Witness to the Holocaust: Sculpture dedication and panel discussion

Two events that are part of this year’s Holocaust Genocide and Contemporary Bioethics Program will take place in the Strauss Health Sciences Library.  The Program is an annual event that is organized by the Center for Bioethics and Humanities.  The Program’s goal is to promote education, scholarship, and community engagement on the lessons of the Holocaust.  All Program events are free and open to the public.  This year the Program includes events at all four CU campuses and a session at UCHealth.

The events in the Strauss Library will be held on April 30th.  There will be a dedication event at Noon on the 3rd floor for the Devorah Sperber sculptures “Witness to the Holocaust”.  The dedication will be followed by a panel discussion at 1:00 pm in the Reading Room.  The topic for the discussion is “Health Professionals, Patients and the Public Trust”.  Reservations are requested, but not required.  We hope you can attend one, or more, the events!

Strauss librarians elected to professional associations

Melissa De Santis (left), Dana Abbey (center), and Lisa Traditi

A number of Strauss Health Sciences Librarians were recently elected to officer positions within their professional associations.

Lisa Traditi (Deputy Director) was elected President-Elect of the Medical Library Association (MLA).  MLA is an international association of information professionals focused on enhancing the quality of health care, education, and research throughout the world.  Ms. Traditi has been elected to a three year term that will begin in June 2019.  She will serve as President-Elect, President, and Past President.

MLA has regional chapters, and Colorado is part of the Midcontinental Chapter of MLA (MCMLA).  Dana Abbey (Community Engagement Coordinator) was elected Recording Secretary (a one year term) and Melissa De Santis (Director) was elected Chair-Elect (a three year term).  Ms. Abbey and Ms. De Santis will begin their positions November 2019.

Congratulations to these librarians for their service to the profession and for representing the Strauss Health Sciences Library!

Honorary naming of Health Sciences Library celebrated

On Monday, February 4, 2019, a celebration was held to recognize Henry L. Strauss and his many contributions to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.  This past fall the library was named the Strauss Health Sciences Library in honor of Henry and his wife Joan’s longtime commitment to the campus.  In 1995 Henry Strauss established the Indigenous and Integrative Medicine collection at the library.  Almost 25 years later this collection continues to grow.  In addition to the collection, Strauss also established a quarterly lecture series that focuses on topics related to integrative medicine.

Over 100 people attended the luncheon on February 4th to celebrate Strauss and his many contributions.  Speakers at the event included Chancellor Elliman, Regent Sue Sharkey, and Governor Polis who is a long time friend of Strauss.  Strauss is a pharmacy alumnus and has strong connections to the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  This was an exciting and important day for the Strauss Health Sciences Library.

Health Sciences Library librarians participate in regional librarian meeting

Librarians at the Health Sciences Library regularly participate in professional associations.  In October, a number of the librarians from the Health Sciences Library participated in the Annual Meeting of the Midcontinental Chapter of the Medical Library Association (MCMLA).

The MCMLA Chapter includes the states of Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.  This year the Annual Meeting was held virtually and the Health Sciences Library hosted a viewing that librarians throughout the state were welcome to attend.  Pictured below are some of the attendees from the second day of the meeting.  Many of these librarians are from the Health Sciences Library.

Attendees on the second day of the MCMLA 2018 Annual Meeting. Many of these librarians are from the Health Sciences Library.

The virtual meeting is run just like an in person conference with keynote speakers, paper presentations, lightning talks, and a business meeting.  Research awards are given out during the meeting and two awards went to our librarians:

• Best Lightning Talk: Hannah Craven (former intern), Kristina C. Palmer (intern) and Christi Piper for A Bibliographic Analysis of Librarian Assistance on Systematic Reviews.
• Best Paper:  Dana Abbey for Information Needs of Community Health Center Staff.

The library is proud of the involvement of our librarians in professional associations.

 

Health Sciences Library continues partnership with other libraries in Colorado

The Health Sciences Library is a member of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, often referred to as The Alliance.  The Alliance is consortium of sixteen libraries located in Colorado and Wyoming that was founded in 1974 to consider ways of sharing resources. The driving force of the group is cooperation and the sharing of purchasing power, materials, and ideas.  The Alliance library directors gather six times a year for Member Council meetings.  The September Member Council meeting was held at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, CO.  The Tomlinson Library hosted the meeting and showed off their recent building renovation, including this fantastic outdoor fire pit.

Fire pit at Tomlinson Library, Colorado Mesa Univ

The Health Sciences Library receives numerous benefits from participating in the Alliance.  The biggest financial benefit is access to discounted subscription rates for journal packages and other electronic resources.  The Alliance also manages the Prospector Union Catalog which gives CU Anschutz faculty, staff and students free access to print materials from over forty academic, public and special libraries in Colorado and Wyoming

Since Grand Junction is very close to the border with Utah, during the September Alliance Member Council meeting an additional meeting was arranged with a similar organization in Utah – the Utah Academic Library Consortium.  There are many similarities between these two organizations and members are currently discussing options for a joint programming effort around the topic of diversity and inclusion.

If you’d like to know more about the Alliance, contact Melissa De Santis, Director of the Health Sciences Library (melissa.desantis@ucdenver.edu). For additional information about Prospector, ask staff at the Service Desk or contact the library via AskUs.

De Santis selected as Mentor in leadership program

Melissa De Santis has been selected as a mentor in the 2018-2019 NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine and the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries.  The Program prepares emerging leaders for director positions in academic health sciences libraries through a year-long mentoring relationship with a director of another library and a curriculum focused on developing leadership knowledge critical to enhancing the value of libraries in their institutions. In this highly competitive program, Melissa will be one of ten fellows and mentors from academic health sciences libraries across the U.S. who will begin their work together in November.  Since the program began in 2002, 54% of all fellow graduates have assumed director positions.  Melissa participated as a fellow in the program in 2012-2013 and is looking forward to participating as a mentor later this year.

Bringing Health and Care Back to Healthcare Conference – January 18th

The Health Sciences Library and the Strauss-Wisneski Collection Committee are a few of the collaborators organizing an upcoming conference that will look at healing, wholeness and resiliency.  Join us for the Bringing Health and Care Back to Healthcare conference that will take place on January 18, 2018.

Our panel of health care innovators will share insights, proven holistic concepts and provide a toolkit which participants can immediately use to enhance their practice, the lives of their patients and their personal well-being.

The program is grounded in proven, evidence-based research frameworks. We’ll also discover through experiential exercises, how to incorporate self-care and resiliency practices to awaken a vital new you and reignite passion for whole-person caring.

We’ll explore together how to bring healing and wholeness back to your personal support networks and workplace to:

• improve your health;
• decrease fatigue and burnout;
• reduce staff turnover; and
• improve patient outcomes and satisfaction.

Who should attend?

Everyone working in our health care systems that is interested in improving skills, communications and knowledge within care teams especially Nurses, Social Workers, APPs and Physicians.

For additional information, please visit the conference website.