HSLIC News

It has been great getting to share so much archives-related content during Archives Month! For my last October blog post, I wanted to recap some highlights from the past few months in HSLIC Special Collections.

On June 7, HSLIC hosted a free Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Salvage of Collections workshop for archivists, librarians, administrators, curators, and other cultural heritage workers that was sponsored by the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (SRCA) in partnership with the New Mexico Historical Records Advisory Board. Over twenty-five attendees from northern, central, and southern New Mexico participated in the workshop.

Several collections have been processed, and the finding aids are now available via New Mexico Archives Online. These include the Prevention Research Center records, the Carrie Tingley Hospital records, the Pediatric History Project collection, the UNM Health Sciences Center collection, and the Latin American Social Medicine Publications collection. I am currently working on processing the papers of former UNM School of Medicine professor Dr. Joseph Scaletti.

On September 8, we welcomed participants in the New Mexico State Library’s Tribal Libraries Program to the New Mexico Health Historical Reading Room to view Special Collections holdings as part of their tour of HSLIC.  

Lastly, the New Mexico Digital Collections online access platform was revamped and now features a more modern and easier-to-use interface.  This platform features our oral history collection, materials from the Valmora Industrial Sanatorium records, and digital items from other New Mexico archival repositories.

Tribal librarians visit HSLIC Special Collections, September 8

The University of New Mexico is excited to celebrate International Open Access Week from October 23 to 29. This celebration highlights the benefits of free, immediate, and online access to scholarly research, emphasizing our right to use and reuse materials.

Why Open Access Matters

This year, the theme, "Community over Commercialization," urges us to discuss which approaches to open scholarship serve the best interests of both the public and the academic and research community. The Nelson Memo sent by the Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2022 states that public agencies providing funding must publish implementation plans by December 2024 and implement the public access policies by December 2025. This means that researchers receiving federal funding must publish publications and data in open access journals or repositories without an embargo.

Events at UNM

The Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center, Law Library, and University Libraries organized a series of events for Open Access Week.

• Open Access Publishing 101
• Date: October 24, 2023
• Time: 12:00 p.m.
• Format: Online
• Registration: Sign up here

Open Access Publishing 101, which will include information on:

• Models and Paths to Open Access
• Funding Options to cover costs of publishing Open Access, including article processing charges, publisher/transformative agreements, and including them into grant proposals
• Open Access publishing options available at UNM, including the UNM Digital Repository and the Native Health Database

For more information and to stay updated on our Open Access Week events, visit goto.unm.edu/oaweek.  

For a list of events occurring globally, see the International Open Access Week Site.

HSLIC’s Special Collections traces its beginnings to 1982 when Library Director Erika Love and New Mexico Medical Society Executive Director Ralph Marshall began discussing the Society’s upcoming 100^th anniversary. After realizing that New Mexico was not routinely documenting its health and healthcare history, Love and Marshall decided to start an oral history project that would interview New Mexico physicians and produce a book commemorating the Society’s centennial. This project was overseen by the History of Medicine Committee, which consisted of New Mexican doctors interested in documenting their history. Dr. Jake Spidle of the UNM history department was selected as the oral history interviewer. The project resulted in over one hundred oral histories with New Mexico physicians and the book Doctors of Medicine in New Mexico: A History of Health and Medical Practice, 1886-1986.

In addition to the oral history project, Love sought to establish a New Mexico medical history archive at HSLIC. Janet H. Johnson (1936-2022) was hired as HSLIC’s first archivist in February 1984. During Johnson’s tenure, the New Mexico Health Historical Room (Special Collections' reading room) opened in 1984 and was renovated in 1986, and she, along with the History of Medicine Committee, coordinated the ongoing oral history project. Johnson also started collecting, processing, and preserving archival collections. Early collections include the C. Pardue Bunch papers, the William L. Minear papers, the New Mexico Health Systems Agency records, the Mid-Rio Grande County Medical Society records, the Valmora Industrial Sanatorium records, and the New Mexico Nurses Association records.

Upon her retirement in 2002, Janet Johnson wrote about her experiences at HSLIC Special Collections:

Building a program from scratch is something few people have the chance to do, and I was lucky to have had that chance to learn so much about an interesting and important aspect of the state’s recent past. Among the experiences I look back on with the greatest pleasure are the many retired physicians I’ve met personally or through their oral histories, some who donated personal papers and memorabilia to the archives and some who served on the History of Medicine Committee and told “war stories” about their careers and how things were in earlier times in medicine.

AND the experience of repeated trips to Valmora Sanatorium in Mora County, where I stayed in an old cottage for TB patients, had meals and conversation with the doctor who’d been there since 1926 as a patient, then physician and medical director, and I went through every drawer and closet and room and shelf in many buildings to find bits and pieces of the decades when New Mexico was the destination of thousands of hopeful tuberculars. We think those ‘finds’ make Valmora the only sanatorium in the state with an existing documentary history, and some ephemeral items may be the only physical mementos of a particular facility, event, procedure or practitioner in New Mexico, not just at Valmora. 

And, it’s enormously satisfying to have bits of information from very different sources, obtained years apart, fit together to round out a story or add value to a meager file. There are a great many illuminating and amazing facts tucked away in these files, and my hope is they’ll be discovered and made known by avid researchers willing to dig for the odd nuggets that didn’t end up in a bonfire or the dump.

HSLIC's first archivist Janet H. Johnson at her retirement party, 2002

Last week, Occupational Therapy Instructor Mary Hill offered her students a chance to explore the use of the Library's VR headsets. Bringing an innovative mindset to the application of VR for Occupational Therapy, Hill discovered four VR apps in the Oculus Web Store to adapt to the OT context.

“I’ve never used an app designed for therapy,” Hill said, referring to the clunky design of those apps and to her preference for adapting game apps for OT clients. At Hill’s request, the Library purchased four apps: Cubism, Puzzling Places, Car Parking Simulator, and Air Hockey VR.

The OT students played the games and discussed how they could use them to assist clients as they return to activities. In an OT context, simple VR games can offer clients an effective way to build hand coordination, executive function, and vestibular function. Kira O’Neill, one of the OT students, said of the VR experience, “It was really cool being able to use the Oculus to practice real-world skills such as driving. It would be beneficial to use with clients who are physically capable, but they could start practicing and see how it would translate to the real world.”

Although the Library’s Oculus Quest 2 Headsets contain several apps for health sciences education, we also encourage students, faculty, and staff to check them out for relaxation and fun. The Library’s Oculus Quest 2 Headsets have mindfulness apps installed on them, such as Nature Treks VR and Guided Meditation VR. You can check out a headset at the HSLIC Front Desk and take it home with you for three days. The headset will connect to your home wifi, and you don’t need to create any new accounts to use it. For more information, consult our Virtual Reality Research Guide.

Preservation strategies help keep books, archives, and artifacts from deteriorating any further. This is different from conservation where specially-trained conservators do item-level treatments and repairs. The following guidelines will assist with preserving your own family history.

Archival materials should be stored in a cool, stable environment with a relative humidity (RH) of no more than 50% (to help prevent mold growth and reduce insect activity). Archival materials should also be kept away from light whenever possible. Acid-free folders and boxes help absorb acid from paper via an alkaline buffer (calcium carbonate) and extend the life of materials. Boxes also protect archives from light damage, dust, insects, and other pests.

Some easy ways to protect your own family papers and artifacts include storing items in a steady, cooler environment (generally 68-72 degrees) with a lower RH (i.e. no bathrooms), keeping papers and artifacts in boxes, and turning the lights off when rooms aren’t being used. Do not store important materials in attics, basements, or garages as these areas are often prone to leaks, floods, and/or temperature fluctuations. If you use a storage unit, be sure to check that it is climate-controlled. Do not sure store photographs in magnetic (adhesive photo albums) or glue items into albums as they can damage materials. Be sure to monitor for insects and other pests regularly.

Proper handling is also very important. Do not have food and/or drinks near your books and papers. Wash your hands before handling materials and use nitrile gloves when handling photographic prints and negatives to help prevent fingerprints. You might also consider rotating framed family photographs on display to limit light exposure and/or use a preservation copy and safely store the original.

Digital preservation is more complicated. Generally, archivists recommend that you store digital files in three different locations, make sure your file names/identifiers are unique and well-organized, and reformat materials as old technology becomes obsolete.

Have additional preservation questions? Feel free to email me or schedule an archivist consultation during my office hours.

On Tuesday, October 3rd the library and a collaborative team (principally from the UNM-HSC Clinical & Translational Science Center and its Community Engagement & Research Core - CERC) held a Community Engagement Studio (CES) to learn about the unique needs of users accessing the library's Native Health Database.

What is a Community Engagement Studio, you might ask?

The Community Engagement Studio is a community-engaged consultative model developed in 2009 by the Meharry-Vanderbilt Community Engaged Research Core at the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. A CES is a one-time consultative session with a researcher’s population of interest. Studios consist of a panel of community stakeholders (called experts), whose characteristics are defined by the researcher, to provide feedback to enhance the planning, design, implementation, translation, or dissemination of research.  -Courtesy of UNM-HSC CTSC

Over the course of two hours via Zoom, assembled community experts met to tackle a key purpose: understand how users interact with the Native Health Database (NHD) and what they anticipate finding there. To grapple with this broad purpose, a few key questions were posed to the group:

• What were their experiences using the NHD? What was good and what could be improved?
• What were some of the reasons they came to the NHD? 
• What types of resources would they anticipate finding? What does a trustworthy resource look like? 
• How is the concept of Indigenous Data Sovereignty embedded into the user experience? 

The CERC team functioned as both facilitator and notetaker for this important discussion. They deftly navigated from one question into the next, prompting each of the assembled experts to respond from their unique perspective as users of the database. Among the feedback received and suggestions made:

• Integrate tools for transparency around decision-making with resource selection
• Improve citation export functionality, particularly for users engaged in scoping/systematic reviews
• Include datasets, though with strictures in place to prevent unintended access to culturally sensitive information
• Enhance the look/feel of the home page and other top-level navigation options
• Offer more unique materials, such as oral histories and grey literature

The CERC team provided HSLIC with a much larger report that can be used for strategic planning purposes, including funding requests to help implement suggestions in a nimble, sustainable manner. The report will also be shared with the Native Health Database Advisory Council in that group's oversight (with HSLIC) of the resource. 

Our deep appreciation to this project's funder, the Network of the National Library of Medicine's Region 4 (located at the University of Utah's Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, Cooperative Agreement Number UG4LM013732). Our continued thanks as well to the team at UNM-HSC CTSC's Community Engagement & Research Core, specifically Heidi Rishel Brakey, Lexie Roesch, Julia Martinez, and Donna Sedillo.  

October is National Medical Librarian’s Month

Your medical librarian is here to provide access to the latest healthcare information for medical professionals, students, and researchers. We do literature searches, teach classes, and ensure access to resources—just to name a few of the things we do!  Best of all, we increase the quality of patient care.

October is also Health Literacy Month!           

What is Health Literacy?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines personal Health Literacy as the “degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.”

The most important thing to know about health literacy is that with lower or inadequate health literacy levels, patients are unable to understand what they need to do to take care of their personal healthcare needs.

To get tips about communicating with patients and overcoming health literacy barriers, HSLIC will have an online workshop about health literacy on Friday, October 27, 2023, from noon - 1:00 p.m. Register Here.

The Resources, Archives and Discovery Unit is revising HSLIC's Collection Development Manual for 2023. The Manual outlines parameters for collection building and explains how collection decisions are made.  View the Draft Collection Development Manual and appendices on the Collection Development Guide.

We invite members of the HSC Faculty to review the draft of HSLIC's Collection Development Manual and provide feedback to us. Please fill out our Google Form to help us track feedback.

• Use the line numbers on the Collection Development Manual to correspond with comments and feedback in the form.
• Submit each comment/line number separately so that we can better track any suggested changes.

We ask that you provide your first and last name in case we have any questions about addressing your suggested change.

Please submit all feedback by end of day October 31, 2023.  If you have questions about the Manual, please contact Laura Hall or Robyn Gleasner.

The Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) is excited to welcome Leah Everitt as our new Research and Education Services Librarian! Leah will be expanding HSLIC’s initiatives and educational opportunities with the HSC research enterprise and the College of Pharmacy, serving on the Animal Care and Use Committee, and developing her own research projects. Leah was a National Library of Medicine Associate Fellow from 2022-2023, where she worked on numerous projects, including a bibliometric survey of COVID-19 literature and a community assets map for Boston.  Before joining us at HSLIC, she worked at the University of Cincinnati Health Sciences Library as a Library Specialist. In 2021, Leah was a National Library of Medicine intern and worked on a project related to the use of RxNorm, a standard vocabulary for clinical drugs. She was also a biomedical research assistant at Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University, working on repurposing oncology drugs to block the growth of osteosarcoma and hepatitis E virus research, respectively.  Leah received her Master's of Science in Library Science from the University of Kentucky and her Bachelor’s in Biology from Earlham College.

During October the United States celebrates American Archives Month. This annual celebration highlights the critical role archives and archivists play in collecting, preserving, and making available records of enduring value. Archives support collective memory, are vital for organizational administration, help document history, promote governmental transparency, and protect people’s rights, identities, and property.

Archivists often do a variety of tasks including selection and appraisal of records, arrangement and description of collections, reference work, promotion and outreach, and preservation administration. Because archives generally contain unique materials, they often have different use procedures from other departments in libraries.

HSLIC Special Collections contains over 300 archival collections as well as photograph collections and artifacts. These materials help document the history of health and healthcare in New Mexico. Please check out our How to Use Special Collections guide for more information and learn about our archival holdings at HSLIC.

And stay tuned for an archives-themed blog post each week in October!

The Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center is pleased to announce that Varina Kosovich, MLS, MA, is beginning a new role as the library's Student Success Coordinator, effective October 1st! Varina joined the library as a Library Information Specialist in March 2021. The Student Success Coordinator is a new position in HSLIC's Public Services unit, and it combines library service delivery with a special focus on student success initiatives. Varina will be chairing the library's Student Wellness Committee and working to increase the library's engagement with HSC students through new and existing programs. She will also work together with HSC departmental units that support academic preparedness, student learning, retention, and student success.

Varina has proven to be an effective advocate for student voices and needs in her time with HSLIC, collaborating to create innovative spaces and programs like HSLIC's Wellness Room and the menstrual equity project through her work with HSLIC's Justice, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (which she currently chairs). We know that Varina will bring her energy and expertise to this new role and make HSLIC an even stronger partner for students at the HSC. Congratulations, Varina!