physical spaces in 2 facilities and measured the number of literature searches and documents delivered. Could this information help libraries that are in danger of being closed? I plan on keeping an eye on these authors and other librarians who are looking at this topic to find what the future holds.

 

I also spoke with M.J. Tooey about the poster that she and Alexa Mayo displayed titled “A curriculum to reduce community health disparities.” The poster showcased a curriculum designed by the authors that was intended to teach and build upon the skills of students to reduce health disparities. This structure and idea seems like it would work well with not only high school students at charter schools, but those in other rural areas, at an undergraduate institution, and maybe those interested in public health at other levels of education. The curriculum has 6 modules with 19 standalone lessons and was designed so that each module could stand alone. Module topics range from Crafting and Delivering the Message to Taking Charge of Your Health. Authors have made the curriculum freely available online and ask that those who use it simply provide feedback about how it worked, if they changed anything, and the population that they worked with. I plan to use this curriculum in my local community and hope that you’ll reach out to the authors if you’d be interested in learning more information about the curriculum.

Poster Session I

This first poster session had a variety of posters and all authors were eager to share their knowledge with colleagues. I didn't have a chance to speak with all authors, but I did get to speak with a few of them and two topics stood out to me.

I spoke with Darra Ballance about her poster titled "For the mouths of babes: nutrition literacy outreach to a child care center." Most outreach that I've read about have dealt with clinics or faith based organizations and this one took a different take on who they reached out to. I loved that she and Dr. Webb worked with child care workers and gave them the tools they need to make healthy decisions about the food given to children at their center. Board books about nutrition were given to children to take home and iPads were given to the workers to use for a variety of things, including looking up nutritional information on appropriate websites such as MedlinePlus. This project is replicable and could be used with child care centers who work with underserved populations throughout the south.

The other poster that stood out to me was "Strategic marketing for university libraries" by Kim Mears and Renee Sharrock. Kim was very open to questions and shared information about how her library rebranded itself and started their marketing plan. I'm not sure how many libraries in our chapter have marketing plans, but always think we can do a better job of engaging users - especially since we get new users every year. Kim shared with me her thoughts on marketing and it's impact on library use, as well as what steps she thinks her library will take in the future. The University Libraries Marketing Committee also created a LibGuide that discusses their marketing plan and templates. This could be very helpful for all libraries, but has great information for libraries who which to start a marketing plan. 

Round Tables and Dine Arounds

One of the things I like most about library conferences is meeting and chitchatting with others in between formal presentations. Adding food and/or coffee to mix is even better.

Today at the round table lunch we enjoyed both great conversation and food. The topics were: professional development, staff and services, technology, and research. A volunteer recorder at each table took minutes and discussed their work in a friendly and relaxed environment. I sat at the professional development table and, though we sometimes veered off-topic, I got some great ideas and advice from my colleagues. 

Attendees also had the opportunity to sign-up for dine arounds at the hospitality table. A few choice locales' lists filled up quickly, but it seemed everyone who wanted to participate had the opportunity to. I was part of the large group of attendees who went to The Royal Scam, a great restaurant just a few blocks away from the Battlehouse. We enjoyed great food while discussing the events of the day.

Welcome & General Session

I have not read Dr. Sherri Fink's book Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, but after hearing her speak this morning I'm inclined to run out and buy (or check out) a copy. Dr. Fink is currently in Liberia chronicling the Ebola outbreak there for the New York Times, so she addressed the group today via live stream. She discussed the difficulties Memorial Hospital in New Orleans experienced during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the midst of the disaster, hospital staff faced a number of practical and ethical dilemmas. Dr. Fink also discussed various New York hospitals' response to similar vulnerabilities and issues during Hurricane Sandy - including the lessons they learned from hearing about Katrina. We learned that creativity, flexibility, and communication play an important role in disaster response. All in all, it was an engaging and thought-provoking start to this year's meeting.