Library Day in the Life - Friday

I had no scheduled mtgs today, which is unusual, so I was able catch up on and finish a few lingering projects. 

1. I finished editing the Instructor College brochure I referred to on Tuesday.  The brochure, which will be distributed to new hires, offers info about the IC and its resources, including links to the IC site, blog, and other instruction-related resources...  Plus - we - the committee - offer to take the new hires out to what would be for them a free lunch 
2. I also went over a dental thesis and sent some suggestions to the student.  Thesis committee work.  
3. Everything else blurred together, so I'll present the rest of my day textblock-style: I had a conversation with a web admin abt access privileges to a medical school wiki system; I discussed these strange STAT!Ref access issues with the electronic access unit in the library and the informatics dept in the School of Dentistry (it's likely an issue on our end and not with STAT!Ref); I encountered video card problems -- to be fixed w/ some surgery on Monday; Arranged for the library's presence at a dental outreach event in mid-February ('arranged' meaning I got us a table and discussed what materials we'd need with the outreach coordinator); Read abt an UM ebook study (which was FW'd to me by a colleague in dentistry); and submitted, for the library's documentation purposes, a month's worth of presentation and consultation statistics.
4. A colleague also sent me this awesome dance video.

Library Day in the Life - Thursday

Again, the main stuff:

• Met with a colleague to discuss partnering and collaborating opportunities with researchers from one of my liaison depts.
• Attended a dental curriculum committee mtg.  We discussed two new courses, one of which has potential for library involvement. 
• Attended a staff meeting.  Discussed recent liaison activities and collection issues.
• Presented to a group of Internal Medicine Residents.  I gave them a really targeted bit on PubMed and MyNCBI.  Also discussed UpToDate and Dynamed.  National Guidelines Clearinghouse.  EMBASE. And Collexis - a faculty profile resource.
• Answered some direct reference questions about Access Surgery and some strange, ongoing access issues with STAT!Ref.
• Watched / listened to an awesome video about cephalopods.

Have to be brief --- continuing to work on this STAT!Ref issue.

Library Day in the Life - Wednesday

Here's the main time-consuming stuff from Wednesday:

• Met w/ the Nuclear Medicine Fellows at 7:30am.  The 'presentation' turned into more of a conversation, which worked for me.  We ended up talking about Cochrane and systematic reviews, plus Impact Factors and specialized queries in PubMed.  Great discussion. 
• An access issue with our Dental eBook collection in Stat!Ref came up.  After a back and forth with the Library's collections person and a dental faculty member, and after a vendor rep joined in, the issue was resolved.  Access is good.
• I had hoped to attend a noon dental faculty meeting, but had to skip b/c of the above. 
• We had our first journal club meeting.  Assessment is an ongoing topic du jour in the library system, so we used our first JC mtg to discuss an article on creating a culture of assessment.    
• Was asked if the library would again like a table at Dental Research Day in February.  I said, "yes."  I've been to the last couple, but won't be able to attend this year.  I'd still like us to have a presence.  Even if it's just some library materials sitting on a table.

Library Day in the Life 6 - Tuesday

It's Library Day in the Life time again.  I've participated previously (both accessible here). I missed Monday, so I'll go with a 4 day week.

• Attended an Instructor College (IC) committee meeting.  This is an University Library initiative devoted to improving the instructional skills of library staff.  Generally speaking, we plan and host staff-wide presentations and brownbag sessions on topics/issues of interest to the library system.  That's what we more or less did today, tho more less than more.  My action item is to update an IC brochure we've created for new hires. 
• Thesis committee work.  I'm currently serving on 2 dental thesis committees, one of which involves a bibliometric study of a dental specialty.  I started reviewing the final draft of said study today.  I was also asked today to join another thesis committee that'll involve some hefty searching.  
• Prepared for a presentation I'm scheduled to give to Nuclear Medicine fellows tomorrow morning (@7:30).  It'll be the 3rd and last time I'll meet this batch.    
• Read two discussions about a Stanford EHR study.  Only one is accessible w/o a proxy, and it's got an overly dramatic headline.  In time, EHRs will have a tremendously positive impact on health care, and the role for librarians is significant.  Haven't read the actual study yet.  Will do so tomorrow.   

A Day in the Life - Friday

• Co-taught a 2-hour session to first year dentistry students.  Content = Ovid MEDLINE and PubMed and PICO searching.
• Attended a great presentation on academic article introductions.  The presenter was tremendously engaging. 
• Edited the final article discovery report.  The project began in September.  We met every Thursday after that.  Now we're done.  It was enjoyable and I'm happy with our recommendation.
• Pursued an email question about accessing a non-UM thesis, which the other institution won't lend because it's their lone copy.  We're working on a work-around.
• Discussed a systematic review search with surgery faculty.  It'll be a short turnaround.  
• Set a date to record the lectures for the first year Pharmacy course (Feb 10). 
• Had a meeting with a Dentistry faculty pushed back until next week. 

And if Chekov were alive he'd be 150.  The Guardian's nice write up.