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First Lady Laura Bush Presents IMLS Award to the UTHSCSA RAHC Library
Greysi Reyna and Flor Zuviri accept the nation's highest award to libraries from Laura Bush
On March 14, 2005, First Lady Laura Bush awarded the UTHSCA RAHC Library with the Institute of Museum and Library Services Award. Recipients of the awards are chosen for their innovative approaches to public service, and for their success in improving communities and making a difference in peoples' lives.
The Library was represented by Outreach Librarian Greysi Reyna, Director Mary Moore, and Debra Warner. Community partners Lucy Hansen, Mercedes Med High librarian, Flor Zuviri, Med High student, and Rosario Figueroa, promotora from Cameron Park in Brownsville, were invited guests at the ceremony.
The Library was one of three libraries and three museums to receive the award, and the only health library ever to be so recognized. Other museums and libraries that received the award include the Chicago Botanic Garden, Chicago, Ill.; Flint Public Library, Flint, Mich.; Mayaguez Children's Library Inc., Mayaguez, Puerto Rico; Western Folklife Center Inc., Elko, Nev.; and the Zoological Society of San Diego, San Diego, Calif.
Dr. Mary Moore noted that the establishment of the RAHC Medical Library fulfilled the vision and hard work of the Briscoe Library's two previous directors, Drs. David Kronick and Virginia Bowden. Dozens of talented library staff assisted in outreach to South Texas. "The vision for outreach services dates back four decades to Drs. Kronick and Bowden. Greysi, Debi and so many others work to achieve that vision," Dr. Moore said. "I am so proud of our dedicated and creative staff. The National Library of Medicine also deserves our thanks, for funding many of our outreach projects."
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UTHSCSA Libraries Invites Colleagues to Celebrate 40 years of Outreach, IMLS and New Services
UTHSCSA will welcome special friends and medical library directors from across the nation and Canada at a reception on Saturday, May 14th, celebrating the Library's history of 40 years of library outreach to the community. Special invited guests will include Former Governor Dolph Briscoe, Jr., for whom the Briscoe Library is named, Dr. Robert Martin of the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C., and Dr. Kenneth Shine, Executive Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs for the UT System and former President of the Institute of Medicine. We will honor previous UTHSCSA Library directors Dr. David Kronick and Dr. Virginia Bowden, and recently retired outreach librarian, Mary Jo Dwyer. Medical Library Association President-elect MJ Tooey, former MLA President Dr. Charles Sargent, and MLA Executive Director Carla Funk will be present. The Library will also welcome Betsy Humphreys, recently named Deputy Director of the National Library of Medicine.
"There are so many things to celebrate," said Director of Libraries Dr. Mary Moore. "The recent IMLS award has been called a lifetime achievement award for our libraries. Now we will be launching the Healthy Texas Web site and our MedlinePlus Go Local database with our community partners. It is a wonderful opportunity to thank our honored guests for all they have contributed to this Library and the people of South Texas." The Healthy Texas project was funded by the SBC Foundation.
The celebration is in conjunction with this year's Medical Library Association conference. Over 2000 librarians from the United States and around the world will converge in San Antonio May 14th-19th at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.
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Healthy Texas Consumer Web Site Becomes a Reality
We are pleased to announce a new health Web site for the South Texas public. Healthy Texas (http://www.healthytexas.org) provides basic health information on the biggest health problems we face in South Texas, written in clear language. It was developed in a partnership with the Women and Family Health Information Network, an umbrella organization for almost 30 community based organizations that seek to improve health.
The site covers twenty health topics like Diabetes, Heart Health, and Breast Cancer, as well as prevention topics like Eating for Health, Fitness, and Using Medications Safely. The topics were drawn from Healthy Border 2010 and Texas State health priorities. Community health providers helped write the health topics. Each health topic gives the user a choice of reading just the basics, written at the sixth grade level, or in-depth information provided by MedlinePlus, the comprehensive health Web site of the National Library of Medicine. Users of the site can see clinical research studies in Texas and drug information from MedlinePlus. On certain topics, like asthma, there are connections to streaming video clips. Healthy Texas users have a fun way to check their comprehension of the health information on the site by completing matching exercises or crossword puzzles.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the site is the part called Art and Health. The community makes the site its own by contributing health-related art and literature. People have documented their health journeys with poetry, art, and stories. Many groups and individuals have contributed fabric art or quilt squares that can be viewed online at Healthy Texas.
Deborah Kaercher, Founding Director of The Network, said, "There are many consumer health Web sites, but I think Healthy Texas is different because it is one of the few sites that has been able to put into practice sound concepts of health literacy. This is a site that was built with the Library, but it is owned by the whole South Texas community."
"We continue to look for ways to make the site our very own. We hope to have the community's help in exploring many of the practices of local folk medicine, coupled with the relevant medical research to explain those practices. We will collect healthy Mexican food recipes. And we will explore myths and realities about things like living under electrical wires, and the water quality of the Rio Grande. Obviously the site will have local health events, highlights of local health research, and comments from local health providers. All this is in the future, but we hope it is in the near future!"
UTHSCSA is proud to help the Network make this service a reality. Please take a look, and send your feedback to Mary Moore at moorem3@uthscsa.edu.
Funding was made possible by the SBC Foundation and Frost Bank.
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Go Local for Local Information
Are you looking for a support group for people with your specific condition? Do you have an elderly parent who needs just a little more help than you can give? Are you new to the area and need to know where you can find a pharmacy with a drive through open twenty-four hours a day? Lone Star Go Local can help with these questions and more.
Lone Star Go Local (http://golocal.uthscsa.edu) is a new public Web site developed by the UTHSCSA Library to help people in South Texas find health-related resources in their own area. Lone Star Go Local covers thirty-eight counties-from San Antonio to Brownsville, from Fredericksburg to Laredo, and from Corpus Christi to Del Rio-and already includes more than 15,000 services and providers.
As a visitor to Lone Star Go Local, you can search for health-related services by service type or provider (such as dermatologists, first aid education programs, or psychiatric hospitals) or by health topic or condition (such as diabetes, child behavioral disorders, or physical fitness). Then you can choose to limit the results to a particular county or zip code, to help find services that are conveniently located near where you live or work.
For each service or provider, Lone Star Go Local will show you contact information, including a link to the provider's own Web site wherever possible, and usually a description of the types of services offered by that provider. Convenient links from any Lone Star Go Local listing will take you right to the National Library of Medicine's comprehensive consumer health site MedlinePlus (http://www.medlineplus.gov) for more information. You can also access Lone Star Go Local from MedlinePlus.
Like any Web site, the information provided on Lone Star Go Local cannot take the place of consultation with your own healthcare provider. Before you make an appointment with any service or provider you find on Lone Star Go Local, you'll be wise to give them a checkup: just because they're in practice doesn't mean they're any good, or that their services are right for you. Check out "Choosing a Doctor or Health Care Service" in MedlinePlus or Lone Star Go Local for tips, contacts, and helpful resources.
Lone Star Go Local was originally developed as part of the Healthy Texas project, a partnership with the Women & Family Health Information Network supported in part by a grant from SBC. For more information, or if you know of a health-related service in our area that we've missed, you can contact Lynda Howell at howelllm@uthscsa.edu.
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Library Begins Services to Texas Research Park
This Spring the Library has been able to begin providing services to the Texas Research Park. A survey of faculty, staff, and students in December identified they felt they needed instructional programs on changes to complex research databases, as well as local delivery and pickup of materials, and desktop delivery of full text materials when available. Students requested library training and access to Web and Internet services. Since the survey, the Library has offered three instructional sessions. Librarian Anne Comeaux will soon be in the Library (room 3.200 of the South Texas Centers for Biology in Medicine Building) at least once a week. The Library is still available for journal club and other meetings. An additional ten chairs have been added to the room at the request of TRP faculty and students, as have more computers.
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Library Establishes Learning Objects Repository
The Library is pleased to announce completion of a trial of a learning objects repository (LOR) for the UTHSCSA. What is a learning object? Examples include images, data sets, quizzes, text, video and sound clips, and interactive modules. The learning objects repository keeps learning objects together, where they can be quickly and easily found and re-used.
Last summer the Library and UTHSCSA Multimedia & Web Services received an SBC Foundation award to create the LOR. A faculty focus group representing all five schools helped evaluate the need for the LOR, and a team was formed to implement the plan. Our first learning objects have been either locally created or historical anatomical illustrations. We indexed the illustrations with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), provided thumbnails with metadata descriptions, and linked to the objects so they could be used in lectures or presentations.
We are seeking learning objects to add to the LOR. The Library is digitizing local medical historical photographs, original manuscripts, and other local publications that relate to South Texas medical history. If you have slides, medical illustrations, PowerPoint presentations, posters, etc., that would be of interest to other instructors or students, let us know. Please contact Sallieann Swanner, Associate Library Director for Systems, at 567-2400 or swanner@uthscsa.edu.
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Trial of news@nature.com
The Library is sponsoring a trial of news@nature.com (http://www.nature.com/news), a new publication of the Nature Publishing Group (NPG). news@nature.com is a science news site that brings together:
- Free daily news, incorporating the full resources of the site's predecessor, Nature Science Update
- News channels, gathering articles on topics such Biotechnology, jobs, earth and environment, medical research, and physical sciences
- My news, enabling personalized news pages
- Multimedia specials on topical events, such as the Cassini mission to Saturn
- Blogs, providing regular updates on breaking news from reporters at major scientific events, such as the International AIDS Conference
- Advance Online Publication (AOP) of news content from contributing journals ahead of print publication
- In Focus collections in PDF format, bringing together articles on a common theme, such as SARS and bird flu, for convenient reference
Please let us know what you think of this new publication by contacting Rajia Tobia, Associate Library Director for Collection Development, at tobia@uthscsa.edu.
Editor of the Library News is Janna Lawrence (jlawrence@uthscsa.edu).
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Suggestions, questions, and comments should be directed to AskaLibrarian@uthscsa.edu
