Mission Statement

You may or may not know that all of our units here at FNU have a mission statement. Over the last year, the library faculty and staff, along with the Library Committee, went through a process of revising the mission statement for the Library. While it might seem like a perfunctory, academic requirement, we learned a lot in the process and are very excited about our new mission statement!

As we often say in the library, it's best to start a project by doing research! We definitely took our own advice and began the revision process by finding articles and other resources on how to write a mission statement. We also looked at the mission statements of other units at FNU and other libraries (both hospital and academic).

One of the things that came up in the literature was that when creating a mission statement, all stakeholders should be involved. Therefore we really wanted to hear what students thought about the library. We asked them two questions:

• What services do you expect from the FNU Library?
• What qualities or characteristics come to mind when you think of the FNU library?

Thanks to those of you who responded to that survey! Here is a graphical look at the answers.

Next we set out to align the Library's mission with that of the University. If you're not familiar with FNU's mission statement, check out the Vision & Mission page. Then we began drafting the actual statement, using wording from the survey results and FNU mission statement. It took several drafts, and while wordsmithing can be painful, it was a good process that meant we chose our words very carefully.

Finally, we had a draft that everyone was happy with:

The mission of the library is to support the curricula and scholarly work of FNU by providing students, faculty, and staff with high quality, readily accessible information resources, highly responsive service, and instruction aimed at improving information literacy. The library is committed to empowering students to use evidence-based resources in preparation for their careers as leaders in primary care.

This draft was officially approved by the Library Committee at its December 2018 meeting. It is posted on the About Us page of the library website.

We are so excited to continue serving all of you by carrying out this mission! Please let us know how we can help! 

What's New in the Library

Happy New Year! I hope 2019 has been off to a great start for everyone. January is when most of our journal subscriptions start and each year we usually add new titles, in hopes of making our collection better and more relevant. This year is no different. Starting in 2019, we have access to the following titles:

• Annals of Internal Medicine
• The Australian & New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology
• JAMA Internal Medicine
• JAMA Pediatrics

If you would like to suggest a journal to be added to our collection, you can use our Suggest a Journal form. It's always available on the Books & Journals page of the library website.

In addition to these new journals, we have some new resources that were added in 2018 that you might not know about:

• Trip Database - this database is designed to help users find quality evidence-based information quickly. Our subscription includes the Pro version which provides extra content and functionality. 
• Sanford Guide - this resource is a well-known reference for anti-infectives. It also has a mobile app - see the download instructions on our Mobile Resources Guide.

Once again, Happy 2019! We look forward to working with you in the coming year! 

New Journal Titles Now Available!

Each year, we add new journal titles to our collection based on your requests and suggestions. Here are the new journals for 2018:

• Acta Obstetricia Et Gynecologica Scandinavica
• Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada : JOGC
• Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
• Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Journal for Healthcare Quality
• Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
• BMJ Simulation and Technology Enhance Learning : STEL

Enjoy reading and researching with these journals! Remember that you can suggest a journal at any time using this form.

Welcome Carla!

We would like to welcome Carla Townsend, MLIS, to the library staff. She joins FNU as Information Services Librarian. She will be working 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the Lexington office. Carla has many years of health science librarianship experience, most recently at Baptist Health Lexington. Outside of work, Carla is a devoted mom and dance enthusiast. You can reach Carla at carla.townsend@frontier.edu or 859-899-2562.

New Resources

The start of a new year usually involves adding new titles to our journal collection, and 2017 is no different. The following titles are now available through the FNU Library:

• Evidence Based Medicine
• Archives of Women's Mental Health
• Educational Technology Research & Development
• JAMA Psychiatry
• American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 

This year we also added a subscription to Psychiatry Online which gives us access to four journal titles (including American Journal of Psychiatry) and several books from the American Psychiatric Association. It also includes online access to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, also know as the DSM-5.

Check out our other journals on our Books & Journals page. If you have a suggestion for something to add to our collection, let us know!

Connecting FNU online journals to Google Scholar

Have you ever searched Google Scholar wishing it would provide links to full text articles like EBSCOhost? Check out this video to learn how to set up google scholar to connect to FNU's online journals. Once connected, if you see "E-journals @ FNU" next to a result, it means you can access the full text by clicking on that link!

New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year! It's still January for a couple more days, so it's not too late to say that, right? Anyway, I hope your 2016 and Winter term are off to a great start. We here in the library have made a New Year's Resolution of sorts and we wanted to share it with you. We are going to revive the good ole blog here and we've resolved to post on it at least once a month. With the recent launch of the FNU blog it seemed like a good time to do it. We have plenty to say, we just haven't been making the time to do so. New Year's resolutions are all about changing habits, so we're going to make it a habit to share more with you.

Like I said, we have some things we want to say, but we're also interested in what you want to hear. Leave a comment and let us know what sort of things you'd like to see posts on - questions you have or resources you'd like more information on, anything! We're looking forward to hearing from you and to sharing more on the blog.