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HSLIC News

10/14/2024
profile-icon Deborah Rhue

OrganizationOctober is Health Literacy Months that deal with patient care celebrate health literacy month every October as they recognize that health literacy is an important part of the care they provide to patients.  For instance, if a patient does not know how to take their medication correctly, they can end up back in their doctor’s office or the hospital.  Patient outcomes suffer and the cost of medical care rises.  The goal of health literacy is to help individuals make informed health decisions by improving their ability to access, understand, and effectively use health information.  It is important to emphasize to busy patient care providers that health literacy matters and the annual October celebration serves as a wonderful reminder of this often-overlooked aspect of good medical care. 

The Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center offers workshops on Health Literacy every year.  In addition, the University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) is one of the few hospitals in the country that has an Health Literacy Office.  UNMH’s Health Literacy Office provides workshops on teach-back and plain language methods of communication.  In addition, they will review forms, policies and handouts for UNMH departments to make sure the documents meet suggested health literacy standards:  https://unmhealth.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/health-literacy.html

If you would like to learn more about health literacy, there are many excellent websites on the Internet for you to browse.  Here are a few:

National Institutes of Health:  https://www.nih.gov/institutes-nih/nih-office-director/office-communications-public-liaison/clear-communication/health-literacy

CDC:  https://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/index.html

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion:  https://health.gov/news/202010/october-health-literacy-month

04/29/2024
profile-icon Deborah Rhue

 

 

All of Us Tech Days Presentation

Lori Sloane and Deborah Rhue from HSLIC joined Todd Quinn and Karl Benedict from CULLS to present a talk about the All of Us Research Program at the annual University of New Mexico’s Tech Days on Friday, April 26, 2024.  The talk, entitledAll of Us: Using Big Data to Study Factors Affecting Health and Health Impacts,” was well- and enthusiastically received. 

Deborah, Lori, Todd and Karl have been working to promote awareness and enrollment in the NIH-sponsored All of Research Program since 2023 when the University of New Mexico became one of the Program’s officially enrolled research participants. 

The All of Us Research Program is an effort funded by the National Institutes of Health to gather health data from one million or more people in the United States.  The All of Us Research Program encourages individuals from communities historically left out of biomedical research studies to enroll and share their health data and make that data available to researchers through the All of Us Research Program platform.

   "All of Us: Using Big Data to Study Factors Affecting Health and Health Impacts":  Tech Days Slide Presentation

    For more information about the All of Us Research ProgramAll of Us Research Program 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

04/16/2024
profile-icon Gale Hannigan

 

The purpose of National Minority Health Month is to "raise awareness about the importance of improving the health of racial and ethnic minority communities and reducing health disparities."

This year's theme is Be the Source for Better Health, which fits right in with HSLIC's mission to advance health and health equity as New Mexico’s only publicly accessible health sciences library. HSLIC is a source for better health information, which we believe can lead to better health.

Health disparities are a significant problem, and the library provides resources about them. The OMHRC Knowledge Center Online Catalog (Office of Minority Health Resource Center) gives access to 75,000 documents, books journal articles, and media related to the health status of racial and ethnic minority populations. PubMed searchers will find the MeSH terms Minority Health and Health Status Disparities, which were introduced in 2008. Note that there are other terms available to search the concepts prior to 2008.

Datasets are increasingly important and available to researchers. The National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA) contains physical, economic, demographic, and social information at the census tract, ZIP code, and county level. This dataset was used in a recent publication about the devaluation of assets in Black neighborhoods. As a minority majority state (with less than half the people being non-Hispanic whites), and home to 23 American Indian tribes, as well as Black and Asian people, minority health issues are important to New Mexico researchers, health care providers, and community leaders. The New Mexico Community Data Collaborative maps local health conditions and behaviors, as well as provides data about special populations, such as health care providers and rural vs urban designations.

Image from World Bank CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

04/02/2024
profile-icon Gale Hannigan

 

National Public Health Week 2024 celebrates collaboration, cooperation, and partnerships in public health. The theme is “Protecting, Connecting and Thriving: We Are All Public Health.”

At HSLIC, we make resources available that support research in the broad field of public health, and collaborate with faculty and educate students in the College of Population Health.  Ours is a strong partnership. These past two years, as part of a grant from the college to develop an Academic Health Department, HSLIC librarians extended services to New Mexico Department of Health (NM DOH) practitioners. Academic Health Departments are partnerships between an academic institution and a health department. A goal is to strengthen the links between practice and academia, with opportunities for joint education, research and practice.

Librarians developed training modules in the process of evidence-based public health practice. We regularly teach these skills throughout the health sciences professional programs' curricula. A team of librarians, some with public health degrees, customized training to the context of public health and created four modules, following the steps of the process. These included:

    • Module 1: Developing Searchable Questions
    • Module 2: Searching for Evidence
    • Modules 3: A Toolkit for Evaluating Evidence
    • Module 4:  A Toolkit for Applying Evidence

Modules 1 and 2 were offered synchronously online to NM DOH personnel last spring, and all modules are now available to anyone through the UNM Digital Repository at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/er/

In addition, HSLIC became the partner library for NM DOH's Public Health Digital Library, a project of the Network of the National Library of Medicine. This means that New Mexico public health personnel have access not only to the hundreds of books, journals, and databases in that library but, if an item is not available, HSLIC will provide it from our collection or from another library. This greatly extends the scope of information sources available to practitioners.

At HSLIC we recognize and support the valuable work of public health practitioners. We are all public health!

11/09/2023
Abbie Olivas

In honor of November being National Diabetes Month, I wanted to share some historical sources about diabetes in HSLIC Special Collections.

 

New Mexico insulin pump

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Mexico insulin pump, New Mexico Insulin Pump photograph collection, PH 226

 

Monte Patterson holding the insulin pump

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monte Patterson, the first patient to receive the New Mexico insulin pump, New Mexico Insulin Pump photograph collection, PH 226

 

Dr. Eaton in lab

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. R. Philip Eaton in the laboratory, New Mexico Insulin Pump photograph collection, PH 226

 

10/12/2023
profile-icon Jonathan Pringle

home page of the Native Health Database

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.  

 

 

09/14/2023
profile-icon Deirdre Caparoso

On Friday, September 8, HSLIC was thrilled to welcome participants of New Mexico State Library’s Tribal Libraries Program to the library for an all-day event. The Tribal Libraries Program provides library development services to tribal communities throughout the state, including support for library management, collection development, funding navigation, staff continuing education, and advocacy. The purpose of the field trip to HSLIC was to connect tribal librarians with health information resources and UNM programs as well as develop fresh relationships with libraries serving Indigenous people.

Executive Director Melissa Rethlefsen kicked off the day with a warm greeting and UNM’s Indigenous Peoples’ Land and Territory Acknowledgement. Participants then had a special tour of HSLIC led by Specialist III Amy Weig-Pickering, including a peek at items from the library’s Special Collections with Archivist Abbie Weiser and a walkthrough with Specialist III Rachel Howarth of some of the technology available to students and the public. HSLIC Clinical Services Librarian Deborah Rhue and Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine Library Director Norice Lee introduced PubMed and MedlinePlus, respectively. Participants had the opportunity to view the Native Health Database with Jonathan Pringle, Scholarly Communications and Digital Librarian. Emily Roberts, the Library Services Coordinator at the Center for Development and Disability, provided an in-depth review of CDD’s resources. Carla Sakiestewa introduced the Office of Community Health’s Health Extension Regional Office, which she is a part of as an Affiliate Agent, and Norman Cooeyate, the Tribal Relations Liaison for the Center for Native American Health, rounded out the presentations on UNM programs. Ingrid Hendrix, Division Head, Research, Education, and Clinical Information Services, ended the day by leading a conversation and Q and A session. 

HSLIC is New Mexico’s only publicly accessible health sciences library.  As such, it strives to provide health information access and training to all New Mexicans. Engaging with libraries throughout the state provides HSLIC with the opportunity to reach diverse local communities in the places they call home. We look forward to continuing to expand and improve health information learning opportunities throughout the state. 

06/02/2023
profile-icon Jonathan Pringle

Logo for the National Institute of Health and the National Library of Medicine

At long last we are excited to formally announce that HSLIC is the recipient of $41,029 in funds from the Network of the National Library of Medicine's (NNLM) Region 4 (based out of the University of Utah's Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library) to conduct a series of Community Engagement Studios to better understand how the Native Health Database (NHD) can best facilitate collaborations between its key stakeholders.

A summary of the project as submitted in late 2022:

To meet the needs of multiple stakeholders, the NHD has necessarily evolved numerous times since its initial creation in the early 1990s. Just before New Mexico's move from NNLM Region 3 to Region 4 in May 2021, HSLIC was the successful recipient of Region 3 funding that supported migrating its former platform to one now served through Mukurtu CMS. This unique content management system provides numerous pathways for content creators, Indigenous communities, users, and providers to collaboratively—and respectfully—exchange information. To ensure it continues meeting the needs of its myriad stakeholders, this Region 4-supported project will engage the services of UNM’s Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) and their Community Engagement Studios to understand how best to leverage the outreach tools housed in the new NHD that will be most beneficial for each group. We will invite equal representation from content creators, community members, users/learners, and providers (I.e., clinicians) to participate as community experts. The purpose of each studio is to provide critical feedback about strengths and areas of opportunities of/for the resource. This is especially well-timed as HSLIC—in concert with the Native Health Database Advisory Council—prepares to deploy a robust and wide-reaching outreach and engagement program for the NHD in 2023.

Our first Community Engagement Studio is anticipated to be held this Summer (as early as July), with the final Studio wrapping up in early 2024. Stay tuned as we work with our CTSC on the coordination of each Studio, and any subsequent information we learn from each one. 

We wish to thank our NNLM champions, both from Region 3 and Region 4, who have supported the Native Health Database in its goals to help improve health outcomes among our Indigenous populations here in New Mexico and across North America. In particular, we extend gratitude to our new colleagues in Region 4 for this incredible recent support. We look forward to future collaborations with NNLM as it pertains to our NHD and other programs offered through HSLIC. 

 

04/26/2023
profile-icon Melissa Rethlefsen

Today is National Library Outreach Day. We congratulate all the faculty and staff at the Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center (HSLIC), past and present, for helping us achieve HSLIC's mission to advance health and health equity as New Mexico's only publicly accessible health sciences library. This is a commitment we take very seriously, and we continue to invest in our outreach efforts. Today, we are delighted to announce the new Patricia V. Bradley Native American Health Research Award.Pat Bradley presenting on health information resources

Patricia Vickie Bradley was born October 9, 1950, at Travis Airforce Base in Fairfield, CA, into the Bit’ahnii (Folded Arms People Clan), born for Kinyaa’áanii (Towering House Clan). Pat was a proud member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation. She received a Master of Library Science (MLS) from the University of Arizona. Pat's career in medical librarianship spanned more than 40 years in places that included the Navajo Health Authority in Shiprock and the Gallup Indian Medical Center (Indian Health Service) as a Medical Librarian. She then served as the Native and Distance Services Librarian at the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) for 15 years. Her positive impact was honored in 2014 when she received the Michael E. DeBakey Library Services Outreach Award, which was established by Friends of the National Library of Medicine to honor outstanding service and contributions to rural and underserved communities. Pat passed away in 2019 after a brief illness.

To honor her legacy in outreach to the Indigenous communities of the Southwest, HSLIC has begun the Patricia V. Bradley Native American Health Research Award. This Award will be given annually to a member of the UNM community who is conducting research in the area of Native American health using resources at HSLIC, which may include the Native Health Database, the largest collection of information related to the health of Indigenous North Americans.

An anonymous donor has generously offered to match donations received with the goal of endowing this fund in perpetuity.

 

 

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03/30/2023
Brandon Carroll

You are invited to join us on Thursday, April 6th, from 10 A.M - 11 A.M. for a virtual seminar by Lewis Worley, BE, and Robyn Gleasner, MLIS.

Topic: HSC Citation Analysis Project

Description: The HSC Citation Analysis Project set out to answer the following questions: where are faculty at the HSC publishing, does HSLIC/UNM provide access to these journals, what journals are the authors citing, and does HSLIC/UNM provide access to those journals. The answers to the questions would assist in the evaluation of HSLIC’s journal collection and determine potential gaps.  This session will show how we went about attempting to answer these questions from pulling data from Web of Science, analyzing it, and wrangling and parsing it using a number of programs and scripts including excel, open refine, SQL, and python. 

Learning Objectives: 

We will discuss: 

  • What citation analysis is and why it is beneficial for collection evaluation 
  • Our process of pulling, cleaning, wrangling, and parsing the data to meet our needs 
  • Next steps to analyze the data and how to apply the analysis to future collection development decisions 

Please email BLCarroll@salud.unm.edu to request Zoom info.

02/23/2023
Brandon Carroll

You are invited to join us on Thursday, March 2nd, from 10 A.M - 11 A.M. for a virtual seminar by Glyneva Bradley-Ridout, BA, MI, and Elena Springall, BSc, MLIS.

Topic: Cross-Sectional Study of UpToDate versus DynaMed

Description: Health Sciences Libraries are often faced with difficult budget decisions regarding which clinical tools to purchase while keeping in mind user preferences and needs. Our research study was designed to inform evidence-based decision-making around this issue. We designed and executed a cross-sectional research project which compared the speed and accuracy of two popular point-of-care information tools: UpToDate and DynaMed plus. We will share the results of our research, including a behind-the-scenes glimpse into our research process. 

Learning Objectives

We will discuss: 

  • how to form research objectives from collections priorities
  • how to balance multiple priorities and changing roles while conducting research
  • how to work with busy medical residents as study participants

Please email BLCarroll@salud.unm.edu to request Zoom info.

02/09/2023
Brandon Carroll

You are invited to join us on Thursday, February 16th, from 10 A.M. - 11 A.M. for a virtual seminar by Jonathan Pringle, MAS.

Topic: The Native Health Database in 2023: Embedding Outreach with Culturally-Respectful Technology

Description: The years 1993-2019 marked significant changes and modifications to the Native Health Database, a (then) abstracting database that provided unique health information and resources for myriad audiences. Between 2019 and 2022 the resource underwent significant changes, this time focused on the underlying platform delivering the information; the new NHD now has the capacity to elevate source Native American & Indigenous communities to equal partners in the exchange of information. In 2023, the NHD is poised to leverage this new platform and engage in focused outreach efforts to show content creators, communities, users, and healthcare providers how they can interact within the new platform.

Learning Objectives:

We will discuss:

  • How the past has informed the present and future of this resource
  • How the new platform provides solutions to information exchange that embodies the Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement
  • How the platform can be utilized broadly as an effective outreach tool for researchers

Please email BLCarroll@salud.unm.edu to request Zoom info.

10/13/2022
Brandon Carroll

You are invited to join us on Thursday, October 20th, from 10 to 11 AM for a virtual seminar by Emily McRae, BA, and Cynthia Jacobs, BS

Topic: The New Mexico Community Data Collaborative

Description: Join the New Mexico Community Data Collaborative (NMCDC) to explore social determinants and health indicators across your neighborhood. The NMCDC team will provide a brief tutorial of how to find data on the site, as well as describe recent and future projects, including the NM Food Supply Chain Data Hub and the Data Disaggregation Project.

Learning Objectives:

1. Navigate to a data product on the NMCDC website given only a broad topic area.

2. Use the NM Food Supply Chain Data Hub to find data related to the food supply chain components and understand how you can support the upkeep and relevance of the Data Hub.

3. Describe the Data Disaggregation project and understand how to follow, support, and inform the work.

 

Please email BLCarroll@salud.unm.edu to request Zoom info.

09/29/2022
Brandon Carroll

You are invited to join us on Thursday, October 6th from 10 to 11:30 AM, for a virtual seminar by Gabe Peters, BA.

TopicInclusive Dermatology: Creating a Diverse Visual Atlas of Skin Conditions

Description: Existing literature on Dermatological conditions highlight little to no visual diversity amongst skin conditions of varying individuals of color. Inclusive dermatology focuses on the importance of gathering and sharing images of dermatological conditions in all skin types with an emphasis on individuals who have been excluded in medical education. By expanding the availability of images in varying skin types, we hope to not only advance medical education but also strive to improve patient care, especially with our diverse population here in New Mexico.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe what Inclusive Dermatology is

2. Explain the importance of inclusivity and how it benefits patient care

 

Please email BLCarroll@salud.unm.edu to request Zoom info.

09/07/2022
Brandon Carroll

You are invited to join us on Thursday, September 15th from 10 to 11 AM, for a virtual seminar by Deborah L. Lauseng, AMLS

Topic: Roles, Collaborations, and Activities in Health Informatics Education - a discussion of scoping review findings and your own involvement

Description: Librarians and libraries have been engaged in informatics training for decades, however, sharing of the types and extent of engagement has been limited in the literature. The scoping review, “Library involvement in health informatics education for health professions students and practitioners,” published in JMLA, seeks to explore the extent library involvement in health informatics education, specifically focused on activities and outcomes described in the published literature.

 

In this BioMISS session, the lead author will share findings on the roles, collaborations, and activities librarians have had in health informatics beyond instruction. The author will lead a discussion about current and potential collaborations. Additionally, attendees will explore how best to report their involvement with health informatics to inform the profession.

 

Learning objectives

  • Participants will gain insights into the extent and nature of librarian/information professional involvement with health informatics as discovered through this scoping review. 

  • Participants will explore potentials of collaboration with health informatics activities in their own work. 

  • Participants will discuss generating a standardized template for reporting librarian/information professional involvement in informatics educational activities. 

 

Please email BLCarroll@salud.unm.edu to request Zoom info.

10/11/2021
profile-icon Jonathan Pringle
On Indigenous Peoples' Day, we are pleased to introduce Nancy Agin Dunnahoe (Choctaw, Cherokee, Guatemalteca) as our guest author.
04/30/2021
profile-icon Jonathan Pringle

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.

Tent Rocks, New Mexico

 

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. 

Screenshot of the Old Native Health Database

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
04/09/2021
profile-icon Jonathan Pringle

It is with great enthusiasm and deep appreciation to many that HSLIC formally announces receipt of funds to support the future and sustainability of the library's Native Health Database (NHD). Funded by the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) South Central Region (SCR), $24,348 has been secured to migrate 10,046 records presently found in the Native Health Database into a new database platform. Once completed, HSLIC seeks to leverage community engagement opportunities to find new content and responsibly build on the strengths of the current NHD. 

HSLIC lost a valuable colleague when Patricia Bradley (Diné), the library's Native and Distance Services Librarian, passed away in Spring 2019. Patricia's passing left a void in her work with outreach and teaching, as well as with her leadership of the NHD. Jonathan Pringle, HSLIC's Scholarly Communication and Digital Librarian, was hired in September 2019; as part of his responsibilities, he was tasked with management of the NHD and determining some next steps. Notably, no new content has been added to NHD since Spring 2019. 

Patricia Bradley with the Native Health Database Advisory Board in November 2016

Patricia Bradley (front row, 2nd from right) with the NHD Advisory Board, November 2016

After a significant period of quiet reflection, consideration, and collaborative conversation with former advisors of the NHD--many of whom are Indigenous and work in myriad segments of the health field--in October 2020 Jonathan presented a vision for where the NHD could head. A link to a 20-minute recording of this presentation is available here. An updated NHD would emphasize responsible sharing; introduce community control over content; and most notably provide direct access to the content itself. HSLIC settled on Mukurtu CMS, a platform that "aims to empower communities to manage, share, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways." A new model for submission of content will now come from a community of contributors, and Indigenous communities will have more control over this content. 

Mukurtu CMS Home Page

The first step was to figure out how best to migrate 10,000+ records from the current NHD into the new NHD. To help facilitate this process, a funding opportunity with NNLM/SCR presented itself, and by December 2020 a formal proposal was submitted. Jonathan would serve as PI. In the new year, word was received that HSLIC was successful in obtaining the funds. In January 2021, HSLIC hired Maxine Marks, a PhD student at UNM, to undertake the task of cleaning up existing metadata and prepare it for import into the new NHD.

In March 2021, Jonathan provided an update with the metadata migration process, and again reinforced the potential of the new NHD post-migration. This 33-minute video/presentation is available here

With a few weeks left in this grant-funded project (ending April 30), there remain a few thousand records left to be properly migrated. HSLIC is laser-focused on getting this final grouping completed, then taking a short rest before leveraging the best of what Mukurtu CMS can offer to deliver a new NHD for students, staff/faculty, researchers, and the public. The current NHD will be replaced with the new NHD at some point in May. Stay tuned!

Our thanks to NNLM/SCR, former NHD advisors, Maxine Marks, and the whole team at HSLIC for making this collaborative project possible.

This project is funded under cooperative agreement number UG4LM012345 with the University of North Texas Health Science Center - Gibson D. Lewis Library, and awarded by the DHHS, NIH, National Library of Medicine.