We would like to thank everyone who participated in our 2012 Learning Needs Assessment Survey! More than 200 responses were received, and it is very encouraging to see such strong interest in staying abreast of the emerging areas in our rapidly changing field! Your passion was clearly evident regarding such topics as implementing cultures of evidence-based medicine in your institutions, cultivating health literacy with patrons, and assisting researchers with informatics, scholarly communication, and data curation. (more…)

by Lisa Federer
Health and Life Sciences Librarian
UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library

On May 16, 2012, the UCLA Library held a panel discussion entitled Data Curation in Action, designed to introduce librarians to the real-life challenges that researchers face in working with their research data. “Data” and “eResearch” are quickly becoming hot topics in libraries, and librarians have a great deal of knowledge and experience relevant to supporting researchers’ data needs, but many librarians lack a concrete sense of what exactly researchers’ data look like. This panel discussion was designed to introduce librarians and others interested in data curation to the many types of data researchers use and the challenges they face. Four panelists were selected to represent the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. (more…)

by Lynn Kysh
Department of Information Studies student
UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

During the 2012 spring quarter, I had the opportunity to intern with the Pacific Southwest Regional Medical Library. For the past ten weeks, I’ve taken on three projects: a training session on MedlinePlus for medical social workers, a webinar focused on resources for sexual violence survivors, and a project modifying an existing curriculum, which instructs senior adults how to find and evaluate online health resources for a low literacy population. These projects all complement my interest in providing instruction services, and my growing commitment to health literacy. (more…)