The GMR Office and the UIC Library of the Health Sciences are both back open for business as of 9:30 a.m. this morning.

We sincerely hope that the winter storm did not create too much disruption to the flow of health information over the past few days.

The UIC Library of the Health Sciences, including the office of the NN/LM Greater Midwest Region, will close at 6 pm today.  We are uncertain at this time about when the Library will reopen.

The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued a Blizzard Warning in effect from 3:00 pm today, Tuesday, February 1, 2011, to 3 pm Wednesday, February 2nd.  Snow accumulations in excess of a foot are expected over much of our Greater Midwest Region.  Northwest winds of 25 to 40 mph with stronger gusts will result in blizzard and white-out conditions.

We are aware that similar conditions are forecast throughout the Midwest region.  We will keep you posted as best we can through GMRLIST, our blog, the GMR Facebook page, and the GMR homepage: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/.

We have alerted our sister region, the Pacific Southwest Region, headquartered at UCLA, about our weather situation. If necessary, they will be assisting us with DOCLINE changes and other backup support.

Stay safe everyone.

National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC) classes are coming to Chicago April 13-15, 2011. Attend these FREE hands-on classes on PubMed® (April 13), TOXNET® (April 14) and Gateway (April 15) offered through the National Library of Medicine. The University of Illinois at Chicago Library of the Health Sciences will host these sessions taught by the staff of the NTCC. They will be held in Room 303 of the Library of the Health Sciences at 1750 W. Polk St., Chicago, IL. Register here or read on for details. (more…)

The holiday preparations look especially bright and appealing this year, perhaps in contrast to the blanketing of snow that we have enjoyed so far this winter. Economic reports for retail are improving, with expenditures five percent above what they were at this time last year.

The positive trend for holiday shopping is good news for consumers and the businesses that cater to their wants and needs. Unfortunately, such a positive view cannot be transferred to the current economic state of affairs affecting health sciences and hospital libraries in the GMR, especially in our publicly funded institutions.  Revenue shortfalls at the state and local level are having a significant impact on staffing and accessibility of information resources at our member organizations.

In addition to position elimination, ongoing hiring freezes, and non–renewal of licenses and subscriptions, institutions are showing the strain by reorganizing and combining libraries and their constituent units and by repurposing space for non-library, revenue-producing functions.  Such strategies reduce the accessibility of information resources.  For example, when the ILL unit is combined with its general university counterpart, the importance of using DOCLINE for transacting ILL and of keeping SERHOLD records up-to-date to facilitate DOCLINE may diminish.  When library stacks are repurposed for patient or student functions, legacy print collections may be the first to go to free up space for these new functions.

The GMR is attempting to take a proactive stance to soften the long-term impact of reduced budgets on our membership. The E-licensing Working Group of the Regional Advisory Council (RAC), in collaboration with the Midwest Collaborative for Library Services serving as agent for consortial licensing by hospital and smaller academic libraries, identified two candidates for selection in 2010. The GMR convened an ILL task force to review trends, issues, and factors that affect ILL services and to make recommendations on ways to improve this essential function. The task force met with NLM representatives to convey their suggestions for DOCLINE enhancements. (more…)

By Ruth Holst
Associate Director
NN/LM GMR

Both university and health sciences libraries (HSLs) are feeling pressure with regard to their collection space, with other campus units pressing them to remove print materials and release the space those collections occupy for other uses. Many HSLs have already begun to withdraw print materials that they have available in electronic format. Large resource libraries (RLs) that have not yet taken this step are concerned that they will become the preserver of print collections by default.  Hospital libraries are concerned that they will lose access to needed materials within the region.  NLM is concerned with similar issues as they apply to the medical literature in general and to health sciences libraries nationally. (more…)

Photo Credit

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is pleased to announce that it will be hosting NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) Discovery Workshops focusing on biomedical and genomic databases this December. This free two-day series of workshops on NCBI tools will be held at UIC on December 15-16, 2010.  Register at: http://tinyurl.com/NCBIWorkshops

Program Overview
The Discovery Workshops consist of four 2.5-hour hands-on sessions emphasizing a different set of NCBI resources. Each session uses specific examples to highlight important features of the resources and tools under study and to demonstrate how to accomplish common tasks.

The four sessions of the Discovery Workshop will focus on the following areas:
1. Sequences, Genomes and Maps
2. Proteins, Domains and Structures
3. NCBI BLAST Services
4. Human Variation and Disease Genes

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We at the GMR are pleased to sponsor webcast sites across our region for the November 10, 2010, MLA Webcast: ABCs of E-books: Strategies for the Medical Library , broadcast Wednesday from 1:00 p.m.–2:30 p.m., Central Time. The agenda includes: Overview of electronic books management, Selection and acquisition process, and
Management issues for e-book collections.

The complete list of recipients of the GMR sponsored webcast sites is available at: http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/webcastrecipients.html.

Find more information about this webcast and additional site locations at: http://www.mlanet.org/education/distance_ed/ebooks/.

Please contact the site directly if you wish to attend.

The GMR is again offering to sponsor a number of sites for the upcoming MLA Webcast: “ABCs of E-books: Strategies for the Medical Library” to be held on Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., central time

Visit:
http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/mlawebcast.html
for detailed information on how to become a sponsored site. (more…)

The E-Licensing Working Group of the RAC has reviewed the findings from the questionnaire that was sent out to GMR members in May.   Along with choosing 3 products that had high interest from members, the group also has determined some next steps.   Onward!

(more…)