National Medical Librarians Month 2013

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

There was once a man from the city who was visiting a small farm, and during this visit he saw a farmer feeding pigs in a most extraordinary manner. The farmer would lift a pig up to a nearby apple tree, and the pig would eat the apples off the tree directly. The farmer would move the pig from one apple to another until the pig was satisfied, then he would start again with another pig.

The city man watched this activity for some time with great astonishment. Finally, he could not resist saying to the farmer, "This is the most inefficient method of feeding pigs that I can imagine. Just think of the time that would be saved if you simply shook the apples off the tree and let the pigs eat them from the ground!"

The farmer looked puzzled and replied, "What's time to a pig?"

(There are several versions of this old joke floating around, but this one came from http://www.ahajokes.com/ani017.html)

The theme of this year's National Medical Librarians Month (NMLM) is "Saving You Time So You Can Save Lives." Unlike the pig in the above story, time IS important to most of us. Here at FNU, we know that our students are busy with many things - school, families, jobs, not to mention any other interests or time for yourself. So if we can help you save time when looking for a journal article or other information, we are happy to do so. We hope the tools and resources that we provide are efficient and easy to use for the same reason.

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

When I began writing about this year's NMLM, I looked back to see what I had written last October. Though last year's theme was "Your Best Return on Investment," I still talked mostly about saving time. Time is money (how most people think of investment), right? I think this year's theme takes the idea of time efficiency another step though. It reminds us that in health care, it's not about the time, or even the money. It's about lives. Saving them and making them better. As librarians, we are somewhat removed from that aspect - we don't see patients or often even hear about clinical encounters. Yet we know that when we teach students how to quickly look up drug information on their mobile device, or how to find a current and evidence-based journal article, that we are ultimately helping them save time, so that they can save lives. We are proud to have even a small part in such an important process.

Help us celebrate National Medical Librarians Month by utilizing us to do what we do best - Saving You Time So You Can Save Lives.