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!