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.

Mobile Resources for Keeping Up with Pap Guidelines

I know many of you were fans of the free Pap Guide app, created by Joshua Steinberg, M.D. Unfortunately, it is no longer available.






Here are a few alternatives for viewing pap guidelines on your mobile device:

• use the Lexicomp app (if you are a clinical student)
• go to 5-Minute Clinical Consult -> Algorithms -> Search for "pap" 
• add the entry to your favorites for quicker retrieval
• download a PDF copy of the ASCCP Algorithms and save to a mobile app (such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, etc.)
• purchase the ASCCP Mobile App for $9.99

If you need further instructions on any of these options, keep reading...

Update on Research on Mobile Resources Use

Wow, it's been awhile since our last post. If you didn't read our post about Research on Mobile Resource Use, now's a great time to catch up! The forthcoming article that was mentioned at the end of that post is now available: Mobile Resource Use in a Distance Learning Population: What Are They Really Doing on Those Devices. Read, enjoy, and let us know what you think! While you're thinking about mobile resources, be sure to check out our Mobile Resources Guide. It was created in part due to the results of this research.

[Note: many of the links on older posts are now broken due to a change in our proxy server last year. As always, contact us if you need help finding something.]

Research on Mobile Resources Use

Recently, Zach and I presented at the 16th Distance Library Services Conference in Denver, CO on FNU's mobile project. We examined data from questions on the End of Terms Surveys regarding use of mobile devices for completing school work and referencing clinical information.  We also took a very close look at responses to the survey item asking students to "list up to five apps that assist you with your education at FNU."

Before I go any further, let me take a moment to say "Thank You!" to the students who take the time to respond to these surveys. The information we gather allows us to make evidence based decisions about the services we provide. Sharing the information with colleagues (by presenting at conferences, for example) allows them to help other students across the country. We really do want to know what you think - so when you see a notice about a survey, please consider completing it!

Reviewing the apps that students listed as being helpful for school work was very interesting. We asked students to share this information so that we could be aware of as many apps as possible and share them with other students.

Here are the apps that were mentioned at least 20 times:

• Epocrates
• Lexicomp
• DynaMed
• Email
• AHRQ ePSS
• Medscape
• Blackboard Mobile
• Dropbox
• iGeriatrics
• Sanford Guide
• Skyscape
• Flashcards (ex: gflash, gflash pro, gflash+, flip cards, quizlet, flashcard machine, studyblue, flashcard+)
• Internet browser
• Micromedex
• Pregnancy wheel (ex: perfect wheel, prenatal wheel, the wheel pro, OB wheel, pregnancy calculator, birth wheel)
• Essential Evidence Plus
• Podcasts
• Evernote
• Facebook
• MPR
• Google
• BMI tools (ex: bmi calculator, bmi tool, calculate bmi)
• Lactmed
• Blackboard Collaborate
• Calendar
• Kindle
• Skype

Here are a few other clinical apps that were mentioned:

• STD Meister
• Pap guide
• EFM guide
• DxSaurus
• Qx Calculate
• ATP III
• Shots STFM
• iTriage
• BiliCalc
• GBS guide

(note these are how they were reported on the survey; actual names may vary slightly)

Slides from our presentation are below, and the full paper will be published in a forthcoming issue of  Journal of Library & Information Services in Distance Learning. What apps are you using? We'd love to hear about them!

New Journals for 2014!

Welcome to 2014! I hope the Winter Term is starting out well for everyone. Beginning this month, the following titles have been added to our journal collection:

• Journal of Advanced Nursing
• Journal of Clinical Nursing
• Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics
• Journal of maternal-fetal & neonatal medicine
• Journal of Women's Health
• Health Affairs
• Current Opinion in Obstetrics & Gynecology
• Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

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

If there are other journals you'd like to see added, please let us know!

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.

Looking for the Pearson Report?

Unfortunately, we learned earlier this year that the Pearson Report has ceased publication. It has been removed from the WebNPonline site so we don't have historical access either. The best alternative for the state by state advanced practice nursing information that the Pearson Report provided is the National Council of State Boards of Nursing site - www.ncsbn.org. Here the information is not compiled as concisely as in the Pearson Report, so you may have to search a little more. The following links will help you get started:

• APRN Maps - this collection of maps shows the status of each state in various categories such as title, role, certification and education. Use the links on the left to change categories.
• Workforce Data - find information on the future of nursing, job growth, and occupational outlook.
• Licensure Statistics - for RNs and PNs
• Find your Board of Nursing - contact information is available 

Feel free to contact the library if you still have problems finding specific information.

New Year, New Journals

Happy New Year! Okay, we're over a month into 2013 already, but I hope you'll accept my wishes just the same. With the dawning of the new year I wanted to share with you some journals that are new to our library collection.

Last summer we purchased a journal package that includes over 40 titles related to nursing and public health, including:

• American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine
• American Journal of Men's Health
• Clinical Nursing Research
• Health Promotion & Practice
• Journal of Child Health Care
• Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine
• Journal of Family Nursing
• Journal of Research in Nursing
• Journal of Transcultural Nursing
• Nursing Science Quarterly
• Perspectives in Public Health
• Qualitative Health Research
• Western Journal of Nursing Research

In January, we added these two titles to our collection: 

• American Journal of Health Promotion 
• American Journal of Perinatology

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

If there are other journals you'd like to see added, please let us know!

Also for the new year we've added a few things to this blog. On the right hand side you'll find a search box and list of labels that have been used to tag posts. Hopefully these features will make it easier for you to find older posts.

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.

Daily POEMs

October is almost over, but not quite! We still have a few days left of National Medical Librarians Month. I'd like to continue our celebration by discussing another little known resource, Daily POEMs from Essential Evidence Plus. Many of you may have used Essential Evidence Plus before (and if you haven't be sure to check it out!) but you may not know about the Daily POEMs Alert service. POEM stands for Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters, and each one contains a clinical question, bottom line (answer), and reference, as well as information on the study design, funding, setting, and a synopsis. You can have these emailed to you daily.

Email message with Daily POEM

If you don't want to clog your Inbox, though, never fear! You can search within the POEMs on EE+ by choosing "POEMs research summaries" in the drop-down menu.

You can also browse the POEMs by date or topic by clicking on "POEMs Research Summaries" under "Browse Our Databases."

Here are some recent POEMs of interest, so you can get an idea of the topics addressed:

• Oral steroids beneficial with antibiotics for chronic rhinosinusitis in children and adolescents
• Outcomes of oxytocin regimens for augmentation of labor
• Immediate insertion after uterine aspiration increases IUD use rate

In addition to the daily messages and database, a weekly podcast is available too!

I hope you'll consider using POEMs when you need to answer a clinical question!