by Judith Kammerer, MLIS, MA, AHIP
Medical Librarian/Manager
UCSF Fresno and Community Regional Medical Center
Fresno, CA

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has organized an annual summit on translational bioinformatics (TBI) since 2008. I was fortunate to attend the 2013 Summit, which took place in San Francisco, CA, on March 18-20, 2013. This was made possible by an NN/LM PSR Professional Development Award, that supports hospital librarians in attending continuing education workshops and conferences. (more…)

October is National Medical Librarians Month (NMLM)! Highlighting the fact that medical librarians are the best and most cost effective way to obtain quality health information, this year’s NMLM theme is “Medical Librarians: Your Best Return on Investment!” In honor of this event, we are recognizing the contributions of medical librarians by promoting Network member outreach projects. (more…)

Introduction

The increased attention to managing research data during the past few years, along with the adoption of national and international policies for data archiving and sharing, has made data curation a hot topic! The latest webinar from the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), Metadata for Managing Scientific Research Data, provides an overview of why metadata is important, what to consider when selecting a metadata standard, and tips for getting involved with data curation for the first time. (more…)

We extend our thanks and appreciation to everyone who participated in the recent RML questionnaire! We received nearly 140 responses, with information and valuable feedback that will enable us to continue to improve our programs and services to meet the needs of Network members. Overall, we were encouraged to see results suggesting that our work does make a difference for health sciences librarians and information centers in the region. Two illustrative examples include over 91% of respondents agreeing that the RML helped them obtain access to information resources, and more than 97% agreed that the RML makes them aware of relevant regional activities. (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…)

On April 18, 2012, Julie Kwan was named the 2012 MLGSCA Louise Darling Achievement Award recipient at the MLGSCA Business Meeting. (more…)

Data collection for reportable diseases and epidemics has always been a focus for local, state, and federal health agencies in the US, and of great interest to health science librarians. In recent years, a key government initiative has been to “put public health data to work” and make it as transparently available as possible to any interested entity or individual, with the larger goal of free and easy access to the vast reservoir of data, in order to improve the nation’s health. Following this trend, on February 9, 2012, the Public Health Practice Committee of the International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) hosted the webinar Public Health Surveillance in the Internet Cloud: The BioSense 2.0 Experience, featuring two key presenters. The inital segment of the webinar, with speaker Jeff Barr from Amazon, introduced basic principles of cloud computing and related security issues. The second speaker, Mike Alletto, a member of the BioSense 2.0 Redesign Team, provided a schematic of the BioSense 2.0 environment, including details regarding data storage and transmission. The presentation, including the electronic slides, was recorded and archived for viewing. (more…)

by Stephen Kiyoi, Second Year NLM Associate Fellow
NN/LM Pacific Southwest Region
UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library

On January 18, 2012, the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library hosted Carly Strasser, Ph.D., for an enlightening talk on data management in scientific research. Carly’s work at DataONE and the California Digital Library (CDL), as well as her doctoral education in Biological Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, give her a unique perspective on challenges of scientific data management. In addition to explaining her own work, Carly gave an excellent background on the cultural and technical issues in data archiving, sharing, and publication. The following is a detailed summary of Carly’s talk. Her presentation is also accessible on SlideShare. (more…)

E-Science Day, a day-long program organized by the University of California, Davis, and funded by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Southwest Region, was held on Tuesday, December 6, 2011, at the Medical Education Building of the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California. The event was conducted in a blended format—available both in-person and via web conference, featuring a keynote address and panel presentation; lightning rounds, and afternoon break-out sessions. The aim of the event planners was to educate regional librarians in the subject of e-science, why librarians should care about it, and how they can begin supporting it at their own libraries and institutions. Over 100 attendees participated in the event either virtually or in-person. (more…)