HSLIC News

League of Women Voter Guide

Election Day is just around the corner and some people may still need voter information. The League of Women Voters has created a guide to assist voters with all the important information you need to know about voting in this upcoming election. This guide includes information about the absentee ballot process, early voting in person as well as approaching election dates and registration deadlines. In addition, there is information about where your polling place is located, the hours polling places are open for voting and where to drop off your absentee ballot.

Please stop by the Happy Heart Bistro to pick up your copy of the League of Women Voters Guide and make a plan to vote on or by November 3. 

October is Health Literacy Month and the Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center and the Hospitals Health Literacy Office have joined forces to put together a workshop on the importance of health literacy in New Mexico.

Some questions about health literacy that are common are: Why is health literacy important? How can you incorporate it into your practice and improve communication with patients? This workshop will summarize what health literacy is and how it addresses health equity in New Mexico. We will include strategies you can incorporate into your day-to-day interactive practice and resources. 

So join us on Tuesday, October 27th from 12-1 to celebrate Health Literacy Month by learning and growing with us! You can register for the workshop here.

If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to our Student Success and Engagement Librarian, Kelleen Maluski.

It’s the time of the semester to be working on those research papers and projects, and now is a great time to be thinking about citing and citation management. Are you finding yourself wanting assistance with different or new citation styles? Do you need a way to organize citations more efficiently? Do you want to make sure you are properly citing and crediting the ideas of others? Learn about it all and more with our Citing & Citation Management Research Guide!

The Citing & Citation Management Guide is home to the manuals, blogs, and example citations for the following citation styles: APA (American Psychological Association), AMA (American Medical Association), Vancouver, Chicago Style, and MLA (Modern Language Association). The guide is also home to an introduction to citation management tools Zotero and Mendeley, a side by side comparison of AMA and APA citation examples, and an overview and tutorials on plagiarism.

Whether you are looking for a specific citation style or a quick tutorial on the ten types of plagiarism, the Citing & Citation Management Research Guide has you covered!

For more in depth information regarding citation management tools, please visit the Zotero or Mendeley Research Guides. For any other questions, feel free reach out on our Ask A Librarian page.

Need help finding the full text of an article for your research?  Check out HSLIC’s Finding Full Text Research Guide.

This guide covers how to access resources off campus and how to find full text in Pubmed, Google Scholar, and CINAHL & EBSCO Databases.  Having trouble accessing those resources?  There is also a section on troubleshooting common access issues.  If you have any questions or still have trouble finding what you are looking for, feel free to contact the library for help.

Here at HSLIC we're excited to be celebrating the 2nd annual Indigenous Peoples' Day in New Mexico! It was a monumentally important and long overdue step when last year Indigenous Peoples' Day officially replaced Columbus Day in New Mexico. This year to celebrate the contributions and culture of the 23 Indigenous Nations, including the 19 Pueblos, 3 Apache Tribes and the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center is offering virtual program which can be found here.

You can also learn more about Indigenous health information in New Mexico with our newly redesigned guide. We have made an intentional effort to not just highlight available resources, but also discuss and educate on issues surrounding research and cultural humility when working with and for the Indigenous population. As we continue to work to make these connections we would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions, comments, or questions. Please feel free to reach out to either or both of the guide owners, Jonathan Pringle and Kelleen Maluski, from the guide homepage.

Also, as you continue your work you might want to utilize the UNM Land Acknowledgement resources and the LandGrabU to better understand the discriminatory practices employed by higher education institutions in founding and operating many universities across the nation.

Here at HSLIC we're very excited to be partnering with the Associate Director for the Center for Academic Program Support, Stephanie Sanchez, to offer a workshop on impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is the inability to see one's own successes as legitimately deserved despite all evidence to the contrary. In this workshop, we will discuss impostor syndrome, the mediated effects of marginalization and discrimination, and ways to manage both.

The workshop will be held virtually on October 13th from 12-1pm and you can register here. After registering you will be sent the Zoom link closer to the date of the workshop. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email Kelleen Maluski, Student Success and Engagement Librarian.

The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center is pleased to announce that Melissa L. Rethlefsen, MSLS, AHIP, has accepted the position of executive director for the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) to begin January 1, 2021.

Rethlefsen joins UNM with more than 20 years of experience working and advancing initiatives for academic health sciences libraries.  She is coming to UNM from University of Florida in Gainesville, where she has served as the Associate Dean for George A. Smathers Libraries and Fackler Director for Health Science Center Libraries.

Rethlefsen is a well-respected leader in the field and is passionate about the critical role that biomedical librarians play in improving the quality of health care, research, and education through integrated involvement throughout curricula, the health care environment, and research teams.

According to Rethlefsen, “The Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center is a unique and important resource to the state of New Mexico, as the only publicly accessible academic health sciences library. I'm excited to work with the HSLIC team and colleagues across the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center to fulfill this vital role.”

“I’m very pleased to have such an accomplished faculty to join us here at UNM, and lead our health sciences library,” stated Richard L Larson, MD, PhD, executive vice chancellor for health sciences, in response to Rethlefsen’s appointment.

Prior to Rethlefsen’s experience in Florida, she worked at the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah, Mayo Clinic's Learning Resource Center, the Minnesota Department of Health RN Barr Library, and the University of Minnesota Bio-Medical Library. Rethlefsen has received many awards for her work in medical librarianship, including receiving the Estelle Brodman Award for Academic Medical Librarian of the Year in 2015. She received her master's degree from the University of North Texas, and she graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English and history from the University of Minnesota.

Join us in welcoming Melissa to UNM!

If you have been wondering what impact COVID-19 has had on the Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center (HSLIC), one of the more notable challenges with switching to working remotely is that we have much less contact with our physical collections. This means delays with donations of original archival materials; unclear timeframes for adequate processing and description; and very little digitization to provide ease of access for our patrons. This isn't just felt at HSLIC; the entire archival profession is grappling with how it can provide leadership in how to do this important work while keeping us and our patrons safe.  

So with these barriers in place, what are we filling our time up with, you ask? Much of the answer lies with our own individual thoughts and reactions to change itself.:

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are."

J.P. Morgan 

COVID-19, for all the suffering and anxiety it causes both inside and outside of our workplaces, has nonetheless compelled archives professionals to consider new ways to cope with--and adapt to--changes with long-established theory and practice. We must openly explore a future in our profession that balances our acceptance of change with its impact on not only our own well-being, but that also of our donors and patrons. Empathy and emotional intelligence have never been in as high demand as they are right now. This is a period in which collaboration, ingenuity, and activism are welcomed and celebrated as we all, together, figure out where we go next. 

What are some ways in which HSLIC is optimistic about the future of its archival program? Here are just a few examples we see as opportunities in the profession, and in turn for ourselves:

• Support for more community archives work, in which unique communities control the creation, preservation (of), and access to information about themselves
• Collaborative outreach efforts that create a more trustworthy, inclusive, and sustainable perspective of our present; i.e. open description and collection development
• An expanded set of skills and tools to better (and more efficiently) manage electronic records (born-digital and digitized)
• Modifications to our work environments that allow us to maintain a closer connection to our homes and families

Our doors are presently closed, but we are open to new ways of working and serving our patrons during this distressing yet transformative period.

To learn more about our current archival program and some of the amazing physical collections that await you once we reopen, visit the HSLIC Special Collections page. You will also find links to several Special Collections resources we have made available for you online.