From the Director: The Value of Medical Libraries and Librarians in Patient Care

A recent JAMA Viewpoint article recaps research indicating that knowledge-based information sources and the services of a medical librarian have a positive impact on clinical decision-making and patient care. The article by Julia Sollenberger MLS, and Robert Holloway MD, MPH of the University of Rochester, identifies library and librarian roles and the value they provide in provision of care and education [1].  A library’s provision of information sources including databases and journal articles and the technology to access them resulted in more informed clinical decisions and changed treatment plans in several studies. Librarian literature searches to answer care questions in clinical settings yielded better results than physician searches in less time. In one controlled study of matched cases, a librarian literature search for evidence on patients presented at morning report was associated with shorter hospital length of stay. Librarian evidence searching on rounds with medical students and residents impacted not only treatment plans but also the trainees own knowledge and skills in finding evidence. Other roles cited include participation in evidence based practice curricula and support of biomedical research.

Librarians and staff at Dana Medical are engaged in many of the activities described in the article. We are evolving as health care, education, and technology change.  October is National Medical Librarians month. The theme this year is “Saving you time so you can save lives.” Let us know how we are doing.

Marianne Burke MLS AHIP
Director, Dana Medical Library
marianne.burke@uvm.edu

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1. Sollenberger, JF, Holloway, RG Evolving Role and Value of Libraries and Librarians in Health Care, JAMA September 25, 2013.

Thanks for Another Great Funding to Publication Series

Hilda Alajajian presents Finding Grant Opportunities: The Search Process

Mid October represents a lot of things. The leaves are falling. Cooler weather is coming. It also marks the end of another great Funding to Publication series. Funding to Publication is a series of workshops that focus on different aspects of the research process such as tools for finding research, sources of funding, and publication strategies. This year 57 people attended one or more of the workshops, which represents an increase of 42% over last year’s series. In fact, so many people signed up for two workshops (Advanced EndNote and Sources and Databases Beyond PubMed) that we had to add a third day to fit everyone in! Thank you to everyone who attended the workshops and for your help in making it such a great experience for everyone involved. If you missed any part of the series, take a look at its site, http://danaguides.uvm.edu/research2013, for class content and supplemental materials.

Although the Funding to Publication series is over, there are still lots of workshops being offered between now and December. For example, you can learn some new tricks on using images in PowerPoint in the “An Image is Worth a Thousand Words” workshop. Additional topics include EndNote, Google Scholar, The Cochrane Library, and a great session on creating posters. You can find a list of the workshops and when they’ll be offered on the Schedule of Library Workshops page.  How to Stay Up to Date: Alerts, Preparing Posters, and Introduction to Google Scholar are new selections alongside popular standards such as Advanced EndNote and Beyond PubMed.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Please let us know. We’re always looking for great ideas for future workshops.

Gary Atwood, MSLIS
gary.atwood@uvm.edu

Staff News: UVM Libraries Award Given to Dana Employee

Susan Bishop, Administrative Assistant and recipient of the University Libraries 2013 Delmar Janes Staff Excellence Award

Susan Bishop, Administrative Assistant to the Director, was given the University Libraries 2013 Delmar Janes Staff Excellence Award this month. This award “recognizes outstanding employees whose overall commitment, exemplary performance, positive attitude and acts of achievement (extending above and beyond the call of duty) serve to further the libraries’ mission while enhancing the work environment.”

Susan’s service to UVM Libraries spans as far back as 1977, when she was hired to work as technical assistant for the Hospital Library Development Service, an outreach grant funded by the (US) National Library of Medicine, to develop and strengthen the region’s small hospital libraries. Later, Susan went on to obtain permanent status with UVM, and has been working at the Dana Medical Library for well over thirty-five years. Susan has had a positive impact on every staff member throughout her career.  She has also worked in every department in the Library.

During her tenure at UVM, Susan performed myriad duties, from billing and managing departmental budgets to schedule management and exhibit curation. She filled in at the circulation desk, substituted on the reference desk during librarians’ meetings, and worked in the Audiovisual Department. At one point, she typed the individual cards and pockets that used to line the backs of books and journals. She trekked across campus in all types of weather to deposit funds at Waterman, and get change for the various coin boxes. Susan was the first person at Dana to have a computer!

Describing Susan’s current job description isn’t easy, either. She plays an important role in organizing and creating the various exhibits displayed in the DML, whether they are on loan from the National Library of Medicine or created in-house. She works on a variety of assignments such as gathering yearly statistics, supporting the creation of the newsletter and annual reports, delivering the mail, managing the Director’s calendar, filling in and assisting in ILL, and lending her design expertise in the creation of scholarly posters. She coordinates Dana Council meetings through calendars, provides well-written, timely minutes, and schedules these meetings and locations. She is a wonderful editor. She orders library supplies and organizes all the files. Simply put, Dana wouldn’t run smoothly without her.

All at Dana are lucky to work with Susan Bishop, and offer a hearty congratulations for this well-deserved award.

Jeanene Light, MLS
jeanene.light@uvm.edu

ScholarWorks @ UVM Presents a Digital Window

The University Libraries now offers a new service to increase access to the scholarly and creative output of the university and to preserve these works in digital form. ScholarWorks @ UVM (http://scholarworks.uvm.edu) provides for the organization, dissemination, and management of digital materials created by UVM faculty, staff, students, and their collaborators.

Many leading publishers now allow the deposit of journal article preprints and postprints into the author’s institutional repository such as ScholarWorks @ UVM. With a stable URL and immediate availability of the full text of their published journal articles, faculty can easily and quickly share their work with colleagues.

Grant reports, white papers, posters, presentations, newsletters, annual reports, student theses, conference proceedings, and other publications of enduring value can be published in ScholarWorks @ UVM.

Publications in ScholarWorks @ UVM are indexed by Google and Google Scholar. ScholarWorks provides authors quarterly reports of hits and downloads of their deposited publications. ScholarWorks can produce targeted RSS feeds to automatically update external web pages when relevant new materials are deposited.

See ScholarWorks @ UVM Policies and Guidelines http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/about.html for more information. Contact your library liaison or scholarworks@uvm.edu to set up a collection for your department, program, institute, lab or other UVM unit.

Donna O’Malley, MLS
donna.omalley@uvm.edu

Cholera History and UVM Research Presented in Dana Library Exhibit

Cholera epidemics have scourged human kind for centuries of recorded history. “Cholera: Man versus Microbe,” an exhibit currently on display in the Dana Library, presents the history, the science, and the hope for eradication of this disease.

The exhibit opens with bleak images depicting the emergence of cholera in 19^th century Europe. A chronology of the discovery of the causative agent, vibrio cholera, follows with the contributions of the major researchers including Pacini, Snow, and Koch described. A diagram shows how the cholera bacterium and its deadly toxin affect its human hosts, and the panel notes the proven public health, rehydration, and vaccine therapies that reduce mortality when applied. The exhibit closes with images of cholera in the 21^st century, and the contributions a group of UVM researchers are making to combat this devastating disease.

Bibliographies of historical and contemporary articles about cholera supplement the exhibit, as do relevant materials from the Dana Library collection. Of particular interest are reprints of original articles by John Snow.

The exhibit coincides with the 2013 UVM First Year required reading, the Ghost Map: the story of London’s most terrifying epidemic–and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world by Steven Johnson. The epidemic described is cholera; the impact is the advancement of urban public health.

Library Associate Professor Frances Delwiche, MLIS of Dana Library is the exhibit curator. She was assisted by members of the University’s Vaccine Testing Center’s Cholera Vaccine Study team

: Caroline Lyon, MD, MPH, PI; Elisabeth Lucas, Study Coordinator; Sarah Petri, Research Technician; Beth Kirkpatrick, Director, Vaccine Testing Center.

Marianne Burke, Director of Dana Medical Library (left) and Beth Kirkpatrick, Director, Vaccine Testing Center (right) discuss the exhibit

A reception to highlight the exhibit and UVM cholera research was held on October 24th. Many members of the Cholera Vaccine Study Team were in attendance, as were Provost David Rosowsky and Robert F. Cioffi, Chair of the University of Vermont Board of Trustees. Provost Rosowsky has recently posted two articles inspired by “The Ghost Map,” UVM’s first-year required book, on his blog at http://www.uvm.edu/provost/?Page=about/rosowskyblog.html.

Also present was Mitchell Snowe, a participant in the ongoing UVM Cholera Vaccine study. Participants ingested the live cholera bacterium and were patients for 8-9 days  in the hospital. Mitch blogged about his experiences here: http://impooped.blogspot.com/2013/10/day-1-welcome-to-general-research-clinic.html. For more information about the UVM Cholera Vaccine Study, see a recent article, entitled “UVM Center Demonstrates Global Health Commitment with Launch of Oral Cholera Vaccine Study.”

The exhibit will continue through December 20.

Laura Haines, MLS
laura.haines@uvm.edu

Collections News

UpToDate Goes Everywhere… And Anywhere!

UpToDate can now be accessed from any remote location. You no longer need to be on the UVM/Fletcher Allen Health Care network to access UpToDate.

This new version, called UpToDate Anywhere, allows full access to UpToDate at UVM, Fletcher Allen Health Care, all FAHC practice sites… and from anywhere with an Internet connection.

To take advantage of UpToDate Anywhere, users must first register an individual account from within the UVM or FAHC networks. These networks include accessing UpToDate:

• while at UVM;
• while at FAHC;
• remotely with EZ Proxy or VPN;
• through FAHC’s Remote Access Gateway;
• on the UVM wireless network;
• or on FAHC’s employee wireless network (NOT the FAHC guest wireless network).

With this account, UpToDate can then be accessed anywhere just by logging in with the registered user name and password. The account also enables users to accrue CME credits for reading UpToDate articles, and to download an UpToDate app to a mobile device.

Directions for downloading and installing the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and Android versions of the mobile app are available at http://danaguides.uvm.edu/mobile. A more detailed description of UpToDate Anywhere can be found here: http://danaguides.uvm.edu/uptodate.

As usual, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the Library at 802-656-2201 or danaref@uvm.edu.

Expanded Access to Dermatology Diagnostic Tool

Dana Medical Library recently purchased an expanded license for VisualDx, a dermatological diagnostic clinical tool. VisualDx may now be accessed from both the UVM and Fletcher Allen Health Care netowrks. It is web-based and can be used on a desktop, laptop, mobile phone or tablet. See our mobile guide for more information. The photographs and images in VisualDx can also be used in presentations for educational purposes.

What’s that rash?

VisualDx is a diagnostic clinical decision support system that leverages the ability to recognize visual patterns to assist healthcare providers in making faster, more accurate diagnoses. VisualDx combines high-quality, peer-reviewed medical images and concise, actionable information to support physicians in the accurate recognition and management of disease. Health care professionals can input visual clues, symptoms, and patient history to help make the correct diagnosis at the point of care.

VisualDx can also speed up recognition and diagnosis of medication-induced conditions, and provides adverse events decision support for hospitals and medical centers. Its knowledge database covers over 100 medication reactions, all linked to PubMed (MEDLINE) evidence. Users can search by medication and see images of drug reactions, along with literature evidence documenting each association, and access management and therapy guidelines.

VisualDx Features

Differential builder

Select a clinical scenario and enter patient symptoms to build a contextualized, patient-relevant differential diagnosis. The Quick Start function guides the user to enter the patient factors relevant to the problem at hand, or alternatively, one can simply type in the patient symptoms or other relevant findings.
See how the VisualDx Differential Builder works.

Diagnosis search

Search a diagnosis to access disease images and pithy clinical information. Each diagnosis topic contains a clickable differential list allowing the user to go back and forth between diagnostic summaries and images. Search functionality includes type-ahead-find, diagnosis synonymy, key words, and text search. In addition, the synopses provide ICD codes, references, and a list of associated findings such as signs, medications, exposures, medical history, and more.
See how VisualDx Diagnosis Search works.

Medication adverse events

Search by medication to view adverse conditions that may be caused by a specific drug. Results provide images of medication-induced eruptions and include literature evidence documenting each association, as well as management and therapy guidelines.
See how VisualDx Medication Adverse Events works.

Try out VisualDx for yourself, and let us know if we can help you in any way: danaref@uvm.edu or 802-656-2201.

Laura Haines, MLS
laura.haines@uvm.edu