MAHSLIN Network News

The MAHSLIN Board will consider all nominations that are made by March 17, 2006.

MAHSLIN Partner Recognition

This year MAHSLIN formalized our partnership program to better reflect that our partners are not only important to us in putting together our annual meeting, but serve to support our mission throughout the year!

We greatly appreciate the support and look forward to working with our 2006 partners!

MAHSLIN EDUCATION UPDATE

RECENT EVENTS

Mary Piorun and Penny Glassman offered a terrific morning program on some PC maintenance issues and the Foxfire browser in one of the computer training rooms at U Mass Medical Center. Mary took us through some of the hardware options we might not use frequently such as disk cleanup and defragging the local hard drive. We also covered updating software and backing up data that included backing up only what is new. Mary also provided us a gadget demo that was very timely given the increasing number of journals and medical organizations offering podcasting. Penny took on computer protection from viruses, worms, spyware and other threats through the use of anti-virus software, anti-spyware software and Windows updates. She recommended WebJunction, as site specifically for computer security in libraries (http://www.webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=528). The class concluded with an introduction to Foxfire which included unique features such as tabbed browsing, searching from the toolbar and popup blocking.

MAHSLIN sponsored this recent MLA webcast, and the panel included several librarians: Jeannine Cyr Gluck, Judith Robinson and Lorri Zipperer. The webcast provided background information on the topic with an emphasis on the two Institute of Medicine reports: “To Err is Human” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm”. Along with a look at the current environment with an emphasis on JCAHO efforts, there was an interesting case study of how one hospital has created a culture of patient safety (Sentara Norfolk General Hospital). The librarians offered different perspectives on their role including Judith Robinson’s discussion of her library’s role with the medical school’s IRB. Expert searching plays a role as does educating the patient. A bibliography of the speakers’ favorite papers on the topic was provided in the manual.

The Boston site for the webcast also included a wrap-around session with Chris Fleuriel, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Julie Whelan, Mass. General Hospital, describing their roles in patient safety at their hospitals. Julie had several success stories to share about her patient safety role at the hospital. Currently, she writes a monthly newsletter on preventing medication errors. The initial distribution, which was to a group of ten pharmacy administrators, has grown to over 250 people. She initially approached the Pharmacy with this idea armed with JCAHO Medical Management standard 8.10 which reads, "The hospital identifies opportunities for improvement by routinely evaluating the literature for new technologies and successful practices that have been demonstrated to enhance the safety in other organization to determine if it can improve its own medication management system". You can check out the most recent issue of the newsletter at http://massgeneral.org/library/PME.pdf. Because of her work on the newsletter, Julie was subsequently invited to join the Medication Education Safety and Approval Committee. Her work on this committee includes helping them build a website. Julie also described her work for the Collaborative Governance Quality Improvement Committee. There is an application process to be accepted onto the committee, and Julie cited Michael Homan’s article, The Role of Medical Librarians in Reducing Medical Errors in her application (available at http://www.healthleaders.com/news/feature1.php?contentid=38058). She has found that she is doing a good deal of searching as the committee relies on her expertise in this area.

Chris Fleuriel recently started subscribing to the National Patient Safety Forum listserv (http://www.npsf.org/html/l-comm.html). Initially, she sent out an edited copy of the digest for the listserv to a nurse on the Patient Safety Committee but recently has added the head of the Center for Patient Safety.

There are many different ways librarians can and do contribute to the patient safety initiatives in their institutions. It just is a matter of determining what works best in your situation. As our colleagues can attest, taking that first step can lead to new partnerships for the library.

MAHSLIN members were invited to a presentation jointly sponsored by the Countway Medical Library and the affiliated hospital librarians on copyright with an emphasis on digital materials. Hope Tillman, Director, Libraries, Babson College was the speaker, and she covered a variety of topics including posting articles to a website, scanning images and emailing ILLs. Hope showed attendees different versions of the presentation she uses (depending on the audience) at her institution. Her library offers 2-3 programs a year on the topic and reminded attendees that regardless of the format the fair use guidelines are applicable. The TEACH Act which covers distance education was covered in this session as well and was a good review for those of us who need to be aware of its implications for satellite locations. Hope recommended checking www.loc.gov/search to look for a copyright holder. She also mentioned a small booklet on the topic which she finds very useful, "The Adoptable Copyright Policy - AECT". The Copyright Clearance Center also has information on its website including a "Campus Guide to Copyright Compliance" If you are interested in receiving a copy of Hope's presentation, please email Alison Clapp (Alison.clapp@childrens.harvard.edu) to request a copy.

2006 PROGRAMS

The Education Committee is working on upcoming programs:

• PubMed Update — This summer we will be offering the usual PubMed Update which will focus on Advanced searching techniques and tools.
• Evaluation Tools: Focus Groups and Surveys

The Education Committee is working on a class on these topics. We NEED your feedback. Are you interested in this topic? Would you prefer a half-day or a full-day course? The tentative location is the Hoagland Pincus Conference Center in Shrewsbury.

Please let us know how we are doing, and let us know hear from you about courses you would like to see!

Celebrating Mass Eye and Ear Libraries 25th Anniversary with a Tribute to the "Friends of the Library"

About 15 years ago, a few years after the original cutbacks that hit hospitals and hospital libraries so hard in the 1980’s, one of our library committee members suggested that we start a Friends of the Libraries Fund and solicit medical staff and others who might be willing to support the library in difficult times. We are lucky in that our hospital does allow departments to do this. I had a hard time selling Girl Scout cookies so asking for money was a difficult idea for me to buy in to. Nonetheless, we were very concerned about finances so I decided it would be worth a try. I wrote a letter and ran it by a friend in Development who improved it considerably. The letter discussed the financial situation, the libraries' needs, progress in the past year and plans for the next year. It went out to the entire medical staff and a few others who were heavy library users, and, amazingly, checks began to arrive. People whom I never expected to hear from and some I didn’t know at all donated, and some who were heavy users didn’t give a penny. I wrote a personal thank you to every donor. We netted about $15,000 that first year which may seem insignificant, but it covered things like staff education, meetings and a computer that we couldn’t afford any other way. We were able to save about $11,000 of the $15,000 and thus build up our rainy day fund. In the second year we sent out to the entire staff again to give non-donors a second chance. The letter was much easier to write the second time and when the non-donors didn’t give the second year, we realized we were probably wasting time and postage on them and dropped them from our list. Some years we offered free library services or a book bookplated with their name. Most years we offered nothing and it didn’t seem to make any difference at all. Regular donors kept giving and rarely stopped.

We try to keep track of graduates from around the country who were heavy users while they were here or who call us up after graduation to ask a favor. They are usually so grateful for our help that they respond when the letter comes. Amazingly, three of our best donors (over $1,000/year) are from Maine, Texas and South Dakota. They request absolutely nothing from us and were not exceptionally heavy library users when they were here. Most others give $100 - $200. In the 14 years we have been doing this, we have been given a little over $260,000. Depending on the year, it has been used for meetings, on-line journals, unbudgeted salaries (weekend), computers and other hardware, a library booklet containing access information for the on-line journals, unexpected repairs or opportunities that needed a fast infusion of funding. Some years we are able to save a little, and many years we spend every penny, especially lately when we have had to use the fund to pay for essentials. At this point we have a surplus of about $40,000 in an interest bearing account making a little more for us. The on-line journals are making a big dent, and I don’t know how much longer we can keep this surplus.

Last spring one of our donors suggested that we consider hosting an occasional tea on Friday afternoons, with a guest who might be of interest to a range of people. His idea was that a special invitation would go out to Friends of the Libraries donors, and others who wanted to come could also attend. I was hard pressed to think of someone who would be of great interest to many people, but hit upon our Dr. Wiedman who is an Infirmary character and regular library user. He is over 80 years old, has been the team doctor on five Everest expeditions where he has done research on high altitude sickness and is a photographer who has had many exhibitions including one in Paris. I no sooner asked him and he accepted than he decided that the whole tea idea was silly and that we should make it an evening event with printed invitations and a reception with wine and elegant food. That sounded like a lot more work and expense, but we saw his point. While working on the invitations, we realized that if we put it off until 2006 (it had been planned for November, 2005) we could make it a combination 20th anniversary of the new library and a tribute to the Friends of the Libraries. It was slowly becoming a much bigger deal than originally planned, but our speaker was enthused and we decided that this could be the grand kickoff event for other smaller ones to follow. As it took shape we saw it as an overall public relations gesture to thank the many people who had contributed time and effort to building the "new" library and the Friends of the Libraries who had been helping us stay viable. Since Dr. Wiedman planned to emphasize the libraries' contribution to his research into the talk, we felt it would also be an event to call attention to the library among the general hospital population including managers and a chance to get our message out to trustees.

The invitations were our first challenge, going from a simple library produced version to a Copy Cop printed one with a photograph of Dr. Wiedman examining a climber’s eye, Everest in the background, and a complete list of every donor to the Friends of the Libraries. Public Affairs helped with the formatting and made my job much easier. We ordered 500 for mailing to the Friends of the Libraries, in-house staff, researchers, leadership group, trustees, others who would have an interest in the speaker and outside friends of Dr. Wiedman. The list of things that went wrong at this step is a how to on how not to do it. None of us noticed that the R.S.V.P. didn’t give a phone number so we had to make up a card to insert after the fact. When the invitations came back from Copy Cop on a snowy Friday in December, an unknown person signed for them and they disappeared for a few days. They were found and delivered several days later, but not until we lived through several days of panic. We still cannot figure out who signed for them. Then, due to reductions in mail room staff and some passive aggressive action on part of the remaining staff, many of the invitations were not delivered. In one department to which five invitations were sent, only one was received. As we waited for the R.S.V.P.'s, I asked people as I saw them if they were coming and they either said they never received an invitation, or, almost worse, they hadn’t R.S.V.P.'d but of course they were coming, as if I should know this. This total chaos in responses meant that I had no idea of how much food to plan for. In the end we had 45 R.S.V.P.'s and 112 people came. The good news was that I overbought on food and we had plenty. The bad news was that the food was expensive and having to overbuy to be safe meant that we spent several hundred dollars more than necessary.

We used a caterer for the nice finger food and desserts, and we augmented this with cheese, fruit and other treats from our newly arrived Whole Foods store on Cambridge Street. I had planned to keep wine and water cold in my car in the Infirmary parking lot until the last minute, but it was probably the warmest January 11 on record and not even close to cold. I couldn’t ask to put the drinks in the hospital refrigerator because we hadn’t used our very expensive hospital caterers. Needless to say, the white wine and sparkling water were tepid.

Several days before the reception Dr. Wiedman brought in many of his exhibit photographs for display in the Library where the reception was to be held. They were good advertising for the talk and were of great interest for many of the guests at the reception. We photographed his photos and made posters to advertise the event.

At the event itself, I spoke for a few minutes and thanked both the people who had been donating to the Friends and those who had given time and money to the new library twenty years before. Unfortunately, many of the latter were deceased or too ill to come, but at least they were acknowledged and remembered. A long time colleague of his choice introduced Dr. Wiedman. Dr. Wiedman’s talk lasted about 10 minutes longer than expected, but he was interesting enough that no one seemed to mind. At the reception he held court and answered questions about climbing, Tibet, China, the various expeditions he’d been on and his research. People at the reception seemed to have really enjoyed his talk although several wished he’d spoken more about his medical findings related to climbing. The reception was expected to last about an hour but was still going strong after two with people obviously enjoying themselves.

I certainly learned from doing this and feel like it would be no big deal to do it again. I think my biggest regret was not having any control over the delivery of the invitations. I know there were hurt feelings even though I assured people that they had been invited and urged them to come. In the last week we sent out a hospital wide e-mail and put up several posters with an invitation to come, but for many it was too late to make plans. This was a shame as those who came said they had a great time really enjoyed the speaker. Short of calling all 497 people who were sent invitations, I’m not sure how we could have been sure people had actually received their invitations.

The process of sending out the invitation (with the Friends of the Libraries listed) jogged several people who hadn’t donated in a few years to send a check, so we almost broke even. In retrospect, I’m very glad that we did this. It brought a little excitement to the library for the benefit of both the staff and invitees. It gave everyone involved an enjoyable project to work on. There were plenty of problems, but they were at least different from our regular problems. We had to use the help of various departments we don’t normally work much with, and I was amazed at how helpful they were. The photography exhibit looked so good that we are thinking of hosting a revolving exhibit of staff works in limited number as a public relations project. We will definitely do something like this in the future, perhaps as an annual event, and I expect it will be much easier the second time around. The hardest part will be finding another interesting speaker on a par with Dr. Wiedman. All in all, it was very worthwhile and a really good public relations event.

MASSCAT—Unusual, Unique, Unexpected
http://catalog.masscat.org

When you don’t have a needed book in your collection and wonder if any other Massachusetts health science libraries have it and be willing to lend it, you might be able to find a lender through the MassCat online catalog.

MassCat is a shared catalog of a group of diverse libraries throughout the state. There are currently 141 members, consisting of school, medical, historical, trial court, public and special libraries. The catalog contains 605,000 bibliographic records that reference 1,200,000 holdings. Through the support of the regional library systems and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, many small libraries have been able to easily implement access to this online catalog with inter-library loan capabilities.

MassCat currently contains the holdings of 22 hospital libraries. Although many of the materials contained in the catalog are for "Reference" use only, most hospital libraries are willing to photocopy sections of needed resources. For MassCat members, loans can be placed online through the systems. For other libraries, loans can be initiated through the regional ILL centers, or by calling the owning library directly.

MassCat is also an unexpected resource to find out about unique collections that are held in libraries throughout the State. The National Fire Protection Association collection contains current and historical Fire and Building Codes. Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School Instructional Media Center has a collection that is rich in materials on topics as diverse as designing business plans, digital animation, and household surfaces. The historical societies have extensive manuscript collections, rich in material on family and local history.

While some of the more specialized and intriguing materials cannot be taken out of the libraries, MassCat member libraries are committed to sharing their resources. The catalog can be searched at: http://catalog.masscat.org

Update—Center on Media and Child Health

The Center on Media and Child Health (CMCH) at Children’s Hospital Boston has been creating the first online database of literature on (what else but…) media and child health. Scientific research has investigated topics such as whether violent video games really cause violence in players; how educational television programs help children learn to read; how young women’s body image is influenced by celebrities; and other health issues including media’s influence on obesity, sleep patterns, attention span, etc. Since this research has been done in as many as ten academic disciplines, many researchers are not aware of the broad scope of the literature, leading to duplicative research over the years. Collecting the literature into one database is the first step in bringing this historically multidisciplinary field to an interdisciplinary one.

The CMCH Database of Research is available at http://www.cmch.tv and currently contains over 900 citations. The majority of the citations online are focused on media violence, since that is the most substantive area to date. However, the database is a continual work in progress and new citations are added every week. There are three search interfaces available: simple search, advanced search, and Smart Search, where a user can enter a query in natural language. Over 500 people have tried our Smart Search engine; here are some of the questions they asked:

• Should reading and television together be encouraged?
• Do video games affect children's learning abilities?
• What is the impact of the media on adolescent sexual attitudes and behaviors?
• Can parents prevent children from experiencing unwanted effects of violent television?

Brandy King, the Information Specialist for CMCH, will be speaking about the CMCH Database of Research and its search technology at the MAHSLIN annual meeting on Friday, April 28th, 2006.

Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Medical Library Celebrates National Medical Librarians Month

Library Assistant Meaghan Muir, assisted by Alison Bozzi Zaya and Julia Whelan created an informative display to publicize the medical library’s resources and services. On October 28, the library hosted a table outside the hospital cafeteria during the busy 11-2 lunch hour. In exchange for a sweet, visitors were asked to fill out a slip with a comment or suggestion for the library. Popular giveaways included pens, bookmarks, and a brochure. The recently created subject pathfinders were so popular they had to be restocked. A smaller version of the display graced the library circulation desk earlier in the month.

The National Medical Librarians month event is part of a marketing and outreach campaign recently begun by the library. The campaign aims to educate hospital staff and encourage them to use the library.

Photo: Meaghan Muir beside the SRH Library display which included bios of the library staff, pathfinders, bookmarks, and "comment for a candy".

New Members

Announcements

Training Program on National Library of Medicine Environmental Health Resources
Contact your local regional library system office for more information on these training sessions. The Informed Communities project is funded by NNLM-NER and trains community health professionals, youth leaders and librarians on NLM’s environmental health resources.

Get Published in the MAHSLIN Network News!

Send your news to Michelle Eberle, MAHSLIN Newsletter Editor, at michelle.eberle@umassmed.edu.

Thanks to all of our contributors for their articles! Anne Fladger Margo Coletti Nathan Norris Alison Clapp Jeanie Vander Pyl Chris Nims Brandy King Julie Whelan Kathy McCarthy

This site is hosted by the RML at the UMass Medical Center. MAHSLIN is solely responsible for its content.