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Life Sciences

Sarah Thomas, Janet McCue, Carolyn Reid

“Life in the Age of the Genome” is one of the three challenges identified by President Jeffrey Lehman in his October State of the University Address. Provost Biddy Martin has recently appointed Janet McCue, the AUL for Life Sciences, to serve on a task force charged with developing academic plans supporting this theme. Janet is also chairing a new CUL Life Sciences Steering Committee consisting of Jean Poland, the AUL for the Associated Science and Technical Libraries, and Carolyn Reid, the Frances and John L. Loeb Librarian of Medicine at Weill Cornell’s Samuel J. Wood Library and C.V. Starr Biomedical Information Center.

Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the life sciences and the university’s strong emphasis on fostering collaboration across colleges and units, the Life Sciences Steering Committee will work with the Science Team, the Life Sciences Working Group, and the tri-institutional group of medical libraries in New York City to enhance services to the life sciences community. The committee plans to meet regularly and address such topics as achieving barrier-free access to scientific, medical, and technical information. Currently, Mark Funk, of Cornell Weil,

and Phil Davis, at Mann Library, are co-chairing a group that is focused on enhancing access to electronic journals across the campuses. Obstacles to access include consortial memberships where Weill Cornell has agreements that do not cover the Cornell Ithaca campus, Cornell Ithaca licenses that prevent Weill Cornell’s partners from receiving access to some information, issues with net IDs and authorizations that prevent easy access to resources, and an inability to do cross-catalog searching. Since Cornell faculty and students cross organizational and geographic boundaries routinely in their work, we want to offer them seamless access to information services as well.

The issues the Life Sciences Steering Committee will be taking up are not unique to Cornell. Many other libraries are also struggling with how they can best provide service in this world of distributed relationships. Janet, Carolyn, and Jean will be working with the Life Sciences Working Group to explore ways to support professional development, communication, and collaboration among the staff; to continue to track the Life Sciences Initiative and propose services for students and researchers in this community; and to help the University Librarian develop proposals and case statements for the university campaign. The Life Sciences Working Group has developed an excellent new tool, VIVO, which creates a virtual community for the life sciences research community. It will be tools like VIVO—along with collegial interactions—that will help forge new relationships in our far-flung community.

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