Geeks Bearing Gifts is a course designed to get you thinking about how new and evolving web technologies can transform your library’s services and your own professional development. Geeks will be offered at beautiful Bastyr University in Kenmore, Washington on Thursday, March 27 from 8:30 to noon. The course is approved for 4 hours of MLA CE credit.

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Date: March 11, 2008

To: Washington State Health Sciences Librarians

From: Sherrilynne Fuller, Director, Health Sciences Libraries and Associate
Dean, University Libraries, University of Washington

Re: WSMA questionnaire

On March 5, the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) sent out a web-based questionnaire to its membership that was developed by WSMA, the University of Washington Health Sciences Library, and the RML.

The survey is designed to assess physician information needs, their use of online clinical resources, and their familiarity with PubMed and other NLM resources. It also asks about interest in training about NLM resources, while noting that many excellent additional resources are available to those physicians who have privileges at hospitals with librarians. Based on the response, the RML hopes to offer NLM training sessions, in conjunction with WSMA functions around the state.

Since you may be getting questions about the survey, I wanted to alert you to it, and provide a copy of a PDF version of the questionnaire.

The survey introduction refers to a project in development (HEAL-WA) that will be an online clinical resource to provide evidence-based healthcare information to participating licensed health professionals in Washington State beginning in 2009. The HEAL-WA project will provide access to eligible users via a variety of online health information including selected full-text journals, databases and ebooks via a “portal” (that will be separate from — and more limited than — the Healthlinks portal provided to UW faculty, staff and students). HEAL-WA is being developed in accordance with the 2007 action of the Washington State Legislature, and will be funded by special license fees from participating professionals, including registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, physicians, physician assistants, osteopathic physicians, osteopathic physicians’ assistants, naturopaths, podiatrists, chiropractors, psychologists, optometrists, mental health counselors, massage therapists, clinical social workers, and acupuncturists. More information about the HEAL-WA project is at http://nnlm.gov/pnr/dragonfly/category/washington-senate-bill-5930/.

Valerie Lawrence is working on initial design of the HEAL-WA portal. There will be an update at the WMLA meeting, end of March.

We really look forward to results from the WSMA survey and will certainly be sharing what is learned with all of you.

April 7, 2008 will be an important day for scholarly communication. All NIH-funded research articles accepted for publication on or after April 7 must be deposited in PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine’s free archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

This and other changes to the NIH Public Access Policy will significantly expand public access to publicly funded research. Librarians at universities and other research organizations have an important role to play in facilitating institutional compliance with the new rules.

The Association of Research Libraries has developed a Guide for Research Universities to aid understanding of how the policy changes will be implemented. This resource includes guidance for negotiating author/publisher agreements and submitting manuscripts to PubMed Central. The Institutional Responses section outlines appropriate roles for investigators, research administrators, legal counsel, and librarians. The Resources section lists examples of several universities’ approaches to communication about the policy.

Does your web content suck? If not, maybe it should.

Web usability pioneer Jared Spool delivered the keynote address “Why Good Content Must Suck: Designing for the Scent of Information” at the Online Northwest 25^th Annual Conference last Friday in Corvallis, Oregon. Here are some key points from Spool’s presentation. Keep these concepts in mind when developing your own web content or evaluating third party web resources for your library.

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EFTS, the Electronic Fund Transfer System used to debit and credit member accounts for the cost of interlibrary loans, was started in 1996 and currently has over 1200 participants.  There are now EFTS libraries in each of the 50 states, Canada, and Mexico.  In developing the service over the past 12 years, EFTS staff has had the opportunity to listen to many librarians who have raised questions, issue and concerns regarding EFTS.  Here are some of the more frequent questions and answers: Read more »

Have you ever wondered which blogs (other than the Dragonfly, of course) you should be reading? What about new journal articles? Podcasts? LibWorm can help you decide where to focus your attention. LibWorm is a search engine for library-related RSS* feeds. Feeds are organized into useful categories such as Medical Librarianship, Academic Libraries, and even Humor. You can subscribe to a whole category or browse for individual sources. A simple search box lets you get a quick sense of what the “blogosphere” has to say about a topic. You can even generate custom RSS feeds based on your searches. Read more »