Dr. Sarah Ewald, an immunologist in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, had a problem: it was imperative that her specimens were kept in the freezer in order to maintain their integrity, but simply stacking the containers on top of each other would make for a jumbled, disorganized mess . The lab had inherited freezer drawers that would save the new research group almost $8000 dollars, but they lacked the inserts that would support material storage limiting their utility.



Enter the Health Sciences Library and its makerspace. The makerspace, which is a partnership between the Library and Dr. David Chen’s lab, is located on the lower floor of the Library, in the MILL (Multipurpose Innovative Learning Lab). In addition to providing space for meetings, working groups, and a monthly design thinking workshop, the makerspace houses many different materials for prototyping, including a Makerbot 3D printer.

Upon discovering the 3D printer, an associate of Ewald’s lab used the provided software to design an insert, refine the design, test several prototypes and, ultimately, print a few dozen copies of the final iteration.

This was a functional and affordable solution; functional because the inter-layer bonding of PLA (Polylactic Acid) isn’t greatly affected by the stresses of freezing temperatures, and affordable because the only cost to Ewald’s lab was the time spent by her associate to perform the design work and prototyping- use of both the 3D printer and its filament was (and are, for Health System employees and students) completely free!

You can learn more about Dr. Ewald’s work by following her lab on Twitter: @ewald_lab

Are you curious about the makerspace and its services? Do you have a problem that might be solved with the Library’s 3D printer?  If so, email hsl-makerspace@virginia.edu to discuss how the Library might be able to help you solve it.

The University of Virginia Claude Moore Health Sciences Library spends around two million dollars a year--80% of its collections budget--on journal subscriptions.  That’s the equivalent of placing one-dollar bills, end-to-end, from Charlottesville to Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Those 185 miles of one dollar bills are paid to a group of publishers, who provide the University of Virginia access to their journal content.  

Before online journals, subscription costs were used by publishers primarily to cover the costs of printing and distributing their journals.  Today, however, most academic health sciences libraries subscribe to very few print journals, due to online availability, which might lead to the assumption that subscription costs would be lower due to the decrease in publishing and distribution costs.  That assumption would be wrong.  Annual subscription costs continue to steadily rise long after publishers have transitioned from print to electronic.  This model of publishing is not sustainable.  At some point, academic health sciences library budgets will not be able to accommodate the rising subscription costs.  
 

What is Open Access?

Fortunately, there are alternative models of publishing.  Open access (OA), for example, offers a more sustainable, egalitarian, publishing model.  Academic institutions can support OA by establishing an institutional repository, encouraging authors to publish in OA journals, and creating university open access publishing solutions.  At UVA, Libra is the institutional repository, and Aperio is a newly created open access publishing solution.  

A caveat to publishing in an OA journal is that the author usually has to cover publishing charges, which is called the article processing charge (APC).  Authors can defray APC costs by adding publishing costs to a grant  proposal or by seeking funding through institutional means.  APCs generally range between $2,000 and $3,000.

The more that University of Virginia authors publish in OA models, the more that research is free and open to the world.  With fewer dollars going to subscriptions, the Health Sciences Library would be able to enhance our research tools and services.
 

What is Open Access Week?

OA is celebrated every year during the fourth week in October.  International Open Access Week  provides an opportunity to promote OA through raising visibility and sponsoring events.  Please attend this workshop discussion on author’s rights.  It will take place in Brown Science & Engineering Library on October 22nd from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM:

Author's Rights: Use the Law, Share Your Work, Change the World
In this workshop discussion you’ll learn about the basic rights that copyright gives to authors, how those rights are typically treated in publication agreements, and opportunities and strategies for using your rights to promote a more sustainable scholarly ecosystem. We will discuss concrete advice for navigating the publishing world as we find it, along with more abstract questions about the future of sharing scholarship. Bring your questions, concerns, and even your own troublesome publishing agreements.

For additional information, please contact Dan Wilson, Associate Director for Collections & Library Services: danwilson@virginia.edu.

The University of Virginia Hospital, circa 1917.
Image Courtesy the Holsinger Studio Collection, University of Virginia Library.
 

This article was written by Emily Bowden, and edited by Kimberley Barker.

This Fall marks the centennial of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. The outbreak of so-called Spanish flu that devastated Charlottesville and Albemarle County in the autumn of 1918 was part of a much wider pandemic. The origins of the pandemic are still unclear; however, it is widely believed that the first major outbreaks occurred in August 1918 in Massachusetts, France, and Sierra Leone. Not long after, the first reported case of influenza in Virginia was recorded on September 13, 1918, and the virus soon spread across the Commonwealth.

Spanish flu reached Charlottesville and Albemarle County by the end of September 1918. In the following months, 5,000 residents, nearly one seventh of the region’s population, would become infected with influenza, and 200 people would die from it. Doctors, nurses, and volunteers throughout central Virginia worked tirelessly during the pandemic. While no effective treatments for influenza existed at the time, patients who were kept clean, warm, and well-fed had a better chance of surviving the flu and related opportunistic infections.

To learn more about the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and its effects on Charlottesville and Albemarle, visit the new exhibit on display in the lobby of the Health Sciences Library. The exhibit was created by 4th year UVA medical student J. Andrew Legan in conjunction with the Hook Scholars Program in the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities at the School of Medicine and with Historical Collections & Services at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. The exhibit will be up until December 10, 2018.

Two upcoming presentations will also delve into the history of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. On October 31, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger will speak on “Decoding the Genome of the 1918 Influenza Virus,” and on November 14, poet Ellen Bryant Voigt will present a program titled “Voices in Remembrance of the 1918 Influenza.” Both of these events are part of the weekly Medical Center Hour series, which is held throughout the semester on Wednesdays from 12-1PM in the Pinn Hall Conference Center Auditorium. For more information on Medical Center Hour, visit the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities’ website.

Don’t forget to get your flu shot this fall! The UVA Fall 2018 Flu Shot Schedule is available here.

Our librarians constantly seek to expand their knowledge in order to provide the highest quality service to our patrons. One method by which this is accomplished is through seeking professional development in the form of conferences and other educational opportunities. Recently Arian Abdulla, PhD. (Biomedical Science Librarian), completed the Genomic Access Course and shared insights about his experience. If you would like further information about Arian's experience, please email him: aa4gh@virginia.edu

Which institution organized this conference?

The Course took place at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. The curriculum of the Genome Access Course was developed in conjunction with staff at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute.
 

What were your three major takeaways from the conference?

• Bioinformatics is expanding rapidly and, with increasing amounts of data, there are many tools available to analyze and makes sense of the data.
• Technology is playing a major role in research. Now there are many next-generation sequencing technologies that focus on the characterization of individual cells (i.e Single Cell RNA- Sequencing).
• Engaging with other researchers and learn ing more about how they will use some of the technologies in their work was enlightening for my work here at UVA.

How you will apply these takeaways to your work with Health Sciences Library patrons?

Bioinformatics and genomics tools are being widely-utilized by researchers; being familiar with these tools will help me to better serve our biomedical scientists, whether through one-on-one consultations or by developing workshops related to this topic. I plan to lead two workshops this Fall, both of which will focus on resources available via NCBI.
 

What other conferences will you attend in the coming year? How do you anticipate that those experiences will inform your work?

Next year I plan to attend the Medical Library Association annual conference. I am curious to learn more about the work of colleagues at other institutions, as well as hear about the opportunities and challenges that they face at their institutions.

This article was written by Lydia Witman, and edited by Kimberley Barker.

     The word “community” describes a group of people who are similar in some way. In the hospital, for example, we have a community of patients and their families, and we strive every day to meet and exceed their needs. We can also think of the community or communities who share Charlottesville as a home, or, more broadly, the larger community which includes the surrounding five counties. Even more broadly, there are those who live in the state of Virginia, and in our region, which includes West Virginia. Whether or not the people in these communities receive healthcare at UVA, UVA is working to improve their well-being.

     The Health Sciences Library supports UVA’s efforts to partner with the local, regional, and even global communities. Medical librarian Lydia Witman, MLIS, serves in the Health System’s new Community Health UVA Partnership, which focuses on the Department of Health’s Planning District 10 which includes Charlottesville and the surrounding five counties. She has administered two National Library of Medicine “information outreach” grants (totaling $19,500) to enhance “health literacy” capacity in Planning District 10. These grants were distributed in two phases over a 16-month period. Additionally, Lydia traveled to Guatemala on a Librarians Without Borders grant to work as part of the UVA-Guatemala Initiative with Dr. David Burt’s team.

     In Planning District 10, we are thankful to have a “map” to well-being for our communities; with input from the communities themselves, the Department of Health has drafted a “MAPP2Health” community health assessment and improvement plan, available on the Department of Health’s website. The MAPP2Health identifies region-wide priorities to:

1) Promote healthy eating and active living
2) Address mental health and substance use
3) Improve health disparities and access to care
4) Foster a healthy and connected community

Individual counties have also identified their own priorities specific to their local needs.

     The Library helps meet the health literacy needs of both the public and patient/family communities daily, whether in the Patient & Family Library in the hospital, or by providing online resources that are available at all times from anywhere. In alignment with the Health System’s education and outreach missions, the Library goes beyond providing health information to patients and families, and provides outreach to our communities – local, regional, and even global. No matter where you live or who you are, you will eventually find yourself wanting health information or needing healthcare. The Library is here to help.

     For more information on any of the services described in this article, please email Lydia Witman, MLIS: Lydia@virginia.edu