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Like all Duke departments, the Medical Center Library & Archives is struggling with pressures from Dukes current financial situation, as well as within the greater economy. The Librarys initial cut of 7.5% was offset through vacant positions and some decreased expenses. However, we are still struggling with a projected minimum increase in January 2010 of 8 to 10% for journal subscriptions. This increase has to be found within the remaining budget, which means further cuts in our journal, book, and database collections, as well as many other operational expenses.
Journals: Fortunately, we still have data from faculty from the last journal review. We have begun the cancellation process by looking at journals that have very little or no use and at the cost per use for titles. To help determine where cancellations can be made, we will use the data from faculty as to which titles are essential. Well post the proposed cancellations for comments later this summer. The Library is also asking publishers to keep their price increases to a minimum and is involved in negotiations for lower prices with other Triangle libraries. Unfortunately, most journal publishers are not willing to recognize the current fiscal pressures on university and library budgets and are projecting their usual increases.
Databases: While we are trying to protect our core databases, some of the specialty databases will have to be canceled. Subscriptions to Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI) and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA) will not be renewed, and we are also considering the cancellation of SPORTDiscus. Over the next year, other databases such as Natural Standard may need to be canceled, depending on economic pressures and the need to protect our journal collection.
Staffing: In addition to pressures on our collection, we may also see decreased staffing. One vacant position has already been eliminated to offset the initial 7.5% budget decrease. We are now facing the possibility of over 20% of our staff leaving due to early retirement.
Saturday Closing: In response to decreased staffing and low utilization, Saturday hours will be eliminated effective July 1. Although we need to eliminate our Saturday hours to compensate for decreased staffing during weekdays, very few people use the Library resources on Saturdays. The number of questions handled by staff is minimal, and most of the use is confined to Internet access. Given the current economic situation and the limited use over the past several years, we can no longer justify the expense of opening on Saturdays. Our Sunday hours will remain the same.
During these difficult financial times, the Library & Archives are trying to make the best decisions possible in order to protect our core services and collections, especially journal subscriptions. We welcome suggestions from our community and ask that you give us your feedback as we send out future updates on changes that may impact you.
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You are invited to participate in Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health, the National Library of Medicines touring exhibit, which will be on display at the Duke Medical Center Library from August 3 through September 11, 2009.
We invite all programs and members of the Duke community to share your global health experiences through photographs and stories for a special digital display. Starting July 1st, please visit our Website (http://www.mclibrary.duke.edu/) for instructions on how to submit your materials describing the Duke communitys contributions to global health through education, research, fieldwork, and service.
The digital exhibit will go live on August 3rd. If you would like to be included in the digital showcase at the celebration reception in early September, please submit materials no later than August 17th. Stories and images are welcome through September 30th.
Duke Medical Center Library & Archives, the Duke Global Health Institute (http://globalhealth.duke.edu/), and the Hubert-Yeargan Center (http://www.dukeglobalhealth.org/) are cosponsoring this event to highlight Dukes commitment to innovative efforts in global health. For more information on the exhibit and global health initiatives at Duke, contact Megan von Isenburg at vonis001@mc.duke.edu.
During a discussion some months ago with our Library Council about the confusion between the Searle Center entrance, our entrance, and access to Duke Medicine Oncology on the top floor, it was suggested that we permanently close the entrance/exit near the Searle Center lobby and use only the entrance/exit nearest to the Hospital. Effective May 1st, the Library door nearest the Searle Center entrance was permanently locked and closed.

Looking for some summer reading to take to the beach? Here are a few human interest books, as reviewed in Publishers Weekly. Check them out at the Duke Medical Center Library and enjoy your vacation!
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Final Exam: A Surgeons Reflections on Mortality, Chen, Pauline W. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007
Engel Collection | ChenLike most physicians, Chen, a transplant surgeon and former UCLA faculty member, entered medicine in order to save lives. But as a medical student in the 1980s, she discovered that she had to face death repeatedly and found disturbing inconsistencies as she learned from teachers and colleagues to suspend or suppress any shared human feelings for my dying patients. Chen writes with immaculately honed prose and moral passion as she recounts her quest to overcome lessons in denial and depersonalization, vividly evoking the paradoxes of end-of-life care in an age of life-preserving treatments.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Roach, Mary. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003
Engel Collection | RoachUproariously funny doesnt seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Readers Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. From her opening lines (The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back), it is clear that shes taking a unique approach to issues surrounding death. Roach delves into the many productive uses to which cadavers have been put, from medical experimentation to applications in transportation safety research (in a chapter archly called Dead Man Driving) to work by forensic scientists quantifying rates of decay under a wide array of bizarre circumstances.
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On Call: A Doctors Days and Nights in Residency, Transue, Emily R. New York: St. Martins Press, 2004
Engel Collection | TransueDuring her three years as a resident in internal medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, Transue wrote about her patients as a way to guard against burnout and share her experiences with friends and family. This moving collection of her stories conveys vividly, sometimes painfully, the atmosphere of overwork, exhaustion and insecurity in which a resident works; the long shifts and sleepless nights, the moments when she cannot contain her tears, the times when she is haunted by fears that she has made the wrong decision.
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Better: A Surgeons Notes on Performance, Gawande, Atul. New York: Metropolitan, 2007
Stacks | W21 G24b 2007Surgeon and MacArthur fellow Gawande applies his gift for dulcet prose to medical and ethical dilemmas in this collection of 12 original and previously published essays adapted from the New England Journal of Medicine and the New Yorker. If his 2002 collection, Complications, addressed the unfathomable intractability of the body, this is largely about how we erect barriers to seamless and thorough care.
The Women in Duke Medicine online exhibit utilizes oral history interviews to explore the stories of women at Duke, particularly those who blazed trails during a time when there were generally fewer women in medicine. It features biographies, transcripts, and sound clips of Duke scientists, physicians, pioneers, and leaders. Interview topics include treatment as a female in a mostly male culture, particular scientific breakthroughs, leadership, work-family balance, and many others. Jessica Roseberry, Oral Historian, Duke Medical Center Archives, conducted the interviews.
The primary impetus of the exhibit has been a joint project between the Duke Medical Center Archives, which provided extensive research, and Dr. Ann Brown, Office of the Associate Vice Dean for Faculty Development, who offered guidance, contacts, and support. Either the featured women themselves or people who knew them were interviewed. Many of the interview transcripts were made possible by a generous grant from the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation.



Vital Science, the official publication of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, is now available in the Medical Center Library. Launched in March 2008, the newsletter is designed to keep faculty, students, staff, and other partners and stakeholders updated on major developments as well as highlights about the school.
To help make this publication more accessible to the Duke community, the printed version of the newsletter will be available in the Medical Center Library journal collection, with digital versions available on MedSpace, our local platform for digital publications: http://medspace.mc.duke.edu/vital/access/manager/Community/dumca:6477. You will also find a link to Vital Science through the Medical Center Librarys E-journals page and Dukes online catalog.
In addition to the newsletter, there is also a paper copy of and link to Blazing a Trail in Tomorrows Medicine and Science, the schools first report.
The Medical Center Library is collecting materials for the Rehabilitation Center in Tikrit, Iraq. Steven Mitchell, Medical Service Officer, has contacted the Duke School of Medicine for help. While the Centers facility has been upgraded, its library has very few materials, and those available are outdated. The Center is in special need of books and journals published within the last 10 years on physical and occupational therapy, pain management, spinal cord injury, and prosthetics.
Please drop off any donations at our Library Service Desk or contact Karen Grigg, Associate Director, Collection Development Services, at 919-660-1122 or karen.grigg@duke.edu to make arrangements.
The PsycINFO database will be moving from the Ovid platform to the EBSCOhost search system in July, 2009. The new platform may appear slightly different but will provide access to the same content and links to full text articles. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Karen Grigg at 919-660-1122.

Medical Center Library staff presented the following initiatives during the poster and paper sessions at the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in Honolulu, Hawaii, May 17-19, 2009:
Karen Grigg, Richard A. Peterson, Patricia L. Thibodeau, and Bethany Koestner (UNC School of Information and Library Science) - Using a Data-Driven Approach to Assess Efficacy of Collection Development Decisions
Connie M. Schardt and Patricia L. Thibodeau, and Barbara M. Wildemuth, Claudia Gollop, and Peggy Schaeffer (UNC School of Information and Library Science) - A Novel Approach to Recruiting and Educating Medical Informationists
Patricia L. Thibodeau, Richard A. Peterson, and Suzanne Porter - Fusing the Old and New: Integrating the Librarys History of Medicine Program into the Revised Curriculum
Megan von Isenburg, Karen Grigg, Brandi Tuttle, and Patricia L. Thibodeau - The Kindle: A Novel Way to Increase Access to Medical Information in Community Clinics
| Karen Grigg | 5 years |
| Randy Marsh | 20 years |
| Wilma Morris | 35 years |
| Megan von Isenburg | 5 years |
| Sarah Wardell | 30 years |
| Louis Wiethe | 25 years |
Leila Ledbetter joined the Library staff in April 2009. As Director and Archivist of the PA History Center at the Duke University Medical Center Archives, she will act to preserve the history of the physician assistant profession.
I hope to build on the projects already in place and to expand on the collected resources detailing PA history, Ledbetter said. She also hopes to increase the availability of these resources to interested patrons (primarily other PA programs) by identifying and cataloging them and making them available online through the Physician Assistant History Center Website (http://www.pahx.org/). In her new position she will report both to Duke, through the Library and Archives, and to the American Academy of Physician Assistants.
Ledbetter is originally from Connecticut and received a Bachelors degree in Biology from Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. This background has served her well throughout her career, providing opportunities for her to work in a genetics lab and at UNCs Health Sciences Library. In December 2008, she received her Master of Library and Information Science degree and a certificate in organization of information from the distance education program at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. As an intern at the Medical Center Library, Ledbetter worked in several capacities including Information and Education Services and the History of Medicine Collections.
On April 22nd Vanessa Sellars, Business Manager, was honored at a luncheon at the Washington Duke Inn for winners of the Presidential Award for 2008 for outstanding service. The award, the most prestigious honor given to Duke staff and faculty, recognizes distinctive contributions to Duke University & Health System over the year. Vanessa was nominated by her colleagues and was presented with a Presidential Meritorious Award in the Managerial Division by Dr. Richard H. Brodhead.
Improve Your Library Research Skills! |
The Medical Center Library offers a variety of educational opportunities. A roster of training sessions is below. |
PubMed ![]() Hands-on. Searching with MeSH, limiting, full-text access, saving searches, and creating alerts.
![]() Hands-on. Subject heading and keyword searching, limiting, full-text access, saving searches, and creating alerts.
![]() Hands-on. Adding and managing citations, and building bibliographies and in-text citations.
Demo. Set up EndNote, add citations from databases, and automatically insert citations and build bibliographies while you write.
Aug. 13 .....12 - 1 pm | Aug. 25 ......5:15 - 6:15 pm |
Library Orientation Basics for navigating and using our print and electronic collections.
12:15 - 12:45 pm Send tables of contents and search results straight to your desktop using RSS.
![]() Hands-on. Designed for support staff. Tips and tricks for finding articles, database searching, providing access to articles without violating copyright, and more!
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| CINAHL | Anne Powers | (919) 660-1128 | |
| Copyright | Pat Thibodeau | (919) 660-1150 | |
| Drug Databases | Connie Schardt | (919) 660-1124 | |
| EndNote | Ginger Carden Hattie Vines |
(919) 660-1184 (919) 660-1125 |
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| Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) | Connie Schardt | (919) 660-1124 | |
| Health Statistics | Hattie Vines | (919) 660-1125 | |
| Library Orientation | Brandi Tuttle | (919) 660-1126 | |
| MEDLINE OvidSP | Anne Powers Beverly Murphy |
(919) 660-1128 (919) 660-1127 |
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| MEDLINE PubMed | Megan von Isenburg | (919) 660-1131 | |
| NIH Public Access Policy | Pat Thibodeau | (919) 660-1150 | |
| Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and Mobile Devices | Brandi Tuttle | (919) 660-1126 | |
| RefWorks | Megan von Isenburg | (919) 660-1131 | |
| RSS | Brandi Tuttle | (919) 660-1126 | |
| Web of Science / Web of Knowledge | Megan von Isenburg | (919) 660-1131 |
To avoid overdue fines, please pay particular attention to the pickup schedules, or return all journals, books, and interlibrary loan items directly to the Library. Audiovisuals should be returned to the Library Service Desk to avoid damaging them.Duke South Clinics
Personal Rapid Transit Lobby. Pickup: Monday through Friday at 9:30 a.m.
Duke Hospital North
PRT Lobby, Lower Level near the walkway to Parking Garage II. Pickup: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday ONLY at 9:30 a.m.
Sands Building
Sands Building, on the Jones Building side near the rear exit door. Pickup: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday ONLY at 9:30 a.m.
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To receive notification by email when the electronic version of the Medical Center Library News is available, complete the Mailing List Form at http://www.mclibrary.duke.edu/about/news/mailform.html.
Megan von Isenburg ...............Anne Powers