Fall Happenings

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Fall 2025 edition of HLSP News. We're now at or near peak foliage in our region and it's such a beautiful time of the year.

At the SCRLC Leadership Retreat a couple weeks ago, we spent time exploring glimmers and how to appreciate them. Fall foliage season is definitely a good time to look for glimmers and in this edition of HLSP News, we share some bright spots in an otherwise challenging health care environment.

In this edition of HLSP News, we share some member news, look at ways to celebrate National Medical Librarians Month, provide an update on this year's field visits, report on resource sharing for HLSP member, include reminders about the HLSP grant program, and end with some continuing education opportunities.

Please reach out with any questions and glimmers you might have about this edition or any services SCRLC provides to for health information.

All the Best,

Christine Brown

Outreach Services Librarian/HLSP Coordinator

Member Highlights

Matt Roslund, Medical Librarian at Bassett Healthcare and also for the New York Center for Agriculture Medicine and Health (NYCAMH), shared the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) press release for a three-year grant that NYCAMH recently received.

The grant total is $665,378.00 and "will support the development of a groundbreaking digital resource aimed at improving health outcomes for workers in the agriculture, forestry, and fishing (AgFF) industries."



Matt will be working to support Dr. Erika Scott, the Principal Investigator for the project and he's looking forward to this new opportunity. The work is scheduled to begin this month. Congratulations on this exciting project and we look forward to hearing more about it as it progresses.

NNLM Region 7 Update

The NNLM Region 7 Advisory Committee meeting held on September 24 was informative and some bright spots were shared including a way to support the continuation of NNLM.

PubMed and PubMed Central are still being updated on a daily basis Tuesdays through Saturdays even through the government shutdown. Also, MedlinePlus is being updated regularly (the date of the most recent update is available at the bottom each post). There has been a misconception that these important medical and health information websites had stopped their updates months ago and that the information on these sites was outdated. That is not accurate.

We also learned that each region of NNLM needs to demonstrate its value to members and the public and they distributed a survey nationwide during the Summer. The results of the survey are in, and Region 7 had the highest response rate which is very helpful for them. Thanks go out to everyone who completed the survey.

Region 7 needs to continue to demonstrate the value that they provide to libraries and are requesting that people provide impact stories they can use in future funding applications. If you have not already done so, we ask that you consider submitting an impact statement.

National Medical Librarians Month

The Medical Library Association (MLA) established October as Medical Librarians Month in 1997 and have celebrated this recognition since then. MLA establishes a theme for each year.

The theme for October 2025 is "Better Information. Better Decisions." 

Some ways that MLA has identified to celebrate include: 

• Display a poster about NMLM and include your contact information. MLA has developed posters using this year's NMLM theme and those posters are available on their website. 
• Update your email signature to include an NMLM banner which are available on their website.
• Write impact stories about your contributions to your community and share them with MLA. Additional information is available on their website page that is dedicated to National Medical Librarians Month. 
• Use hashtags like #NMLM and #medlibs to generate conversations on social media and celebrate impact stories and other contributions that you and your colleagues have made to the profession.
• Host an event such as a lunch and learn, a trivia contest, or a pop-up booth where your providers and administrators can meet their health information professionals and learn about the services you provide.

Please feel free to use any of these ideas or develop your own idea for celebrating all the good that you provide your hospital during the month of October. And please share them with Christine so she can share them with the SCRLC community.

Field Visits

I will be reaching out to all HLSP members soon to schedule Field Visits for this year, and I'd like to meet in person with as many members as possible.

This year, I'm planning to provide basic training on using some NEJM features. We're also introducing Doody's Core titles as a resource for HLSP members, and I'll spend some time making sure members have access and understand how to use it.

In addition to these important electronic resource trainings, the field visits will include information about other HLSP resources and there will be an opportunity for members to share things that are happening at your hospital and how we can be of service to you.

Electronic Resources

When I prepared the HLSP section of our Final Report for 2024/2025 I saw that our NEJM usage was nearly the same as last year despite Lourdes temporarily not using our subscription. So, the other members, many of whom didn't use the subscription the previous year, are now using it. 🥳

The big news in electronic resources for 2025/2026 is that we have added a basic subscription to Doody's Core titles which will be provided for all HLSP members. Doody's provides information about books that can be used in collection development. Additional information about Doody's is in the grants section of this newsletter.

If you have any questions about any of our electronic resources (NEJM, Ovid cost share journals, Stat!Ref titles, and Doody's Core Titles), please let me know.

HLSP Grant Program

The applications for the 2025/2026 grants will be distributed this month. As in past years, I will send each member an application form with your grant amount and contact information completed. Members will need to enter a plan for using the funds. Please keep in mind that the grant funds need to be expended during the 2025/2026 fiscal year (7/1/25 to 6/30/26).

This year, we've subscribed to Doody's Core Titles which is a resource that can assist in collection development for medical and healthcare libraries. Doody's selects and scores many books and software and provides a review of the material including a list of core titles for 126 specialties. Over 200 health information professionals (including librarians) participated in the 2025 edition and it's an excellent resource for deciding what to add to a hospital library collection. Information about Doody's Core Titles and how to register will be distributed soon and a demonstration offered during the field visit.

As a reminder, the purpose of the HLSP grant program is to provide funds that allow each member hospital library to purchase resources that will improve patient care. The funds are not intended to supplement the resources of an individual.

If you have any questions about whether a specific item or service is allowable, you can check the guidelines or reach out to me for information and a discussion. You can also check the Niche Academy tutorial on the grant program.

Continuing Education

Upcoming Webinars

SCRLS's Health Wellness and Hospital Libraries Lunch and Learn series.

On December 2 at noon Neyda Gilman, Medical Librarian at Binghamton University, will share information about pharmacy including what medical librarians can do to support pharmacists, common databases used by pharmacists, how AI is impacting pharmacy and current topics impacting the field.

We are finalizing dates and details on a program on AI in healthcare and on a program about the Guthrie Journal which was recently revitalized. Please check our website in the next few weeks for more details and registration for those programs.

The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) is offering the following FREE CE classes this Fall:

Providing Mental Health Resources at your library - In this 1-hour webinar, participants will explore several websites to respond to requests for mental health information at their libraries. October 9.

How PubMed Works - Introduction - This webinar provides basic training on the PubMed bibliographic database. November 5

Connecting Older Adults to Health Information | NNLM - December 11.

The Medical Library Association (MLA) is offering the following CE classes this Fall:

Beyond PubMed and Google Scholar: Exploring the Future of Free Bibliographic Databases - In this webinar, participants will learn about the contents, features, benefits, and limitations of three no-paywall, discipline-agnostic bibliographic databases: The Lens, OpenAlex, and Internet Archive Scholar. (This webinar is also available through LILRC here: Long Island Library Resources Council)

Predatory Publishing 101: What Every Medical Librarian Should Know - A 90-minute webinar where participants will learn about predatory publishers and how to identify these types of journals/publishers including a brief introduction to the open access movement and how predatory publishing fits into this model. 

For a complete listing of MLA CE classes, check out their website.

NOTE: There is a charge for each MLA CE class with a discounted price for members. SCRLC may be able to pay for your registration for MLA programs so keep that option in mind for these or any other courses on the MLA website.

Recently Recorded Webinars:

SCRLC's Lunch & Learn Series:

• "It's an Art, Not a Science:" How to Build a Practice of Slow Librarianship
• Mosquito-borne Infections in New York State
• Fall Vaccine Update (Covid & Flu)
• Vaccine Hesitance and How to Address It
• All About Ticks

We still have seats available for an NLM webinar on Trauma-Informed Librarianship. Let me know if you would like to access to this webinar at no charge.

NNLM held a webinar on DOCLINE and FREESHARE in August 2024 and it was recorded.

MedlinePlus Tutorial for Librarians & Health Educators - self-paced. This interactive, narrated tutorial provides a tour of the MedlinePlus website and explains why MedlinePlus is a trusted reference when answering health information questions.

This tutorial takes about 1 hour to complete. (1 CE credit)

Recordings of past webinars can be found here.