NEGEA Libraries in Medical Education

Picture of carrel

2011-03-28T08:34:00.000-04:00

Those impressive study carrels at UW

2011-03-25T09:53:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,
I think a number of us were impressed with the lovely study carrels in the quiet room at Himmelfarb Library. Does anyone know who manufactures them? If someone took a picture would you be willing to post it to our blog? We are in the process of yet another "renovation" here and additional individual private carrels have been requested by numerous students. I particularly liked the sliding doors and frosted glass features in the ones we saw at Himmelfarb.

It was great to see everyone again. Despite the disappointing turnout at our workshop I like the attitude I heard from a couple of people that it was a "good dry run" for a workshop integrated into the program.

Ciao,
Julie

LiME Annual Business Meeting minutes

2011-03-16T16:20:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone. Below are the minutes from the LiME business meeting at this past weekend's NEGEA meeting in Washington. - Len Levin

Northeast Group on Education Affairs

LiME SIG

Annual Meeting

George Washington University

Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

Saturday, March 12, 4:30 PM

PRESENT: Laura Abate (George Washington), Donna Berryman (University of Rochester), Evelyn Breck Morgen (U CONN Health Center), David Flynn (Boston University), Jessica Kilham (U CONN Health Center), Paul Levett (George Washington), Len Levin (U Mass Medical School), Kerry O’Rourke (University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey), Nancy Tannery (University of Pittsburgh/UMPC), Julia Whelan (Harvard Medical School)

Outgoing chair Julia Whelan reported on 2010-11 events and activities including:

Online meetings - topics included student orientation and working with school administrators. These were well attended. A poll was taken earlier in the year to solicit topic ideas. Each meeting began with a short presentation by one member followed by discussion

Planning for “Medical Info Goes Mobile” on-site workshop (to be presented Sunday, March 13)

Serving as a reviewer for meeting abstracts (Julia encouraged us all to participate in this activity in the future)

Kerry, Nancy and Donna presented a poster “From Module Development to User Testing: A Collaborative Project to Create and Online Search Module for MERC”

Julia passed the “gavel” to Nancy Tannery, new chair

Nancy discussed her thoughts re: goals for 2011-12. These include:

Continuing the online meetings

Considering a collaborative research project. Possible topics could include a)EBM instruction and/or assessment, b) a trial of medical handheld apps (e.g., how do institutional policies impact usage? How do 4^th year students utilize the devices?), c) bibliometrics (e.g., PubMed alerts, impact factors, H factor, role of these in faculty promotion, etc.) or d) EMR/HER, comparing and evaluating “order sets” and other information packages that often come as part of a new EMR.

Other business/reports included:

17 have signed up for the March 13 Handheld workshop.

How can we better position ourselves with NEGEA? How can we better connect the term “librarian” to “medical educator”? Is this a topic for future discussion or a PR campaign?

Kerry reported on the current RIME journal project (list of best medical education journals for publishing on specific medical education topics). She happened to become involved in this project when sitting at the RIME table at last year’s meeting. She created and sent a list to the participants. Is there a way that LiME can critique/add value to this list?

Nancy will send Lee Manchul, new NEGEA Chair, an invitation to attend the LiME meeting next year. She will also work to get our SIG space on the business meeting agenda along with the other SIGs.

Nancy will explore how we can better connect with LiME groups in the other GEAs.

Officers for next year will be elected online in order to include all LiME members, not just those able to attend this year’s meeting. If anyone is interested in servicing as chair or secretary, please let Nancy know.

Respectfully submitted,

Len Levin, Secretary 2011-12

Bring a photo ID

2011-02-21T15:55:00.001-05:00

Laura warns us that security is tight at the GW library. Bring a photo ID to be sure you won't have problems!

LiME meeting at 2011

2011-02-03T11:34:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Laura Abate, our meeting next month is scheduled.

LIME Meeting
Saturday, March 12 4:30- 5:30
Location: Himmelfarb Library Room 202
RSVP: Laura Abate (mlblea@gwumc.edu)
Himmelfarb Library tour will be provided after the meeting to those interested.

Aside from seeing the library Laura and colleagues are also graciously providing us with coffee and cookies. Now all we have to add is some good conversation.
Hope to see you all there. Julie Whelan

Web page describing our post-NEGEA session

2011-01-13T11:38:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,
Evelyn discovered that George Washington University has posted our postconference session on one of their web pages. I thought you might be interested in viewing it.(Scroll down. We are bringing up the rear.)
https://inside.gwumc.edu/smhs/negea/postconference.cfm

LiME offered opportunity to present a post-conference session at NEGEA

2010-11-29T10:15:00.000-05:00

As you know, we submitted a proposal for a plenary presentation on medical applications for smart phone to the planning committee for next year’s NEGEA meeting in D.C. I just heard that they have agreed to give us time for a post conference presentation. This is a great opportunity for our group to showcase what we have to offer, and become more visible and active in NEGEA. In that same vein, note the request for proposal reviewers that Elza Mylona sent out today and volunteer if you can.

Coming soon...PubMed/myNCBI author ID

2010-11-04T17:15:00.004-04:00

The follown message went out to AAHSL library directors and fellows today. Once news goes out through email from a federal agency, the presumption is to share it:
Source: Elaine Collier, MD
Senior Advisor to the Director
National Center for Research Resources

In mid-2011, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) expects to introduce PubMed Author ID, a tool for addressing the problem of ambiguous author names within the biomedical literature. PubMed is the largest online collection of biomedical literature, with citations and abstracts for more than 20 million articles from biomedical and life sciences journals. With such an extensive collection it is common for multiple authors to have the same name (e.g., 100s of different John Jones), and it is also common for the same author to have published under different versions of her name (e.g., Jane Smith, Jane P. Smith, J.P. Smith). NLM's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is developing a system that will address this problem and facilitate accurate search and retrieval of a participating author's works.

The specifics of PubMed Author ID are still evolving, but as currently envisioned authors (or their designees) would register for the service through My NCBI and identify their research articles in PubMed using provided tools; this identification of articles will allow NCBI to link alternate names/spellings associated with an individual. NLM has already laid the foundation for the system by developing a process for NIH-funded authors to identify their articles for grant reporting purposes. NLM expects to make PubMed Author ID interoperable with multiple external author ID systems, such as those developed by publisher groups, non-profits organizations, and other nations. NLM has not yet identified external author ID systems that it will incorporate in PubMed Author ID, but will work with outside groups as systems are developed in this rapidly evolving area.

Notes from our virtual meeting of October 21

2010-10-27T12:15:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Martha Kirby for these notes from our meeting last week.

Notes from NEGEA LIME virtual meeting October 21, 9 AM
Topic: Educational Technology and social Networking

Hosted by Julia Whelan, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Med School
Attendees: Laura Abate, GWU; Charles Greenberg, Yale; Yingting Zhang, UMDNJ; Nancy Adams, Penn State; Cindy Stewart, Dartmouth; Elizabeth Richardson, Tufts; Elizabeth Irish, Albany; Martha Kirby, Drexel (recorder) -- Sorry if I missed anyone. Feel free to augment/correct/comment on these notes!

Julie began by reviewing the purpose and activities of NEGEA LIME. Purpose is to attend NEGEA annual meeting to interact with faculty, sharing library concerns, strengths. She pointed out that NEGEA has a discussion list for people interested in technology:
Med-Ed listserv from NEGEA: http://www.aamc.org/meded/technology/start.htm

Technology discussion:
Julia led off with educational technology used at Harvard Med:
- Camtasia tutorials have links on library web pages; if course-related, there is a link on the course page.
- elluminate online-distance education software. She uses it for a course in pharmacy education (dietary supplements) – easy, quite reliable, useful for distance learning.
- Diigo[sounds like “I go”] is useful for sharing web page content.
- Diigo [sounds like “veego”] Free - allows creation of a group within a class. Instructors offer web page links. Students add to web site and make comments; other students can make revisions.
- Voice Thread [sounds like voicebred] post narrated Powerpoint presentations online. free, but audio quality not great. Students can leave comments for creator and for fellow students

Camtasia
Laura: uses Camtasia for library tutorials on web site; hasn’t used it in classes.

Clickers
Laura: - uses them in classes. Initially students are excited, but they become jaded. Think carefully about what to ask to elicit response. Must be quick so as not to bog down the session.
Nancy: not too many questions per hour: maybe 3-4
Elizabeth Irish: library has clickers to lend. Her experience: successfully engaged students. Examples of questions? :” For this case, where would you go first for information?” Clinical faculty use them for diagnostic questions.

Jing
Nancy: very easy to do 5-minute videos, but no editing, no quizzes (a step below Camtasia). Have to start over instead of editing (easy). Endnote demos would be one application. Videos stored in cloud storage (can be private storage).
Charles: Has used for a couple months. Does still image capture & download, to add image to module or Powerpoint. For reference questions, can use it to quickly capture a sequence of images for patron.
(name?): Uses Jing to capture tech problem sequences to show to tech support staff.

Skype
Yingting: Uses Skype to communicate with patrons at remote site. Not used much, since only available in daytime, but students are in class then. Useful for virtual reference, trouble shooting: share screen with questioner.

Blog
Yingting: developed a blog to forestall frequent questions about EndNote (same questions again and again) “Now they leave me alone” Blog is used around the world: EndNote Users’ Group Blog at Endnote.wordpress.com
Charles: Can use blog to archive content. Can use RSS to put feed onto library web page.

Captivate
Yingting: takes a long time to create/edit, then once she is done, the database changes!

Screencastamatic
Charles: Can make movies up to an hour long. There is a free version, but he has upgraded to the Pro version. He thinks cloud storage is possible.

Social networking
Nancy: Used it a lot at undergrad library, after finding students ignored email. Facebook responses were instantaneous! Where she now works (Penn State Hershey med school) there was (will be?) a social networking summit to discuss legal and professional implications of social networking in healthcare, and to review extent of social networking by students.
Charlie: Asked at year-1 student orientation how many used Twitter – only 2. He was too discouraged to ask about Facebook, but he assumes most use it. At other schools, 80% on Facebook, but few Twitter.

How to find good cases to use, to illustrate information search? Julie said she spends too much time looking for good case ideas for teaching. Charlie suggested a wiki done by librarians (details? EBM WetPaint wiki? Dartmouth?)

Survey idea
Julie proposed for regional survey of educational uses of technology/social networking. Discuss at next meeting? Create a core group to organize it? Charles suggested it might be easier to ask people to post on a blog.

NEGEA activities (Julie)
Good for librarians to become more integrated into NEGEA.

Research grant competition - Julia is part of a group that made a submission. Another group from Worcester won an award; future meeting topic?

Research In Medical Education (RIME) (section of GEA) is in spotlight at AAMC meetings. Would be good if someone from LIME participated. Next meeting is in November, Washington DC

Next NEGEA regional meeting is also in Washington DC, March 2011 At the last one, LIME proposed to host a plenary session on mobile apps in medical ed, with a LIME group volunteering to present for an hour. No response yet

Other ideas for active participation are welcome. LIME members have had posters and papers accepted in the past. Could also host a table during poster sessions. (suggestion: sticker reading “I talked to a librarian at this conference”)

MERC holds workshops during NEGEA regional meeting leading to a certificate in Medical Education Research. Such certification could help to increase visibility & prestige of medical librarians.

Julie has attended four times – gets new ideas/perspectives on things going on in medical education.

Next virtual meeting to be hosted by Charlie
February, early in the day. Usually consists of a presentation followed by discussion. Today no presentation – OK? Yes: round-robin of sharing is useful.

In between meetings, communicate via blog

Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries October Conference: Presentation Slides

2010-10-21T20:06:00.002-04:00

The Dartmouth College Biomedical Libraries annual October Conference ("Tools to Support Teaching and Outreach: A Mix of the New and the Tried-and-True") was another big success. The presenters' slides are now available from the Conference website:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/services.htmld/OctCon2010/index.shtml

Take a look when you get a chance. Some great ideas here!

-Cindy Stewart

Next Virtual Meeting October 21 at 10 a.m.

2010-10-15T11:55:00.002-04:00

Please join us for our next Virtual meeting October 21 at 10. Sign in information will be sent to all members early next week. If you do not receive an email with this information and wish to participate, please contact Julie Whelan. We will discuss educational technology and social media, plans for our next meeting, with time for a round table discussion at the end.

Our fall virtual meeting

2010-09-20T09:08:00.003-04:00

Hi Everyone,
Orientations are over and the fall semester is hitting its stride. It's time to plan our next virtual meeting. Put on your thinking caps or brainstorm about possible hot topics for discussion. I will send out a Doodle calendar to everyone and we will find the dates that works well for the most people. We should also discuss our participation in the annual meeting and try to keep that initiative rolling.

Be well,
Julie Whelan

Medical schools

2010-09-07T13:19:00.001-04:00

“Snapshot of Medical Student Education in the United States and Canada,” is a supplement to the September 2010 issue of Academic Medicine. It has been 10 years since the publication of the first “Snapshot” in a supplement to the September 2000 issue of the journal. The reports are structured to facilitate comparison between the medical student education programs described in the present collection and those described in the 2000 collection, and also to compare the current programs with one another.

Article of interest

2010-08-27T13:49:00.002-04:00

Improving assessment of evidence-based medicine skills in medical students. Med Educ. 2010 May;44(5):510-1
This article describes a study of 37 3rd year medical students enrolled in a 6-week EBM course. The course covers EBM theory, how to conduct a literature search, literature appraisal and application of what is learned.

Assessment of learning was done using a case study assignment and questions from the Fresno Test of EBM. Mean scores were 70.8% on the case study and 65.1% on the Fresno Test of EBM.

The conclusion was the Fresno test of EBM was successful in assessing EBM skills.

The test is available at http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7384/319/suppl/DC1

2010-08-13T11:06:00.003-04:00

First Year Students are either here or arriving next week...
What are you doing at your school? Are you teaching in one of their introductory classes? Giving tours? Conducting Orientations? Hosting a table at an Info fair? Let's share the tactics we use to reach our new arrivals.

NEGEA research grant applications

2010-08-04T11:36:00.001-04:00

This report from Len Levin our incoming chair...

Hi Julia. I just wanted to pass along to you, in your exalted role as LiME chair, that a faculty member at U Mass and myself as well as a faculty member at the Worcester campus of MCPHS and Irena, the librarian there, applied for the NEGEA collaborative grant that announced a while back. This could be big “LiME news” if we get funded and may help to expand our profile in the NEGEA (and I will be certain to share all of the details with you and put something on the blog as well). I also submitted my professional development/travel requests for this fiscal year today and NEGEA Washington was on my list. Hope you are having a good summer. Take care. - Len

Len Levin, MS LIS, MA, AHIP

Head, Education & Clinical Services

Instructor, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health

Lamar Soutter Library

University of Massachusetts Medical School

55 Lake Ave. North

Worcester, MA 01655

V 508-856-6028

F 508-856-5899

len.levin@umassmed.edu

Meet you in cyber space

2010-06-14T12:17:00.003-04:00

Get ready for our next virtual meeting on Monday, June 21 at noon. If you want to participate, email me at julia_whelan@hms.harvard.edu. In addition, please look at the short (really it's only 2 questions) poll at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LFXD9W5 where you can tell us what topic you'd like to discuss and if you'd be able to do a short presentation on what you've done in that area at your medical school.

Cheers,
Julie

2010-05-21T13:59:00.002-04:00

I have been away until today and previously I had not heard back from other LiME sections about interest in LiME get together at MLA. Now I am receiving some emails that folks are interested. At this point, the best option I can think of is an informal get together at the hotel bar Monday evening. My SIG is going out to dinner that evening, but I should be able to get back by 7:30.

Let's try to gather at 7:30 at the hotel's TDL bar for a meet,greet and chat. Hope you can make it.

Program of interest at MLA

2010-04-28T14:50:00.000-04:00

This note of interest from Donna O'Malley at UVM

There's an MLA SIG called Libraries in Curriculum which is meeting Tuesday morning May 25, 2010: 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM in the Hilton Kalorama room, Lobby Level. It's for all kinds of curricula, not just medical, but it's an option if there's interest in discussing those types of topics. We don't have a topic yet, but these are some of our ideas:
Asynchronous instruction (podcasts, online tutorials, other?)
Do our students just need to learn how to do Evidence Based Practice? Or is there more to it?
Ideas for large-group instruction.
Newest innovations are at our institutions. The stuff that everyone is going to meetings about right now, but that hasn't been implemented yet.

LiME @ MLA

2010-04-21T12:08:00.001-04:00

Are you interested in trying to get together at MLA?

Or, do you feel your conference schedule is so packed you can’t squeeze anything else into the mix?

I wanted to get a sense from the group whether you would like to meet informally in DC. If several people are interested I will send out a Doodle calendar with some possible meeting times and we can go from there.

Julie

Next year's 2011 meeting

2010-03-29T09:30:00.003-04:00

There have been several questions on next year's meeting as members are planning their travel budgets and calendars. Here's the scoop:

The meeting will be hosted by George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington DC. They are looking to inject a Washington flavor into the meeting with visits to capitol hill to meet with legislators, visits to AAMC, etc.. I am sure our GW members will help us with info on the campus and city.

The format of the meeting varies slightly from the past few years. The schedule calls for full days on Friday, March 11 and Saturday the 12th, with workshops and our meeting scheduled post meeting on Sunday, March 13.

I'll keep you informed as I hear more...Julie Whelan

What did you bring home from NEGEA?

2010-03-16T17:50:00.002-04:00

I always bring home something useful from this meeting. This year, I brought home two ideas that I plan to use immediately.

1. Dr. Willet had a poster behind mine about how to turn a lecture into an interactive, engaging learning experience. She used a clicker system, which is not an option here, but she described how I could achieve the same effect by giving students teams signs they could hold up to indicate the answer of their choice.

2. Evelyn Morgen and her staff do a lot to support mobile information sources. I have been worried about the cost of these phones. She bought her staff iPod Touch devices so there is no monthly fee involved only the one time cost of the device.

NEGEA is always a good learning experience.
Julie

LiME meeting minutes March 11, 2010

2010-03-15T17:05:00.003-04:00

In attendance: Donna Berryman, Nancy Tannery, Julie Whelan, Len Levin, Evelyn Morgen, Laura Abate, Alexandra Gomes, David Flynn, Elizabeth Richardson, Jeanette de Richemond, Kerry O’Rourke, Kathleen Crea, Jessica Kilham, Helen-Ann Brown Epstein

Donna Berryman welcomed everyone to the 8:00 am meeting. There were 14 librarians in attendance. Donna thanked Evelyn Morgen, Director of the Lyman Maynard Stowe Library at the University of Connecticut Health Center for hosting the meeting.
Chairs report:
• Several virtual meetings this year, one in the fall about orientations and the recent Feb meeting about evaluations and assessments. Countway library has hosted these WebEx sessions. Helen-ann offered to host from Cornell using GoToMeeting web conferencing
• We viewed the initial SIG proposal we made to the NEGEA. There was discussion about how we relate to MLA SIGs and AMIA has an education SIG.

Elections:
• Len Levin, University of Massachusetts Medical School, was elected Secretary.
• Nancy Tannery, University of Pittsburgh was elected Chair-elect
• Julie Whelan, Harvard University became Chair. Julie acknowledged all the hard work Donna has done this past year. All in attendance agreed.

Librarians participating at this year’s NEGEA:
1. Poster presentations
Beyond Sutures: Bringing Surgery Informatics to Clerkship by Julia Whelan

Tufts University School of Medicine’s Medical Education Literature Alerts: A Faculty Development Initiative to Keep Faculty Up-to-Date with Educational Literature by Elizabeth Richardson and colleagues

The Ever-Changing Teaching Environment: The Impact of the Anywhere, Anytime Information Workspace on Medical Trainees by Jeanette de Richemond

From Best Practice to Module Development: A Collaborative Project to Create an Online Search Module for MERC by Kerry O'Rourke, Nancy Tannery, Donna Berryman

Don’t Just Tell Them, Show Them Too! Embedding Problem Based Learning into First-Year Students’ Library Orientation at UCHC by Kathleen Crea, and Jessica Kilham,

2. Evelyn Morgen was a co-presenter for the workshop, Developing Faculty Skills in Medical Informatics, Teaching Our Learners How to Optimally use Health Information Technology (HIT) in Patient Care.

3. Len Levine, Julie Whelan and Helen-Ann Brown Epstein reviewed submissions

Discussion about our role in NEGEA:
-We feel very welcome at this meeting
-We’ll try to find out the reason for the requirement of an MD or PhD to join a RIME committee
-We will continue to volunteer for programs and committees.
-We discussed a mobile technologies presentation for next year’s meeting. Evelyn Morgen, Donna Berryman, Laura Abate and Elizabeth Richardson volunteered to work on this project.
-Donna suggested we find a research question to be conducted across institutions.Results to be presented at a future NEGEA meeting. Ideas discussed included:
o Measuring educational outcomes
o Qualitative research about what our users do
o Are medical students interested in searching MEDLINE?
o Professionalism, e-professionalism-issues with facebook, faculty and student attitudes differ, medical note taking occurring in many places, how to protect privacy
o Blogs host PICO questions, papers about EBM and clinical support
o Survey of librarians who teach in for credit courses
o Librarians involved in curricular reform
Can we find a common thread via the email discussion list?

What do we want to do to connect throughout next year:
-Virtual meetings –part open discussion and part focused discussion, July, Nov, Feb. A survey will be sent to determine best time of day.
-Use blog for discussions, to plan out research question for example
-Demo of social network for academic librarians involved in teaching, Academic Librarians Learning Network, http://all-net.ning.com/

The meeting was adjourned at 11:00am by Donna Berryman, Chair.
Minutes respectfully submitted by
Nancy Tannery, Outgoing Secretary / Incoming Chair-elect.

LiME meeting at NEGEA

2010-02-22T17:40:00.003-05:00

The annual LiME meeting at NEGEA will be March 12, 2010 at the UCONN Health Center. It’s right around the corner.

Please help us prepare for that meeting by doing the following two things:
(1) RSVP
(2) Nominate yourself or someone else for a leadership position in LiME

To RSVP:
Simply send an email to me (donna_berryman at urmc.rochester.edu) and say, “Yes, I’m attending” or “No, I won’t be attending”. It’s just that easy.

To NOMINATE:
There are two positions in LiME that need to be filled: Chair-Elect and Secretary.

The Chair-Elect shall:

Assume the duties of the Chair in the event the current Chair vacates the office (let’s call that the “Miss America” clause)
Serve as leader of the programming initiative
And, serve as Chair when the Chair-Elect term is ended

The Secretary shall:

Record, keep, and distribute minutes of the annual meeting
Provide such minutes to any NEGEA sections of committees that require them

If you wish to nominate yourself for either of those positions, simply include that information with your RSVP email. If you wish to nominate someone else, please first communicate with that person & make sure they are willing to serve. If they are, then simply include their name & the position for which you are nominating them them when you RSVP.

Please respond by 5:00 on MONDAY, MARCH 1st.

I look forward to hearing from you (RSVP & nominations) by 3/1 and I hope to see many of you at our meeting at UCONN.

And if you’re in need of registration information for NEGEA, look here . If you have questions about the LiME meeting or NEGEA, please feel free to contact me.

Original Proposal for Northeast LiME Sig

2010-02-11T18:49:00.001-05:00

NEGEA LiME Proposal (Draft 2 22)

View more documents from Miner Library, University of Rochester Medical Center.

Slides from the Virtual Meeting 2.08.2010

2010-02-11T18:15:00.001-05:00

Northeast LiMe 02.08.2010

View more presentations from Miner Library, University of Rochester Medical Center.

2010 NEGEA Meeting: UCONN Health Center

2010-02-09T14:24:00.003-05:00

Registration is open for the 2010 NEGEA Meeting! Please plan on joining us at the UCONN Health Center in Farmington, CT.

Information and registration is available here.

As is our custom, the LiME group will have a meeting in conjunction with NEGEA. We'll be meeting on March 12th at 8:00 AM. Please bring your coffee and join us. We'll be gathering in the library conference room. More information will be forthcoming regarding our agenda for the meeting.

Sure hope to see you there!

Powerpoint slides from virtual meeting

2009-07-29T14:07:00.010-04:00

Virtual meetting minutes

2009-07-17T12:32:00.007-04:00

NELiME Virtual Meeting

July 16, 2009

13 attendees

Topic of discussion was orientation plans

How do your current orientation plans compare with what you’ve done in the past?

Comment on- Audience; Length of sessions; Focus;Social networking

Donna O’Malley, University of Vermont

Library provides orientation for 114 medical students in 2 - 30 minute sessions. New this year, PowerPoint presentation which will include images of places in the library, resources, map of wireless hot spots for example

Len Levine, UMass

Library provides orientations for 1^st year med students, EBM for 3^rd year, biomedical sciences students, nursing and new residents

New this year, “keep it simple”, all 1^st year students at one time. 3^rd year’s instruction on EBM throughout all clerkships, orientation at the beginning of the year, more hands-on during clerkship, why should you care about EBM?

Online training for residents- http://onlinetraining.umassmed.edu/lslresorient09

Janet Crager, Brown University

No orientations for 1^st year med students. See all 3^rd/4^th years during clerkships. Librarians work with individual students on projects.

Hongjie Wang, University of Connecticut

Library provides orientations for medical and dental students which is one hour long. New this year, lib (subject) guides and a team approach. Four parts for 4 librarians; overview, databases, av materials, specific case example same as PBL case

Julie Whelan, Harvard

Library provides orientations for 1^st year dental and medical students during their first course. The course is PBL with 2 real cases; library involvement in the middle of week ; 4 groups, interactive as possible without hands-on. New this year, case model, listings of different resources in a chart with advantages and disadvantages of each, open to student questions.

Laura Abate, George Washington University

Library provides orientations for 190 1^st year med students in an open house scavenger hunt model over 3 hours. Six stations in the library and each station has an activity. If students complete all activities they are entered into a drawing for prizes from vendors or local vendors-restaurants. Later in the year are hands-on sessions.

Nancy Tannery, University of Pittsburgh

Library provides an open house to 1^st year med students much like Laura. Also have an online overview of basic library information.

Kerry O’Rourke, Robert Wood Johnson library, UMDNJ

Library provides orientations during students first week of orientation as part of the tour of the clinical campus. 15-20 students in a group for 15 min sessions. Large screen at the entrance of the library used to show a few key resources. Library part of 3^rd year online curriculum; one hour overview of EBM.

Grad school of biomedical sciences students receive orientation to EndNote and PubMed. New resident orientations is given to 7 different groups.

Meeting concluded with discussion about scheduling another virtual meeting and any interest in a collaborative research project.

Virtual Meeting

2009-05-05T09:11:00.002-04:00

Hi Everyone,
After our discussion of trying to have at least one virtual meeting, I came back to Boston and asked here at H.M.S. if we have the technology to host a site. We do with our WebX software and a few of our conference rooms which are equipped with web cams. However these rooms are in high demand so it would be helpful if we could pick a date for this sooner rather than later. We would be happy to act as a host for any LIME members in southern New England who wanted to come here and join the meeting. This would help cut down on the number of sites joining the meeting but allow many more members to participate. So, anyone want to suggest some dates?
Hope you all arrived home safely,
Julie

Agenda LiME meeting May 1, 2009

2009-04-15T11:00:00.000-04:00

NEGEA LiME Agenda
Friday , May 1st 9:00am – noon

1.Election of officers – we will need an incoming chair and a secretary; included will be a review of the responsibilities of each elected role

2.Review of member activities: Let us know if you have a poster, short communication, or workshop at this meeting; other initiatives you may be participating in

3.Update on the LiME/AAHSL joint task force – Kerry O’Rouke

4.LiME blog –what role should the blog play during the coming year. The blog may be found at http://librariansinmedicaleducation.blogspot.com/

5.Poll: At last year’s meeting it was suggested that we do a poll of LiME members to determine future ideas for the group

6.Discussion on ways for us to share educational plans from our institutions – what do we teach, when, how? – Julie Whelan

7.Virtual meetings/workspaces

8. Anything else?

NEGEA Hershey meeting web site now up

2009-01-07T14:21:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't already seen it, the website for the May meeting in Hershey is now up at http://www.hmc.psu.edu/ce/negea/index.htm. This includes information for submission of poster and presentation abstracts which are due on January 30th.

Happy New Year to all.

Len Levin
U Mass Med., Worcester

Our meeting in Pennsylvania

2009-01-06T12:29:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year everyone,
I wanted to check in and confirm when we are meeting in Hershey. The conference website just says the same day as the COMET SIG but doesn't give a time. I am interested in trying to take a MERC course but of course, the LIME SIG is most important. Speaking of MERC courses, has anyone else in the SIG taken either of the courses offered this year?

Wishing you all the best,
Julie Whelan

Upcoming AAMC meeting October 31-November 5

2008-10-22T13:22:00.002-04:00

As the national AAMC meeting quickly approaches, Kerry O'Rourke and Lauren Maggio are working to coordinate a librarians / LiME dinner on Sunday evening in San Antonio. We hope you will all be able to join us and plan to make a reservation soon. If you are interested, please RSVP to Lauren Maggio at lmaggio@stanford.edu, so that we can make a reservation. Feel free to invite your colleagues--the more the merrier!

Also in San Antonio, LiME and AAHSL are jointly presenting a poster highlighting the groups' initiatives and relationship to AAMC. They are hoping to staff the poster while it is up on Sunday and Monday. Please let Lauren know if you would be interested in volunteering some time.

National LiME Page Launched!

2008-07-30T17:40:00.000-04:00

A national LiME website has been launched.

Check it out at http://www.aahsl.org/lime.

AAMC Prelimary Program Posted

2008-07-18T15:02:00.003-04:00

AAMC has posted the preliminary program for the 2008 Annual Meeting in San Antonio (October 31-November 5). Check it out!

Link to program and registration:
http://www.aamc.org/meetings/annual/2008/start.htm

Is anyone planning on attending?

Changes to PubMed's Automatic Term Mapping

2008-06-02T13:41:00.002-04:00

PubMed's Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) has been changed. You can read about it in the NLM Technical Bulletin article.

The changes mean that PubMed no longer maps search queries in the same way. Retrieval is increased. And, as far as I can see, this means that PubMed is moving more towards key word searching and away from subject searching. It's a big change.

In the past, PubMed did a pretty good job of mapping terms in the search box to MeSH terms. In the past, if someone entered an entry term for a MeSH heading, PubMed would do a mapping that would improve retrieval for that subject. So, for example, if someone entered heart attack into the search box in PubMed, you'd see this:

"myocardial infarction"[MeSH] OR ("myocardial infarction"[TIAB] NOT MEDLINE[SB]) OR heart attack[text word]

That's gone now. Here's what you get now:

"myocardial infarction"[MeSH Terms] OR ("myocardial"[All Fields] AND "infarction"[All Fields]) OR "myocardial infarction"[All Fields] OR ("heart"[All Fields] AND "attack"[All Fields]) OR "heart attack"[All Fields]

There's quite a difference between the two searches.

And, yes, I know they've put up an "Advanced Search (beta)" which I've looked at & don't care for much. It seems a step backward to me. Yes, it's an option, but not a very good one from what I can see. It combines Limits with Preview/Index. It's not what users are going to turn to. People are going to slap terms in the search box and hit go -- and now PubMed won't have its elegant ATM to process the search.

My question is this: How are you going to teach PubMed now?

Continuing Education in the Health Professions

2008-05-22T09:55:00.002-04:00

The Josiah Macy Jr Foundation has released Continuing Education in the Health Professions: Improving Healthcare through Lifelong Learning, the proceedings of a conference held in 2007.

While it will take awhile to digest at 243 pages, topics covered include:

Approaches to knowledge development: what works and what doesn't
Financing continuing education: who, how, and why
Designing systems for lifelong learning to improve health

The full document is available on the website of the Foundation and might be worth a look.

New website

2008-05-14T16:54:00.002-04:00

Check out the new NEGEA LIME website http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/nelime Having a presence on the web should help recruitment and increase awareness of our SIG within the larger organization. I love the lime with the stethoscope. Who was the creative mind behind that image? Great work by all involved (especially Nancy Tannery at Pitt for arranging hosting).
Julie

Running for Office

2008-04-17T13:41:00.002-04:00

When we were eating breakfast on Sunday, I struck up a conversation with Joel Bartfield, the GME representative on the Steering Committee. We had a great chat since we had attended many of the same sessions and because we both have sons who graduated in the same class from Berkley College of Music. At any rate, when the call for nominations for Member-at-Large came up, Joel turned to me and encouraged me to throw my hat into the ring. He said it would be great to have someone from LIME on the Steering Committee. I took him up on his suggestion and sent in a self nomination to Karen Richardson-Nassif. So don't think you are seeing things when you see my name on the ballot.

On another theme, it seems that when I'm at the NEGEA meetings I'm not always sure how much I am getting out of them. However, once I'm back at my library I feel I have so much to share with my colleagues ranging from what others are doing at their institutions to the "hot topics" in medical education. It was great reconnecting with you all. I think the "Welcome Reception by Candlelight" should go down in our archives.

Julie

NEGEA Meeting Updates

2008-01-04T14:57:00.000-05:00

Dear Librarians,

Happy New Year!

Earlier today, I received the following email which contains more detailed information regarding the upcoming NEGEA meeting to be held April 12-13^th (with a LiME meeting on the 11^th) at the University of Vermont.

There is a LIME meeting scheduled for the afternoon of Friday April 11. We requested this time slot so that LIME members can have more time during the general conference to network with faculty members and other special interest groups. As the theme of this meeting is collaboration, I am hope that we will be able to utilize our two hour time slot for collaborating amongst ourselves, sharing ideas and experiences. I will be asking for suggestions on how to best structure our time in the next few weeks.

The below message also includes a call for papers, workshops and posters. I hope that some of you will consider this opportunity and submit abstracts. For example, last year a group of LIME members submitted a poster which was very well received. In the spirit of collaboration, I would be happy to work with members interested in presenting. Abstracts are due February 8^th.

2008 NEGEA Regional Conference
Collaboration Across the Continuum
Burlington , Vermont
April 12-13, 2008
Hosted by the University of Vermont College of Medicine .

The theme of this year's meeting is Collaboration Across the Continuum. The meeting will open on Saturday morning with a plenary session with Robert Galbraith talking about New Approaches to Supporting Self-Learning Across the Curriculum. This talk with foster innovative thinking in medical education about how best to support our learning processes. There will be a second plenary session on Sunday at noon, related to how to facilitate collaboration. In addition, we will have many fine short communications, interactive workshops and interesting posters. Saturday night will feature an evening at the Fleming Museum with good food and friends.

This conference, targeted at medical students, educators, administrators and clinicians, will address these issues and more. Please join us in Burlington , Vermont .

We invite you to submit abstracts that fit our conference theme or that are of interest to the NEGEA in one of these formats:
- Poster
- Short Communication
- Workshop
The award and presentation submission forms are available at the website at http://med.uvm.edu/negea. Submission Deadline: February 8, 2008.
Conference Registration/housing information can be found at: http://cme.uvm.edu. Scroll down to NEGEA conference in April.
Preconference programs include:
MERC: Searching and Evaluating the Medical Education Research Literature
Taught by: Lauren Maggio and Sonia Crandall Friday April 11 9-12

Questionnaire Design and Survey Research
Taught by: Sonia Crandall Friday April 11 1:30-4:30

COMET: The Consortium on Medical Education and Technology (COMET) will be holding its annual meeting on Friday, April 11 in the afternoon. Technologist and educators from member schools are encouraged to attend this open meeting. The agenda will include a mix of updates from members schools, presentations and interactive discussions. It is free and will be held from 1pm to 5pm at the University of Vermont College of Medicine with a reception following.
LIME: The NEGEA special interest group Librarians in Medical Education (LIME) will meet on Friday afternoon to discuss current initiatives and future projects and goals.

Post-conference program:
CurrMIT: Sunday April 12 3-6 pm
Using SQL for enhanced reporting options
* Brief overview of CurrMIT structure, tables and field identifiers
* Common SQL commands
* Hands-on report writing

The NEGEA meeting will be held in the beautiful mountain/lake community of Burlington , Vermont . Travel is easy by highway or plane. Besides participating in presentations and workshops, enjoy the opportunity to network and profit from the opportunities for collaboration with other institutions.

Other libraries...

2007-11-27T17:03:00.001-05:00

Tonight I'm attending a charity event at a major university library in the Boston area and actually borrowing one of their e-mail terminals to post. This library is not affiliated with my own institution, yet when I walked past circulation and nodded at the reference librarian, I still felt very much at home.

I love visiting libraries. So if I am ever coming to your town, don't be surprised if you get a phone call. I also enjoy hosting other librarians at my library. I think it's a great way for librarians to share ideas, learn about other libraries and even to learn about their own library. Sometimes when I am giving a librarian a tour of my place, I find myself asking "Yeah why do we do it that way? It's great to get that fresh outside perspective.

Course Info

2007-11-27T12:44:00.000-05:00

Now that I am in the thick of teaching my course: Introduction to Biomedical Information, I am spending a great deal of time using Course Info. As an instructor, I have a love/hate relationship with the system, but we are slowly becoming friends. As a librarian, the more I use it I see new ways of injecting the Library into students' active work space.

For example, I am embedded into our Family Medicine Clerkship Course Info site. In this role, I comment on student's EBM questions and search strategies and answer general questions about the Library. So far this has worked extrememly well.

Reflecting

2007-11-26T19:51:00.000-05:00

Following each information skills session that I teach, I carve out a few extra minutes to write my reflections on each session. I think of it as keeping an instruction journal and try to think about: What seemed to work for the students? What made them laugh? What made them groan? Did I feel comfortable with all of the content? Were there any sticky spots in the lesson plan that need revision? How would you approach this topic / group of students / discipline in the future?

Lately with medical education on the brain, I have been trying to include in my "entries" one thought on how my lesson ties into the bigger picture of med ed. Sometimes this is easier said than done, but I'm continuing to work on it and slowly, but surely I'm realizing that much of what we do has a direct medical education impact.

Peer Review

2007-11-21T11:01:00.000-05:00

At the AAMC meeting, I attended a session on faculty peer review. Basically this means an instructor attends a class taught by one of their peers and then provides feedback on the instructor's material, teaching style, etc. It's hoped that this feedback will help the instructor improve.

Throughout the session, I wondered how many libraries were engaged in peer review of their own instructors. As the Education Coordinator at my institution, I observe some of my instructors sessions and provide feedback, which can be helpful, but also not completely effective. For example, in most cases I have written the materials and curriculum that I would be critiquing and therefore it's difficult for me to see the flaws in my own work. Therefore for me the more interesting idea presented was that of peer review across institutions. For example, a librarian from SOM X would observe a librarian from SOM Y and vice versa. They would then exchange ideas and provide each other feedback. I thought this could potentially be a great way for librarians to inject new ideas into their programs and to help eliminate bias.

As I thought more about this idea, I realized that it didn't necessarily have to mean librarians travelling to observe each other. Instead it may be viable to simply and critique lesson plans - a different peer review of sorts, but one that I think could also be valuable.

Any one interested?

Teaching Courses?

2007-11-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, I began directing the credit course Introduction to Biomedical Information. It is a 14 week graded course required of all 180 of our Graduate Medical Science Students (i.e. students that hope to apply to medical school). Has anyone else offered a similar course?

AAMC - A Week in Review

2007-11-09T19:19:00.000-05:00

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the national meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington DC.

LiME was well represented with several members in attendance from all four regions. Additionally a poster that highlighted our increasing membership and the group's relationship with the Association of Academic Health Science Libraries (AAHSL) and the Group on Education Affairs (GEA) was presented. Also at the northeast GEA (NEGEA) meeting, I had the opportunity to briefly speak about the group's progress and plans for the future. As I found at the NEGEA retreat earlier this year, the NEGEA members were extremely welcoming to the librarians and eager to collaborate.

Lastly, mark your calendars. The upcoming regional meeting sites were announced:
SGEA, April 3-5, Nashville, Tenn.
CGEA, April 10-12, Columbus, Ohio
NEGEA, April 12-13, Burlington, Vt.
WGEA, April 27-30, Asilomar, Calif.

Seen at AAMC....

2007-11-07T17:06:00.000-05:00

NEGEA-LIME was well represented in the IME Exhibit area at th 2007 AAMC Annual meeting.

Getting ready for MLA

2007-10-23T12:56:00.000-04:00

Although it feels like the fall has just started, I am already thinking about the spring meeting of the MLA. Actually with the November 5th deadline swiftly approaching for poster and paper submissions I have been thinking a lot about the MLA and how to fit my ideas / projects / trainings into a structured abstract.

Is anyone else planning to submit a paper or presentation for the upcoming national MLA meeting?

What do you teach your first year students?

2007-10-11T16:39:00.000-04:00

Earlier today I received a message from Dan Kipnis, a LiME member and librarian at Thomas Jefferson University. He had the following question for the group, which can be answered by posting a comment to this blog.

For many years we have taught our first year medical school students how to search OVID MEDLINE. With yet another OVID interface change coming on October 25^th (aka OVIDSP), we are considering teaching our medical school students PubMed and moving away from OVID MEDLINE.

Here are my 2 questions:

1. For first year medical school students, which database do you currently teach? OVID MEDLINE or PubMed? Both? Or do you focus on other database(s)?

2. What is your reason for choosing one database over another?

I would be glad to summarize responses. Thanks for your time and sharing your thoughts.

Dan Kipnis, MSI
Senior Education Services Librarian

A Visitor From Down Under

2007-10-09T08:58:00.001-04:00

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with a medical librarian from the University of New South Wales in Australia here at Boston University Medical Center. We both discussed our education programs, medical students and offices of medical education. After about an hour we both realized that despite the great distance between our medical libraries there really are not that many differences.

This reminded me of the importance of keeping in touch with other librarians. Again feel free to use the Google map that lists contact information for instruction librarians around the country to touch base, learn new ideas and above all to prevent yourself from reinventing the wheel when it comes to programs, assignments, marketing, etc...

Google Map Link: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=109369099526210542044.000437ed42bb3c6e34ec5&z=5&om=1

Keeping track of it all

2007-09-26T09:36:00.001-04:00

Now that the first wave of training is starting to wind down, I have had some time to examine the education statistics that we have collected. So far we have completed just over 80 hands-on sessions and trained 1600 patrons. At face value these numbers are impressive, but I wish I had been able to capture more descriptive data about each session beyond the basic numbers. For example, how many of the students really walked away from the session with a good grasp of Boolean operators? Does anyone have a system that allows them to capture robust descriptive data on their instruction sessions?

Cross training

2007-09-19T14:05:00.000-04:00

September as always has been quite the whirlwind of activities. This year felt even more hectic as we have expanded our student training considerably to incorporate more students from all four of our schools (medicine, dentistry, public health and graduate medical sciences). Basically this has meant a lot of cross training. For example, in the morning I might train a group of third year family medicine students followed up by an afternoon session with first year dental students. It's a lot of shifting gears in terms of student abilities and subject specific materials.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for managing this type of cross training?

Co-teaching

2007-09-13T11:24:00.000-04:00

This semester on my campus I have made an extra effort to get out of the Library and onto the campus to meet new faculty members. In many of the cases, I simply pass on information about the Library, but yesterday I spoke with an extremely enthusiastic faculty person who had come to my campus having co-taught with a librarian at their previous institution. The faculty member raved about her experience and was extremely knowledge about librarians and library services. I am now working with this faculty member and I hope I can measure up to her previous librarian!

Does anyone else co-teach a course with a faculty member?

NEGEA LiME mentioned

2007-09-10T12:56:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend, the NEGEA LiME group was briefly featured in a post to the UBC Academic--Google Scholar Blog. The group was mentioned in a short interview that I did regarding my role at Boston University Medical Center.

Maintained by Dean Giustini, a medical librarian and instructor at the University of British Columbia this blog is dedicated "To observe, document & comment on the evolution of searching in higher education".

I know I frequently check in with this blog to get updates on what is happening in the world of web searching. What are some other resources that people use to keep current with the latest trends?

MedEdPORTAL

2007-09-07T11:29:00.000-04:00

About eight weeks ago my library submitted an online EBM tutorial (http://medlib.bu.edu/tutorials/ebm/pico/) to MedEdPORTAL and it was recently accepted and I was notified that in the next few weeks the tutorial will be professionally indexed and made searchable through MedEdPORTAL.

MedEdPORTAL is the AAMC's online repository of peer reviewed teaching resources, including virtual patients, cases, assessment instruments and faculty development materials. The contents are MedEd PORTAL are free to all users. The AAMC states that "MedEdPORTAL was designed to promote collaboration and educational scholarship by facilitating the open exchange of peer-reviewed teaching resources."

All in all the submission/peer review process for our tutorial was painless and I would definitely recommend the process to other libraries with materials to share. Also as the idea of creating a tool box of education resources has been a goal of LiME from the start. We may want to consider a role for MedEd PORTAL.

Google vs. PubMed

2007-09-04T10:26:00.000-04:00

An article with the title, University Students Don't Question Google, (NetWork world - http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/082707-university-students-dont-question.html?netht=082807dailynews1) - made the rounds of our department last week. It made me think that we need to start all of our classes with examples of how databases can help students search more effectively and retrieve more focused results than Google. I was admiring the tutorial from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine http://www.mssm.edu/library/tutorials/pubmed.html, which includes examples of Google vs. PubMed. I wondered if others include this topic in their teaching and have favorite examples they use to make this point.

Group Dynamics

2007-08-29T14:16:00.000-04:00

We just finished a series of 4 sessions with the incoming medical students. They had all been introduced to a patient case and we structured our session by asking them what questions they needed to answer in order to continue with the case. Then we tried to show them resources where they could find the answers. This year we were more structured in our approach than last because we wanted to be sure that they saw how to get to certain types of information. We gave them a one page sheet categorizing resources and giving examples of what we have in each, such as texts both print and online - good for an overview of a disease state.
It was interesting to note the group dynamics that seemed to come into play. One group was definitely more engaged and interactive. Almost everyone from that group went on the optional tour we offered at the close of each session. In today's group, we got some initial questions, but then no comments and only a handful of students went on the tour. It's hard to understand why there would be such different responses.

The sometimes forgotten dictionary

2007-08-28T09:53:00.000-04:00

UpToDate, PubMed, Scopus and Access Medicine are just a few of the high tech search toys that we medical librarians use every day. However, last week as I facilitated a small group problem based learning session for my medical school, I learned that the most powerful tool for this situation was a print copy of Mosby's Medical Dictionary.

Throughout the session, as the students dissected the somewhat complicated case on spleen injuries, the dictionary was passed around the table helping the students work together to decode the sometimes very foreign language of medicine.

Any suggestions?

2007-08-23T19:27:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow I will be speaking with the incoming NEGEA LiME chair, Lora Thompson, to discuss potential future directions, projects, initiatives, etc. for our group. On the top of our agenda we plan to try to figure out the best way the entire group can begin working on competency statements. In addition to competencies are there any other issues or topics that group members would like to begin discussing and working on?

I look forward to hearing from the group and opening up a region-wide discussion.

Note: If you don't feel comfortable posting a topic to the blog you can feel free to email me.

Course Management Systems

2007-08-21T15:53:00.000-04:00

Today I began integrating some of my library's resources into our school's course management system. These resources included database links, home grown tutorials and a library assignment for our first-year students. We can see that the students are finding some of these resources, especially the required assignment, but it is difficult to know if the students feel that these links are valuable.

Does anyone else post materials to their school's course management systems?

Mapping it out

2007-08-20T18:37:00.000-04:00

Recently I've been working with AAHSL and the CGEA LiME to create a poster for the upcoming AAMC meeting, which will highlight the working relationships between these librarian groups and the AAMC. The center piece of the poster will be an interactive Google map, which will display LiME member institutions. We are also planning on listing with each institution the name and contact information of the affiliated LiME member. It is hoped that this map will not only facilitate faculty members in contacting their librarians, but also in librarians contacting other librarians.

Earlier today when I was working on the map tracking down LiME members' contact information, I had the opportunity to poke around many medical library websites. I have to say I learned a lot, including what types of workshops are being offered, what resources are being highlighted and how libraries are organizing their homepages.

Check out the map in progress: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=109369099526210542044.000437ed42bb3c6e34ec5&z=5&om=1

Switching Gears...

2007-08-20T10:35:00.000-04:00

Last week on Tuesday, I coordinated and taught several hands-on library skills training sessions for our dental students, which covered basic library skills and focused on a several key dental resources. On Wednesday my staff and I were at it again--this time training first-year medical students in our computer labs. In this case the training focused on supporting the skills necessary for the first-year problem based learning course.

In some cases with back to back sessions like these for varying patron groups it tough to make a seamless transition between the two groups. In the next few weeks, we will be training our public health students and graduate medical science students library skills as well. Does anyone have suggestions for making smooth quick transitions between the patron groups?

Facilitating

2007-08-15T14:06:00.000-04:00

This year I have the opportunity to be a facilitatator in our medical school's first-year introduction to problem-based learning. The introductory "mini-course" will run for three sessions. In these sessions, the students will work together to use their "collective brain" to puzzle through medical cases.

My first session seemingly went well and my students had no trouble diving in and dissecting the case. To sum up the discussion the students each formulated a researchable question related to the case. To bring the process back into the Library, I also created a question and suggested how I might use the Library's resources to find an answer. I then challenged the students to identify appropriate resources for their questions. Some students named specific journals, others favorite websites and even a few textbooks were proposed. I was continously impressed by their ideas and their approaches to searching and definitely intend to integrate them into the Library's upcoming skills training.

Bringing it all back home

2007-08-10T07:45:00.000-04:00

Today is the final day of Immersion and we will be working on how to effectively bring all of this rich teaching and learning information back to our home institutions.

One of my colleagues once told me that when you return from these professional development programs you are like a wet dog. Everyone at home is happy to see you because they missed you, but once you start shaking off all of the information and ideas it's only natural for your colleagues to jump out of the way.

What makes a good teacher?

2007-08-09T20:35:00.000-04:00

At Immersion there are two tracks: the program track and the teacher track. As an education coordinator, I have been happily learning about leadership, campus culture and assessment in the program track. However, today my cohort and I took a close look at the art of teaching.

As one of the opening exercises we were asked to think about a significant learning experience in our lives and the teachers that created them. As librarians around the room volunteered their experiences a common set of characteristics came to light. Qualities such as: enthusiasm, authenticity, presence, expertise and the willingness to take risks among many others were shared. As I listened to several narratives, I noted that these characteristics and positive experiences were not dependent on slick power point presentations, high tech computer labs or even the subject matter.

More Information Literacy - Day 3

2007-08-08T17:34:00.000-04:00

Since my last report I've been doing nothing, but living, breathing, and even dreaming about information literacy (IL)--truly it's been a fantastic immersion experience. However, as I try to make links between the concept of IL and medical education, I continuously return to the question of where does IL fall on the radar of medical librarians, medical students and medical educators.

Does anyone share this question?

Greetings from Winnipeg!

2007-08-06T20:16:00.001-04:00

Greetings from ACRL Information Literacy Immersion 07 in Winnipeg Canada. Immersion is a week-long intensive program designed to provide "instruction librarians with the intellectual tools and practical techniques to help an institution build or enhance its instruction program."

For more Immersion details check out: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/professactivity/iil/immersion/immersionprograms.cfm

Today (Day 1) 90 colleagues and I tackled creating our own definitions of Information Literacy(IL). This self-exploration began with exploding or unpacking the loaded term, which brought up key concepts such as lifelong learning, the evolution of information skills and being user-centric among many others. In creating a definition we were encouraged to look beyond the ACRL standards for IL and to consider what it means to us personally. I took this opportunity to not only think about IL in my own life, but to also consider how my medical students, faculty and administrators might also internalize the concept.

The program's schedule is packed, but I hope to sneak in a few more posts over the course of the week.

Rethinking Orientations...

2007-08-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

In an earlier comment Len Levin posted "Over the years, I have tried to make our new student orientation sessions lighter. We used to have hands-on exercises, detailed screen-shots, lessons on how to search, etc. and we discovered that it was all too much for the new students to take in. This became clear when we would see these students again in the future and realized that maybe 10% of what we covered actually sunk in."

Yesterday I took Len's advice when I orientated my 200+ DMD students. I left my hefty power point in the office and worked on getting the basics across. I also took the opportunity to get a sense of the students and their research styles. I did a simple polling by show of hands. Almost all hands went up for Google, many for Wikipedia, about half for PubMed and very few for online textbooks. I now plan to use this information when I design my lesson plans for the upcoming hands-on sessions. For example, we may spend more time on E-texts and a good chunk of time discussing the evaluation of information found on the web.

From the podium this approach seemed to be working as there were less glazed eyes, not so many people texting and lots of questions. However, I think proof of this method is in the large number of students that are already approaching the reference desk and stopping me in the elevator or on the quad .

Has anyone else tried to decompress their orientations? How about other orientation activity suggestions?

Ideas for learning activities?

2007-07-27T16:36:00.000-04:00

We now have an opportunity to offer a series of assignments and activities to second year medical students. These will be embedded in their tutorial sessions. The down side is that we don't get any face time with them but we can utilize any media from print handouts to online or video presentations. I am wondering if you can recommend any sources where we can get ideas for learning activities which will get our creative juices flowing.
-From Julie Whelan

What the Best College Teachers Do...

2007-07-26T10:24:00.000-04:00

Every morning as I take the bus into Boston I read. Sometimes its a junky mystery, an Oprah selection or the Metro, but for the past few mornings, I've been digging into Ken Bain's text What the Best College Teachers Do. To be honest a chapter from this text was originally assigned to me as mandatory reading for my upcoming participation in the ACRL Immersion Program, but that one quick chapter was enough to get me hooked.

Based on a survey of "best" professors from over 24 institutions this text delivers an easy, but thought provoking read, uncluttered with educational jargon and theory. Divided into chapters that address relevant topics such as how professors evaluate their students and themselves, prepare to teach, and how they conduct class. I was also pleasantly surprised to note that a medical educator is included among these "best" teachers, which also helped me to better relate this experience to my work.

Does anyone else want to share a resource that they have found inspiring and informative of their teaching methods and programs?

Getting ready for the thundering herds....

2007-07-23T16:13:00.000-04:00

Refining lesson plans, running sample searches, writing cases, creating websites, familiarizing instructors with new materials, sitting in meetings (lots of meetings!) . These are just a few of the ways that I've been spending my last few precious weeks getting ready for the next batch of medical, dental, public health and graduate medical science students at Boston University.

Recently I wondered how all of you are approaching the new academic year. Is anyone taking a different approach to preparing or is anyone trying something for the first time like a new class, a new group of students or new online materials?

For example, last year in preparation for the students' return, I invited a faculty member from the BU Center for Excellence in Teaching to evaluate a practice run of one of our hands-on sessions. This was a great opportunity for the librarians to watch each other teach and offer peer evaluation. Also as an education coordinator it also gave me a chance to better understand how the librarians were interpretting my lesson plans. Lastly, it was great to step back and think about some of the learning theory underpinning our instruction and to be introduced to some of the key concepts of active learning.

Does anyone have any tips, hints or bits of sage-like wisdom they would like to share as we all hurtle towards the fall?

Welcome

2007-07-10T14:10:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the NEGEA LiME Blog! It is hoped that this blog will serve as an active forum for librarians sharing information on medical education.