Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012

Dartmouth and Dartmouth-Hitchcock folks will certainly be aware that the College continues to face serious financial difficulties. (See http://budget.dartmouth.edu) It is unclear at this writing what exact paths the College and the Medical School and their libraries will take for next few fiscal years (beginning with FY11 on July 1, 2010). We in the Biomedical Libraries will consult with our clientele as soon as we have contexts in which to do that.

In the meantime, note the following principles that have guided previous financial contractions:

The Biomedical Libraries have three functions in support of the health and life sciences at Dartmouth and Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

1. Information resources – books, journals, databases, and clinical decision support tools, both digital and printed. The Libraries already are not providing the information resources needed now by Dartmouth researchers and clinicians, and this lack is exacerbated by high inflation rates in the cost of biomedical information. The information resources budget needs to be increased merely to maintain status quo, much less maintain pace with growth of programs.
2. Information services – professional librarian engagement in research, education, and patient care.
3. Facility hours – the libraries as spaces in which students study, educators teach, and staff work.

Of these three functions, the first two are perhaps most critical to supporting the university and medical center in the long term, and should be sustained to the fullest extent possible.

I will continue to keep you updated as we learn more.

Dana Biomedical Library Improvements

It is well known that the Dana Library (at the College/Medical School campus in Hanover) is inadequate for research support and student learning, not to mention for library and information resources and services proper. This reality has become more stark as the Medical School wrestles with growing class sizes and a contracting—or, at best, static—number of classrooms.
Consequently, I am very pleased to write that the Medical School has approved some modest, yet significant, improvements to Dana's first floor. Broadly, the changes are

• Removing the little remaining current journal shelving, as nearly all our journals are digital-only
• Building three classrooms/large study rooms/reading rooms on the north half of the floor, extending essentially from the stairwell core to the east wall of the building
• Incorporating lots of glass to preserve light and sightlines
• Configuring one of the rooms for 24-hour medical student access, including an outside, secure door
• DMS classes getting priority during the day, and the new rooms being open to everyone otherwise (as is now the case for all the classrooms in the building)

Blueprints are in my Dana office, should anyone want to inspect them. The building permit applications have been approved. The construction firm is teed up and ready to start. Construction could take three to four months. We are looking at a late spring or early summer opening.

I and the rest of the Biomedical Libraries staff are excited about the changes. Climate control for the building as a whole, and other improvements, are additional projects. We continue to press for substantive improvements to the whole building.

Effective January 1, 2010, the Matthews-Fuller Library at DHMC changed its hours of operation to the following:

Monday-Thursday 8:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Friday 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Saturday 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Sunday 11:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

This schedule change is the result of budget reallocations, personnel reductions, and subsequently limited staff resources. The change is consistent with the comparatively low use of the Matthews-Fuller Library during the evening hours and is supported by the increasing digitization and availability of information resources online.

Questions? Please contact Cindy Stewart, Associate Director, Biomedical Libraries, email cindy.stewart@dartmouth.edu or call 650-4967 .

Thank you to all who participated in our autumn 2009 user survey. The results were gratifying in that we received many positive comments about our services, staff, collections, and facilities. We also received some good suggestions to consider as we plan for the future.

Some facts and figures:

• There were 77 surveys completed.
• We heard from medical students (25), undergraduates (11), graduate students (13), house staff (5), nurses (6), faculty (8), and others (9).
• Survey participants were primarily Dana users (49), but Matthews-Fuller users (24) were also well-represented.
• Email was the favorite way for people to communicate with the Biomedical Libraries, closely followed by those who preferred to visit the library in person. The web and phone were also popular, but texting and chatting were not favored at this time.
• The Biomedical Libraries are used for many purposes. Studying, finding books and journals, and using the printers were cited most frequently as reasons to visit the library. Sleeping was a popular write-in choice.

We asked how utilization of our resources and services has impacted research, patient care, and teaching. Some of the comments:

•  "It has been essential."
• "Your reference librarian helped me find resources for tough assignments."
• "It's made life a lot easier."
• "It's not 'impact,' it's daily, useful 'infrastructure'..."
• "Everything is a huge positive. Most helpful, resourceful staff, very knowledgeable. They have literally saved my research."
• "It has helped me focus patient care on evidence-based practices."
• "I love DartDoc."
• "I love the DMS I&II Portal! Great work!"

As perhaps a reflection of the season, survey respondents were grateful for the supply of hand sanitizer and tissues.
Suggestions included opening earlier, closing later, improving lighting, updating furniture, adding journals, and upgrading computers, printers, and scanners. We appreciate the feedback.

For complete results, contact Peggy Sleeth, Associate Director/Information Resources, margaret.k.sleeth@dartmouth.edu or call 650-1635 .

Like other departments in the College and Medical School, the Biomedical Libraries were asked to cut the budget for Fiscal Year 2010. See Bill Garrity's article in the July 2009 issue of The Pulse for more information.

The budget reduction, coupled with continued 6-8% annual inflation rates for books, journals, databases, and other information resources, led us to make some difficult cancellation decisions. See Changes for Biomedical Libraries Journals and Databases in 2010 for details as they were announced in July. Most of these cancellations are effective January 2010. The following factors were taken into account as cancellation decisions were made:

• Whether the content was available elsewhere, such as freely available online, as part of another database, or already subscribed to in multiple formats.
• Whether usage statistics showed less use than other titles and/or a higher cost per use.
• Whether the costs of obtaining needed articles from other libraries or commercial suppliers through DartDoc (the library's requesting service) were estimated to be less than actually subscribing to the journal.
• Journals and other full-text content were favored for retention over indexes and other finding tools.
• Journals were favored over books.

Contact Peggy Sleeth, Associate Director/Information Resources, margaret.k.sleeth@dartmouth.edu or call 650-1635 , with questions or comments.

Ever wish you could shorten a website's URL before you email it to someone?

Check out this web-based chart which outlines various services and how they compare and differ in a variety of features.

For instance, rather than send or transcribe:
<http://www.dhmc.org/webpage.cfm?site_id=2&org_id=755&gsec_id=38836&sec_id=38836&item_id=38836>
would you like something shorter, more compact? Try a URL-shortening service, such as http://www.tinyurl.com/ and use this URL instead:
<http://tinyurl.com/ylk4835>

It's not only simpler and shorter; it's also private – particularly if you don't want the URL to contain information about a patient's medical condition or other confidential information.

Heather Blunt, Research and Education Librarian, passed the American Academy of Professional Coders national certification examination in December. She is now a Certified Professional Coder - Apprentice.

Bill Garrity, Director, Biomedical Libraries, participated on a panel presentation at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), in Boston, Massachusetts. The presentation was titled, “Electronic Health Records (HER) and Knowledge-Based Information: State-of-the-Art and Roles for Libraries in Health Information Technology.” The seminar was sponsored by the Association of Academic Health Science Libraries (AAHSL). Peggy Sleeth¸ Associate Director/Information Resources, attended the AAHSL program. Cindy Stewart, Associate Director/Clinical, Research, and Education Services, attended both the AAHSL program and the AAMC Annual Meeting.

On November 11, 2009, Research and Education Librarians Pamela Bagley, Heather Blunt, and Karen Odato partnered with the Dartmouth Medical School Department of Psychiatry to provide a day-long evidence-based practice education program to psychiatry residents from Howard University Hospital.

In November, Biomedical Libraries librarians were visited by Jonathan Eldredge, MLS, PhD, Associate Professor, School of Medicine, and Interim Coordinator, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center Learning Design Center, The University of New Mexico. Jon and the Biomedical Libraries staff exchanged experiences and successes from their respective libraries, including Jon’s interest in evidence-based librarianship.

From left to right: Heather Blunt, Tom Mead
Pamela Bagley, Cindy Stewart, Peggy Sleeth,
Karen Odato, and Jonathan Eldredge (The
University of New Mexico)

Computing and Media Services supports the computing environment of the Biomedical Libraries. We purchase and maintain all of the staff and public computers, printers, copiers, and audiovisual equipment in Dana Library and Matthews-Fuller Library.

Dave Izzo (left), Manager of Computing and Media Services, has been at the Dana Library almost since personal computers first arrived on campus. Think of PCs with green letters on a black screen, Macs with 512K of memory, floppy disks, and dot matrix printers. Don Fitzpatrick (right), our web expert, has been with the Libraries since 1996. Don creates and edits the libraries' 2,000+ web pages, as well as tending to the general care and support of the Libraries’ computing assets.
We also manage scheduling and audiovisual support for our classrooms and meeting rooms in Dana. Information about our rooms is available in the Services section of our website.
In addition to supporting the hardware in the libraries, Dave and Don are available to assist library users and staff in using library equipment and the software installed on the libraries' public computers.

Visit our web page for more information, email us at danacms@dartmouth.edu, or contact us by phone: 650-1663 at Dana or 650-7894 at Matthews-Fuller.

Picture Styles

New picture styles allow you to easily create a wide variety of interesting display effects for images, such as frames, drop shadows, reflections and 3-D effects. To apply these effects select an image and the Picture Tools - Format tab will appear on top of the Ribbon. Click on the Format tab and chose one of the many styles from the Picture Styles palette.The styles are "Live Preview" so you can see the effect of each style just by rolling the cursor over each style icon.

Use the Picture Styles group to apply frame effects, use the Size Group for sizing and cropping. You can download templates for image slides like this one from the Microsoft Office Template website.

Many of us use EndNote or RefWorks to manage bibliographic references to published articles. These programs construct a database from our downloaded Medline (PubMed or Ovid) references, and later they help us make bibliographies for our papers or grant applications. Still, our hard drives are full of full-text journal articles, usually in PDF format, and it can be difficult to keep track of them, to find them, to see inside them.

Because of those difficulties, new “PDF manager” programs are available. You might think of them as “iTunes for your PDFs.” If you have a Windows computer, you can consider Mendeley. If you have a Macintosh, you can consider Mendeley or Papers.

A comparison of Mendeley and Papers

 Mendeley Screen

Papers Screen

Faculty, staff, and students of Dartmouth College and DHMC/Lebanon may borrow items from the Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries. Below are some of the frequently asked questions we receive from individuals who are interested in borrowing items from either the Matthews-Fuller Health Sciences Library or the Dana Biomedical Library.

What do I need in order to check out books from the library?
All you need to do is present one of the following identifications each time you wish to check out materials:

Dartmouth College
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic/Lebanon
Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital
Guest Borrower Card

If you have a DHMC ID badge (Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic/Lebanon or Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital), we will affix a library barcode sticker to the back of your badge. You can then use your ID to check out materials from any Dartmouth College library.

Material from the Consumer Health Library at Matthews-Fuller may be borrowed by members of the general public for two weeks with registration and a photo ID.

How do I find out if a book or other item is owned by Dartmouth?
You may search the Dartmouth College Library Online Catalog for anything housed in our collection, including books, journals (print and online), and various other media formats. You are able to search by Author, Title, Subject, and more. You will be able to see the library and shelf locations of the book. For more information, please refer to Locating Materials in the Dartmouth Libraries.

Can books be delivered between libraries?
When you find the material you would like in the online catalog, look for a green “Request Selected Item” button. This button allows you to electronically request the book you want and specify your preferred pick-up location. A detailed description of this process can be found here.

Now that I have a book, can I renew it?
You will most likely be able to renew an item, as long as someone else doesn’t need it. There are a few ways you can go about renewing. You may send an email to us, phone us, or log into your library account online and renew the item. 

Where do I return my library book?
You may return your library items at any of the Dartmouth College libraries. The Matthews-Fuller Health Sciences Library has a book drop which is available 24/7 if the library circulation desk is closed. It is not recommended that you return your book by U.S. mail or by Hinman mail as there is no guarantee that the book will make it back to the library.

My book is overdue. What happens now?
We understand that due dates for library materials sometimes creep up on us, so it may happen that you will get an email reminder from us explaining that your item is overdue. This is very easily remedied by requesting a renewal (or returning the item!). We welcome an email or a call from you to help work out the details of an overdue or missing item. Material not returned or renewed may be subject to fines Before an individual is billed, the library will send courtesy reminder notices about the overdue material. Lost material should be reported immediately to the library.

Someone else wants my library book? What must I do?
A typical loan period for a book checked out of one of the Biomedical Libraries is 28 days. After two weeks, your book may be recalled if someone else needs it. If it happens that your item is recalled, you will get an email message from us with the new due date. All you need to do is arrange to return the item as soon as possible; renewals are not possible. Overdue recall fees begin to accrue at the end of your new due date.

Now that you have the scoop, come by the library and sign up for borrowing privileges. Library staff will be available to answer any questions you may have.
Happy reading!

Winter Weather – Emergency Preparedness and Response - Centers for Disease Control
Includes information on staying healthy and safe in extreme cold temperatures, hypothermia and frostbite, dealing with power outages, carbon monoxide poisoning, and more.

The Winter Blues: Seasonal Affective Disorder - MayoClinic.com
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of winter depression which affects millions of people every winter, especially during December, January, and February. This website includes information about risk factors, causes, symptoms, and treatment.

Kids and Winter Sports 
Includes children’s health information, including staying warm when playing outdoor sports, how to dress (including wearing a helmet), wearing sunscreen, and frostbite.

Winter Storms and Extreme Cold - FEMA
Provides information on preparing for a winter storm and what to do during and after a storm, including preparing your home and car.

Post-Holiday Diet - Nutrition.gov
A service of the USDA National Agricultural Library; providing comprehensive information on weight management, nutrition, healthy kids, dietary supplements, dietary guidelines, and much more.

The Pulse is a quarterly publication of the Dartmouth College Biomedical Libraries.

William Garrity, Director of Biomedical Libraries (William.Garrity@dartmouth.edu)

Cindy Stewart (Cindy.Stewart@dartmouth.edu), Editor

Danelle Sweeney, Editorial Assistant
David Sandberg, Editorial Assistant

Don Fitzpatrick, Website Manager

All photos by David Izzo, unless otherwise noted.