HSLIC News

NEW Native Health Database Site is up!

A New Chapter for the Native Health Database

At long last, we are happy to announce the launch of a new Native Health Database page! Click the image below to check out the new site.

Thanks to the hard work of many (see below), and with particular thanks to the Network of the National Library of Medicine - South Central Region (NNLM/SCR) for their funding support, we are able to showcase the new site and show you all an NHD that is responsive, inclusive, and engaging for the future collaborative sharing of Indigenous health resources. 

Get acclimated to effective searching and browsing by visiting the Get Started page. Then, start some of your own searches by navigating over to Explore Resources. Curious to learn about some of the history behind the NHD? Check out the History page. And finally, view additional resources and links at the Related Links page. 

Fixes/Anticipated Updates Known Prior to Launch

While preparing for the launch of the new Native Health Database, a few issues arose that you may notice:

• Upon import, a large number of records had their Original Date changed to 2021; this is being addressed in a patch that will be released in early May.
• The import tool itself is not working as we anticipated, thus approximately just over half of the records from the former Native Health Database remain to be imported. This issue is presently being investigated by the programming team for Mukurtu CMS at Washington State University. 

Because of these known issues, we will provide an interim period during which time the former Native Health Database page will also be available. 

What Have we Been Doing?

We have been planning for this transition since Fall 2019. A significant amount of time was spent investigating the history of the NHD; engaging with former NHD Advisory Board members; soliciting for new advisors; reviewing patron searches and email exchanges; and looking for a sustainable model for a new NHD. You can learn more about our plans by reviewing an October 2020 presentation, as well as a follow-up presentation in March 2021. We settled on the need to migrate the records in the former NHD into a new tool, one that enables for much more embedded community engagement and Indigenous control over access and use. Mukurtu CMS was selected as the appropriate database platform to accomplish this.

Mukurtu aims to empower communities to manage, share, and exchange their [resources] in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways. [Mukurtu is] committed to maintaining an open, community-driven approach to [its] continued development. Our first priority is to help build a platform that fosters relationships of respect and trust.

With a new platform selected, we submitted a funding request to NNLM-SCR in Fall 2020. This funding would secure the services of a UNM graduate student to work as a Project Assistant (PA). This PA would do extensive work cleaning up the over 10,000 original records (metadata) prior to migrating them into Mukurtu-friendly import templates. Upon receipt of the funding, HSLIC hired Maxine Marks, a PhD student at UNM's College of Fine Arts in the Department of Art. Maxine and the project's Primary Investigator (PI), Jonathan Pringle, worked within a dedicated workflow and rigorous guidelines to clean up and import all metadata fields into Mukurtu. 

What Will we do Next?

Beyond addressing any known issues, we will be taking a brief pause from direct work on any of the look/feel of the database; during this time we will solicit feedback from users. We will also look to foster collaborative partnerships with both content creators and Indigenous communities as we formalize a structure for the responsible deposit of new content. There are numerous ideas about what we tackle next:

• Formalize a structure for a new advisory board; developing an associated strategic plan/goals
• Engage in outreach with myriad creators and source communities - those interested in responsible sharing of resources. In particular, find content creators engaged in important research during the periods in which no new content was added to NHD (mid-2019-present)
• Explore digitization funding to digitize as much of the paper-based NHD records as possible and attaching them to their new record in the new NHD
• Present and share out with numerous groups to build support and advocate for the NHD
• Investigate further developments for integrating a map feature, as well as as exploring the exporting of citations

Acknowledgments

We wish to personally acknowledge the following individuals & groups who have thoughtfully contributed to our work on this project

Funders

• Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) South Central Region (SCR)
  • Daniel Burgard, Director
  • Brian Leaf, Executive Director
  • Carla McGuire, Sr. Contract Administrator
  • Rosalba Zamaguey, Budget Coordinator

HSLIC/UNM

• Sarah Arrowsmith, Student Employee, HSLIC
• Wendell Billingsley, Facilities and Unit Services Manager, HSLIC
• Cassandra Bookert, Accountant, UNM Health Sciences Center
• Sally Bowler-Hill, Manager of Administrative Operations, HSLIC
• I-Ching Boman, HSC-CIO
• Kevin Brown, UNM Indigenous Nations Library Program
• Jim Bynum, Interlibrary Loan Library Specialist, HSLIC
• Madison Dow, Contracts Specialist, UNMHSC Sponsored Projects Office
• Dr. Jon Eldredge, Evidence-Based Practice Librarian, HSLIC
• Robyn Gleasner, Resource Management Librarian, HSLIC
• Laura Hall, Division Head, Resources, Archives, and Discovery, HSLIC
• Gale Hannigan, Research Services Librarian, HSLIC
• Ingrid Hendrix, Division Head, Research, Education and Clinical Services, HSLIC
• Dakotah Jim, UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Cynthia Killough, CTSC Community Health Specialist
• David Lucero, Unit Administrator, HSLIC
• Kelleen Maluski, Student Success and Engagement Librarian, HSLIC
• Maxine Marks, PhD Student and Project Assistant, HSLIC
• Zander Pegues, Systems/Network Analyst
• Melissa Rethlefsen, Executive Director, HSLIC
• Lori Sloane, Data Manager, HSLIC
• Amy Weig-Pickering, Library Information Specialist, HSLIC
• Tamara Wheeler, Program Coordinator, HSLIC
• Lewis Worley, HSC-CIO

Former/Ad-hoc Advisors

• Paulita Aguilar, UNM Libraries - Center for Southwest Research
• Kelly Akin, U.S. Indian Health Service Phoenix Area Office
• Naomi Bishop, University of Arizona Health Sciences Librarian
• Sharon Bradley
• Dr. Michelle Dennison-Farris, Health Policy Liaison, Oklahoma City Indian Clinic
• Dr. Bonnie Duran, Professor, University of Washington Schools of Social Work & Public Health
• Kara Lewis, Collections Information System Administrator, Smithsonian
• Dr. Sandy Littletree, Assistant Teaching Professor, University of Washington
• Rachel Menyuk, Processing Archivist, Smithsonian
• Dr. Judy Parker, Secretary, Chickasaw Nation Department of Health
• Pamela Pierce, Digital Scholarship & Repository Librarian, Oregon Health Sciences University
• Carla Sakiestewa, Sr. Operations Manager, UNM Interdisciplinary Science Co-Op
• Dr. Lancer Stephens, Assistant Professor of Research, Hudson College of Public Health

Support Team at Washington State University (home of Mukurtu CMS)

• Dr. Kimberly Christen
• Lotus Norton-Wisla
• Anastasia Tucker
• Michael Wynne