Undiagnosed Diseases Have a Home

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced a new clinical research program that will aim to provide answers to patients with mysterious conditions that have long eluded diagnosis. Called the Undiagnosed Diseases Program, the trans-NIH initiative will focus on the most puzzling medical cases referred to the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., by physicians across the nation.

“The new program, which got under way over the past month, is the culmination of efforts by William A. Gahl, M.D., Ph.D., clinical director at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the NIH; John I. Gallin, M.D., director of the NIH Clinical Center; and Stephen Groft, Pharm.D., director of the NIH Office of Rare Diseases (ORD). With the program infrastructure now in place, the program is ready to accept patients, the first of which is expected to be seen in July 2008.”

Blogging has Health Benefits!

According to Scientific American, Blogging is good for you, as are most types of expressive writing. Now we know why the blogosphere is exploding.

Elevator #4

is the only one that will now travel to the Library. The other elevators will return to service once the Library Commons project is further along.

Refresh your summer school skills with RefWorks

Want a quick tour of a FREE ONLINE TOOL that can WRITE A BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR YOU??

Drop by our RefWorks Refresher class on Thursday, June 19th from 9-10 am to see just how easy it is to use RefWorks, an online bibliographic management session.

RSVP: Maureen “Molly” Knapp | mknapp@lsuhsc.edu | 568-8339

Not a good time? Send me an email and let me know when is!

Can You Tell Me How to Get to the Library?

Construction is proceeding at the Isché Library. The temporary walls are being built as I type; these walls will encompass the elevator lobby on the 3rd floor. For the next few days, only elevator #4 can be used to access the Library. *EDIT* All elevators are still currently working. The limited access won’t happen until later this week.

Printing Increasing by a Cent

Auxiliary Enterprises is currently rolling out new Pay-for-Print software and hardware. The Isché Library already has a new print station on the 3rd floor & the 4th floor station is to be installed today. The price for printing will be 8¢ per single page and 12¢ for double sided, starting Monday, June 2nd. Printing in the Library will continue to require a PayPaw card.

MLA 2008: on “being important”

Who are these folks? They may very well be the people leading MLA into the future. For years we’ve been hearing how librarians will begin to retire en masse. Is this happening? (and indeed, as the McGovern lecture noted, are they even able to?) As this happens, how will MLA deal with changing leadership? What do our new members want, expect, need from our organization? When MLA asked whether members had joined or participated in the New Members SIG when they first started out, 32% responded “What’s that?” Clearly there is a need for more dialogue with newer members whether its their first job or third career.

So that’s where the above picture came from. A number of newer MLA members involved in leadership roles gathered at a special reception to discuss future MLA programs and services that would particularly interest them. Some of the discussion centered around how the MLA leadership structure works: what is this mysterious board? How does one get involved? What are the rules and processes that govern our association work, and how can we make them more transparent, more accessible? As Sara McCoord pointed out, “I didn’t even know there was a manual until after I wrote one.”

One idea I thought particularly interesting was introducing an MLA Board shadowing program for newer members and ’emerging leaders’. (Bart Ragon jokingly called it a “shadow government”.) These ‘interns’ wouldn’t be voting members (this is important because that requires a change in Bylaws), but this is one way to pass on that “50,000 years of collective knowledge” Mark Funk talked about in the opening session.

Around here at LSUHSC we joke about “being important”: serving on committees and sections in our region, writing grants, doing novel work at our institution and in the community that helps serve our patrons better: all this justifies us attending these meetings in the first place. As a national association, we need to think about how every single member can “be important”. There are more ways of reaching out to remote, new or disenfranchised members than ever before. (Live webcasts are a great start.) Getting new members, getting more members involved in MLA work, making the whole governance process more transparent: these are all excellent plans. The question is, now that it’s started, how are we going to continue it?

Moving, Moving, Moving

Last night the Reference Desk and the Pay-for-Print stations were moved over the left side of the Circulation Desk. The demolition phase of the Library Commons project is set to begin on Monday, May 26th.

Public PCs on 3

The Public PCs on the 3rd floor of the Isché Library have been moved to the area beside the Circulation/Reference Areas near Tulane Ave. Looks like the Library Commons project is accelerating!

MLA 2008: Section Shuffle

The first-and-hopefully annual Section Shuffle was a resounding success! This drop in session aimed to educate MLA members on the various sections of the MLA, and what they had to offer. Attendees could vote on their favorite booth, and boy was it difficult to decide with all the candy, costumes and creative exhibits. As a special bonus, everyone who dropped by got 3 free trial memberships to the sections of their choice for the rest of the year. A great way to strike up interest and recruit new members, don’t you think?

Veterinary Medicine Section

Happy Shufflers

History of Medicine plague doctor.

The History of Medicine Section took home the ‘best section’ award. But the veterinary medicine folks were so cute, they get runner up in this blog!

(Not included here was an awesome 3-D poster created by the Public Services Section, glasses included!)

If you are in one of these pictures and would like it removed, please email me at mknapp@lsuhsc.edu and I’ll gladly take it down.

Moving Right Along

In preparation for the work on the new Library Commons, Study Room 401-T will temporarily become a staff office. The move is happening now; when it is complete, room 301-G will become a study room, at least until demolition starts! For more information on study space in the Isché Library, check out the online floor plans.

MLA 2008: Libraries in Medical Education informal meeting

The Libraries in Medical Education (LiME) informal meeting convened for their inaugural meeting today from 9-10am at MLA’s Annual Meeting in Chicago. For librarians involved in medical education, this is a group of which you should be aware and involved. From the standing room only size of the group, I’d say that word is out!

How does LiME work? It’s actually not affiliated with MLA, but in fact a part of the AAMC’s GEA (Group on Educational Affairs). The AAMC is a nonprofit group of medical schools, teaching hospitals, and academic societies. It provides assistance for members in the areas of education, research, and more. Further information on the AAMC can be found here.

AAMC’s Group on Educational Affairs is open to individuals with professional responsibility in medical student, resident, and continuing medical education, designated by deans, hospital directors, or academic societies. GEA is organized in four regions: Southern, Central, Northeast, and Western. LiME functions as a SIG (special interest group) to GEA (can I throw another acronym in there?) within the various sections, thus enabling a space for instructional librarians to share and participate with others involved with medical education in their region. What’s even better: there’s no membership fee to become a member. If your institution is a member of the AAMC, you can join. Contact your regional leaders for more info on that from the links below.

What are instructional librarians doing in their regions? Here’s a quick snapshot (& please, if I’m wrong here about anything comment & correct me!):
The Central GEA (CGEA) LiME SIG was established in 2005, and now has about 79 members representing 79 organizations. One of the group member’s poster sessions won a research award at the regional conference last year. They are moving forward and very well organized. Check out (& join!) their Facebook group – it’s open to anyone, not just their region. A SIG website is coming soon. Meanwhile, read more about the CGEA in general here: http://cgea.net/index.htm

The Northeast GEA (NEGEA) LiME SIG has a blog and a webpage. This online poster session provides an overview of what they’re all about. I love their icon! Hopefully all of the chapter SIGs can adopt this so there is a cohesive brand for others to associate with LiME.

The Southern GEA LiME SIG is under formation, having just submitted their paperwork to become an official SIG of the Southern region. LIbrarians in the SCC region of MLA take note: you are considered Southern chapter in the AAMC. The group has just started a blog. The 2009 SGEA conference will be in New Orleans next year, so this is a great time to get involved.

The Western region of LiME just had their inaugural meeting, with 9 members attending. Not only is the Western LiME an official SIG of WGEA, they even have a librarian board member. They plan to develop a baseline for research in the region. As you can see from the AAMC’s WGEA page, a website for Western LiME is coming very soon.

Highlights of the meeting
LiME sections are getting busy! A vote was taken on the official name — librarians or libraries in medical education? Libraries in Medical Education was a resounding win. We also discussed MERC certification and how LiME can get involved. Lauren Maggio discussed an AAHSL/LiME Task Force and some research projects they’re doing. AAHSL also granted some webspace for LiME on their site, a link is coming soon. Julie Solllenberger from the Univ. of Rochester is the AAHSL liaison and also developing a research agenda with the Educational Research Task Force. She had a poster session today (#39) that should be up until tomorrow afternoon called “An emerging alliance: Librarians collaborating with Colleagues in Medical and Health CAre Education”, if you want to check it out. Rikke Ogawa from UCLA Biomed library also mentioned a recent post on the western region discussion list on promoting non-librarian membership in the SIGs–more food for thought. There was also talk of working with the AAMC on KERMIT, a curriculum management database with big potential.

Can you believe we covered all of this and more in an hour long informal meeting? It will be interesting to watch the future development of this group. LiME is not affiliated with MLA just yet, but with libraries increasingly playing a major role in the education and development of information literacy skills in medical programs and beyond, perhaps they will soon be. Regardless, librarians at LSUHSC will be at SGEA next April, hopefully presenting on what we at do with our medical student instruction and department of medical education research. Maybe we’ll see you there!

MLA2008: Greene Vardiman Black

In Chicago you can find a statue that will interest you dental librarians with a taste for history. Inventor of the foot-powered dental drill, and the first to use nitrous oxide in dental anesthesia, Dr. Greene Black holds office hours in Lincoln Park now.

MLA2008 Plenary Session 1 ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ Bring out the Funk

MLA President Mark Funk opened MLA?óÔé¼Ôäó08: ?óÔé¼?ôConnections: Bridging the Gaps?óÔé¼?Ø with an engaging and informed address focusing on his presidential platform of integrating Web 2.0 technology into MLA, and using it to bridge the gaps of our membership to allow more opportunities for participation.

?óÔé¼?ôWe have a collective experience of over 50,000 years?óÔé¼?Ø he said, ?óÔé¼?ôHow do we keep this collective knowledge for future members of the MLA??óÔé¼?Ø Mark offered several ideas he?óÔé¼Ôäód like to see: adding user reviews to the CE clearinghouse (brilliant!), moving away from books to web-centered literature for library hot topics (huh?), and stockpiling our 50,000 years of collective experience in wikis (cool). He asked that future leadership carry on his initiatives.

For pictures from the address (along with shots from the rainy yet awesome bike tour of Chicago) click here.

& for all the MLA blogs in one place, checkout this link: http://snipr.com/mla08blogs

MLA 2008: Continuing [my] Education on the PhD Experience

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking the continuing education course The PhD Experience: Graduate School in the Basic Biomedical Sciences. As the library liaison to LSUHSC’s School of Graduate Studies, I was eager to learn more about what exactly goes on in those sometimes secret laboratories nestled away in the nooks of our urban campus.

Michele Tennant, Susan Kendall & Kevin Messner did a superior job at presenting an overview of graduate programs in the Basic Sciences. From departments to dissertations to dictostelium discoideum (that’s slime mold to us laypersons), the instructors gave a well-rounded overview of professional culture within the research community, as well as sound advice and techniques that librarians can use to reach these sometimes distant faculty, staff and students.

The course was about eight hours long, but don’t let that sway your choice if you have the opportunity to take this class. Anyone involved in library liaison activities with Basic Sciences, especially those who do not have a science background, will find this useful. What follows is a list of notes & resources I jotted down throughout the day.

• ‘omics: suffix indicating biology on a large scale (ie: genomics, proteomics, etc)
• “gene knockout”: when you knockout a particular gene to see what happens
• Barlow, Robert B., John E. Dowling, and Gerald Weissmann, eds. (1993). The Biological Century: Friday Evening Talks at the Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole: The Marine Biological Laboratory. (ISBN 0-674-07403-3): book recommended by Tennant – collection of science essays giving good overview of the development of biological science in the Twentieth Century.
• e-science trends – Kendall had attended a conference on this recently and had some interesting words on the development of the research process from a linear to circular structure with the advent of the web, which led to….
• Talking about a recent discussion in Science magazine about wikifying GenBank. (??!!) I’m all for 2.0 and all, but this does not sounds like such a good idea
• More info on trends in escience/translational medicine: Check out the session “Translational Medicine and the Library’s Role” on Tuesday afternoon (2-3:30) for more info.
• This book was recommended by Susan Kendall for information on how laboratory research works.
• Finally, Kevin Messner’s del.icio.us account offers all kinds of bioinformatics and biology links, in addition to other non-science related bookmarks

I hope you found this useful. Coming soon, the search for my missing mentee, the opening address, and more!