Found in the Archives...

Who watched "Call the Midwife" on PBS? While watching Episode 3, I saw something familiar. Myles Textbook for Midwives is shown in that episode, and I thought we had a copy in our Archives. So I looked, and sure enough we had several copies of different editions (though not one with the same cover as in the show) with the oldest being a second edition, copyright 1956.

Copies of the second and third edition of Myles Textbook for Midwives

What was even more interesting, though, was the condition of the oldest copy. It was covered in tattered paper, with the title handwritten on the front.

TEXTBOOK FOR MIDWIVES
Myles
Please do not remove from the Hospital Wards

Intrigued, I opened the book, and found this inscription on the front page.

It reads:

To the Confluence Midwives,

With well-wishes and remembrances
of many happy days and nights in and
around the Middlefork.

Nora K. Kelly, SRN, SCM, MTD
27.3.56

Please return to
Helen Browne at
Wendover

I don't know who Nora Kelly might have been (nor what the credentials after her name stand for), but I have of course heard of Helen Browne. Since "Brownie," as she was called, was just awarded a posthumous honorary doctorate at graduation last month, it was especially interesting to see something that she might have used regularly.

I will continue exploring the archives to see what other stories might present themselves!

Medical Librarians: Your Best Return on Investment

October is National Medical Librarians Month, and this year's theme highlights that librarians are the best and most cost efficient way to obtain quality information. Read "Celebrating Medical Librarians," the Editor's Note from the October 2012 issue of The Nurse Practitioner:

"The truth is that most busy direct care providers do not have the time to conduct thorough searches, the skills to do the most effective and efficient search, or knowledge of all available resources and search options. Therefore, we waste a lot of time looking for information, and most of what we find is not useful and generally does not help to answer our clinical question."

@sk Your Medical Librarian
(859) 899-2953
librarian@frontier.edu

Our goal as librarians at Frontier is to reverse this trend for new nurse practitioners and nurse-midwives. We want you to be able to find information quickly and efficiently. The last thing we want is for you to waste your precious time. As you do your school assignments that require research, try to keep this in mind. Like anything else, research takes practice in order to be good at it. Developing good research skills now will benefit you enormously in practice.

Part of knowing how to find information quickly and efficiently is knowing when you need to consult an expert. Medical librarians are experts in searching, and you shouldn't have reservations about asking for their help. If your place of practice has a medical librarian, they will be more than happy to help find the information you need.  If you will be practicing without ready access to a librarian, however, we want you to be able to use the research skills developed while at Frontier to find quality health information.

Remember we are here to help, and we look forward to working with you.  See the Contact Us page on the library website for information on how to get in touch.

New journals @ our library

Spring is here! It's a new season, a new term, and oh yeah, National Library Week! I thought I would share some journal titles that are new to our library for 2012.  In case you missed them last term we now have:

• Fertility and Sterility
• Clinics in Perinatology
• OBGYN Clinics
• International Journal of Childbirth
• BMJ (some articles were free before but we now have full access)
• Evidence Based Practice
• American Family Physician (now includes the current year)

All of these journals can be found in our Electronic Journal list on the Find Articles page of the library website. Let us know if you have trouble accessing any of these titles.  

We will be receiving another new journal, Journal of the National Black Nurses Association, in print (no electronic subscription is available) in the library in Hyden. It won't be available online, but we'll be able to scan articles and email them out to you.

Any other journals you'd like to see @ our library?

National Library Week 2012

This week we'll be celebrating National Library Week with the theme "You belong @ your library." I know that most of our students and faculty don't spend a lot of time "at" Frontier's library in Aunt Hattie's Barn. Most of your "library time" is spent in cyberspace, visiting our website and using various online resources.  However, we do want our physical library to be a useful place for you when you visit campus for Crossing the Bridge, Clinical Bound, and/or DNP Intensive (and of course for new students who are on campus for the first time at Bridge Bound or Frontier Bound). So, what do you think belongs @ our library? Textbooks? Leisure reading materials? Charging stations for your mobile device? Comfy seating? Let us know in the comments! I can't make any promises (we may not run right out and buy a recliner, for example) but we will certainly consider all suggestions for making the library a welcoming and functional space!

More Daily POEMs

In our last post, I highlighted Daily POEMs from Essential Evidence Plus.  One thing this service is good for is alerting me to clinical topics that students and faculty might want more information on.  I keep an "Of Interest" folder in my Inbox so I can file away the POEMs that seem especially interesting.  Lately it seems like there have been several on women's health topics.

Late last month, one POEM showed that breast cancer screening benefits are overrated. Earlier in the month, on Valentine's Day in fact, there was a POEM showing the benefits of delayed cord clamping. More recently, a POEM showed that for low-risk women, there was no difference between giving birth at home, in a birth center, or in an OB unit.

Finally, today a Daily POEM arrived in my Inbox that made me smile - "Three-step identification method for recognizing dangerous snakes." Now, I'm sure this is a serious problem, it just seems so different from the pregnancy, women's health, and primary care topics that we normally deal with in the library.  I'm happy to know that if I need to identify a venomous snake, I know which resource to turn to.