Our new contract year began Tuesday, May 1, 2012, and the biggest change involved RML leadership roles. Alan Carr is now the Acting Associate Director for the NN/LM Pacific Southwest Region. He is an excellent candidate for this role, having worked with both RML Network Programs and Outreach Programs, including NN/LM membership, instruction for health professionals and public health workers, exhibits, and management of outreach funding. Former Associate Director Julie Kwan is neither gone nor forgotten! She has assumed the position of Associate Director of the UCLA Biomedical Library and the Science and Engineering Library. This role includes operational responsibility for the Biomedical Library, and she will serve as UCLA’s representative to the PSR Resource Library Directors group. The reason for this change was budgetary, and will allow the RML to continue a robust program for the region, with substantial training, funding, and outreach programs. (more…)

By Vicki Burchfield
Department of Information Studies student
UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

During the winter quarter, 2012, UCLA Department of Information Studies student Vicki Burchfield completed an internship with the Regional Medical Library. Through her previous work as a Public Service Assistant at the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, Ms. Burchfield had experience with answering reference questions and researching subject guides. Upon completion of her internship, Ms. Burchfield wrote the following summary reflecting upon her experience and the lessons learned during the process of researching and creating an online subject guide for the Clinical Social Work Department at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center. (more…)

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

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

My name is Lynn Kysh and I am excited to be joining the Pacific Southwest Regional Medical Library for my internship during the 2012 Spring Quarter. (more…)

by Kathleen Carlson, MLS, AHIP
Arizona Health Sciences Library, Phoenix Campus
University of Arizona, College of Medicine

On April 3, 2012, more than 600 of the best and brightest young scientific minds were present at the 2012 Arizona Science and Engineering Fair (AzSEF) in downtown Phoenix. The University of Arizona, College of Medicine, Arizona Health Sciences Library (AHSL) was represented by Yamila El-Khayat, Outreach Librarian, Tucson Campus; and Kathleen Carlson, Education Librarian, Phoenix Campus. The librarians demonstrated National Library of Medicine resources, including PubMed and MedlinePlus, using iPads. (more…)

By Monica Garcia, MA, MLIS
Health and Life Sciences Librarian
UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, Los Angeles

Linda Rosenstock, MD, MPH; Dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, moderated the one-hour panel presentation, Voices: Perspectives on Women in Medicine, on April 4, 2012, at the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library. The discussion focused on the advancement of women in the medical profession, and the ways women have influenced and enhanced the practice of medicine, in the hopes of inspiring a new generation of medical pioneers. Dr. Rosenstock was joined by Margaret Stuber, MD, Jane and Marc Nathanson Professor of Psychiatry; Cambria Garell, MD, Pediatrics Resident, and Molly Diaz, MD/MPH PRIME student. The UCLA PRIME Program is a five-year program to develop leaders in medicine who address policy, care, and research issues in healthcare for underserved populations. The program leads to the M.D. degree, and a master’s degree in an area that complements the mission of the program. (more…)

Congratulations are due to the following people in the Pacific Southwest Region, who will be honored at the 2012 MLA Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA, during the Awards Ceremony and Luncheon, on Monday, May 21! (more…)

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

On February 3, 2012, the UCLA Library proudly hosted the inaugural event introducing the much anticipated ARL Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries. This code, created by the academic library community and reviewed by an outside panel of distinguished copyright experts, provides a guide to academic librarians as they manage risks and make important decisions for their institutions. The UCLA event featured Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law, at American University’s Center for Social Media, and Brandon Butler, Director of Public Policy Initiatives, at the Association of Research Libraries. Following is a summary of the main points of copyright, fair use, and the code. The complete code document is availalbe on the ARL web site. (more…)

We hope that all network members who responded to the membership renewal project have received their certificates in the mail.  Last December, we published a Latitudes article announcing several membership changes.  We’ve added a few more changes to that list. (more…)

On December 16, 2011, in celebration of the end of NLM’s 175th anniversary, Clifford Lynch, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, gave the presentation Biomedical Libraries in the Next Decades: Open, Diffuse, and Very Personal, at the National Library of Medicine. Overriding themes of his presentation included the implications surrounding the convergence of the increasingly data intensive nature of the biological sciences with traditional journal publications, and the possibilities for large scale computational scholarship. Another key topic was how developments in the broader economic, social, and regulatory climate will affect the evolution of medical knowledgebases. He emphasized the importance to the life sciences community of having an institution such as NLM, as a focal point for aggregating the staggering amount of information and data generated in the life sciences. There’s nothing analogous to NLM in other areas of scholarship. (more…)