The National Library of Medicine (NLM) wishes to announce that it will cease providing cutter numbers in LocatorPlus for most of the classification numbers assigned to print monographs that the Library catalogs.  Cutter assignment will cease on June 21, 2010, with the exception of material being shelved in the NLM Reference collection or titles cataloged for the NLM History of Medicine Division.

As the library looks to increase efficiencies in its cataloging practices, the time spent cuttering stood out as an inefficient activity. For the past 15 years, NLM has been shelving print monographs by accession number, rather than by call numbers, but has continued to provide fully shelflisted call numbers for the convenience of other libraries using NLM records.  NLM is still committed to providing a classification number that reflects the subject of a book, in recognition that this information can be used widely by others. Cutter numbers, on the other hand, are unique to a particular collection. Libraries that use cutters to arrange their material on the shelf will not have identical collections to NLM, so cutters provided by NLM often need adjustments to arrange material properly on any particular library’s shelves.

Because NLM recognizes this may have an impact on the workflow in some libraries, we hope that the six month notice of this change will provide ample time for these libraries to make needed adjustments.

Diane Boehr

Head of Cataloging

National Library of Medicine

8600 Rockville Pike, Room 1N11

Bethesda, MD 20894

boehrd(at)mail.nlm.nih.gov

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Middle Atlantic Region is happy to announce the recipients of our latest Technology Improvement Awards!  MAR was fortunate to be able to fund 11 of the applicants this round which is more than we have ever funded before.  There were many great applications and the selection process was very competitive.  Congratulations to all the recipients!

The recipients are:

Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY)
Nancy Glassman
Electronic Document Delivery

Crouse Hospital (NY)
Kristine Delaney
Library training center smartboard upgrade

Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center (NY)
Inna Lipnitskaya
Educational computer lab at the health sciences library

Lutheran Medical Center (NY)
Irina Meyman
Say Hello to Kindle

New York Academy of Medicine (NY)
Yixiong Xu
Remote Access to support library resources

Penn State Hershey, George T. Harrell Health Sciences Library (PA)
Cynthia Robinson
Improved access to digital library resources via an increased number of public access computers

Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (NY)
Svetlana Oziransky
Technology upgrade for the advancement of integrative medicine

Richmond University Medical Center (NY)
Mary Hicks
Library Technology Upgrade

St. Barnabas Medical Center Health Sciences Library (NJ)
Patricia Reusing
Improved Access to Library Resources: upgraded library technology

St. Francis Hospital  (DE)
Rosemary Figorito
Project Just One Click

Upstate University Health System, Health Sciences Library (NY)
Cristina Pope
Enhance resource fulfillment to hospital libraries and public health organizations through partnership with the IDS project

MAR Technology Improvement Awards provide up to $7500 each for the purchase, installation, and/or upgrading of information technologies that enhance access to health information.

Columbia University’s Health Sciences Library (HSL) was awarded a $1,000 NN/LM MAR Small Projects Award to subsidize the purchase of 250 customized USB flash drives intended to promote library resources and services.  In Fall 2009, 1 GB USB flash drives were distributed to 199 (of 233) incoming medical and dental students in the class of 2013 (College of Physicians and Surgeons and College of Dental Medicine). These students were attending a librarian-led “Accessing the Medical Literature” workshop, part of their “Molecular Mechanisms and Disease” course during which various NCBI resources were discussed.

The flash drives were branded with logos of HSL and NLM’s PubMed and loaded with ten library handout PDFs and three NLM brochure PDFs, along with web browser shortcuts to the library’s homepage and to the online survey. Handouts included on these drives replaced paper copies of brochures that would otherwise be distributed during orientation events.

A short (5 questions) online survey was developed to evaluate the usefulness of the library materials included and to gather information about student use of USB drives. Of the 55 students (28%) who responded to the survey, 56% viewed one or more of the library materials included on the drive, while 87% said they were either very likely or somewhat likely to use this device to transport resources downloaded via the library.

Further analysis of the survey data (which we hope to share at MLA 2010) will provide useful information about: the optimal number of files to include next time, how to best organize/present these files to improve the odds of their being viewed, the preferred USB size, etc. This project gave us the opportunity to connect with students in a way we had not done before and to consider how this new crop of students use/view the information the library produces.

Posted on behalf of Joey Nicholson, Database Trainer, National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC). If you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail Joey Nicholson at jnicholson(at)nyam.org.

PubMed® Training in Pittsburgh!

National Library of Medicine’s Training for You Locally!

The National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC), in conjunction with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Middle Atlantic Region (NN/LM MAR) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, is offering one FREE hands-on class at the SIS Building in Pittsburgh, PA!

The following class will be taught by the staff of the NTCC:

PubMed® (7.5 MLA CE Hours)

Friday, February 5, 2010

8:30am to 5:00pm

Anyone who has used PubMed regularly has noticed some of the many recent changes and more extensive changes. This PubMed® class is of particular interest to those who want a review of recent changes to the system, including medical librarians, researchers, medical editors, and anyone who searches for biomedical journal article citations.

This full-day class is designed to teach students how to use PubMed® which includes MEDLINE citations. The class also includes an overview of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) and its importance as a tool to both searchers and indexers.

The training session is FREE and intended for health sciences library staff, public librarians, health professionals, and anyone interested in using these free National Library of Medicine (NLM) databases.

To REGISTER for this class, or to look for other class locations, simply click on this registration form link (http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/classes/register.html).

We hope to see you there.

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For further information about our classes, please go to: http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/

For further information about this site location, please contact:

Ellen Detlefsen

Ellen(at)sis.pitt.edu

(412) 624-9444