IRIS Photos

Weill Cornell Medical Library Travels

Kristine Alpi

Even in the virtual age, face-to-face meetings can be a great way to enhance collaborations.  Librarians from the New York City and Qatar Medical Libraries traveled this fall to make and extend connections.  The campus-to-campus bus brought Carolyn Reid, Kristine Alpi, Diana Delgado, and Michael Wood to Ithaca on October 10.  Our first stop was the Veterinary Library to meet with Erla Heyns and Susanne Whitaker about collection development, interlibrary loan, and reaching out to users in their offices.  We then took a tour of the veterinary complex and saw the students and faculty in action.  Fortified by a trip to the Dairy Bar, we then headed out to Cayuga Medical Center, a teaching hospital affiliated with the Medical College, to meet with Ward Romer, a Cornell graduate running the library.  Online resources, particularly access to online journals and clinical databases, were hot topics, and we were able to share some advice on interlibrary loan as well.

That afternoon turned to a discussion of the Electronic Resources Management (ERM) system with Scott Wicks and colleagues Bill Kara, Adam Chandler, Jesse Koennecke, and Liisa Mobley.  Thanks to Bill Kara for suggesting this meeting as a result of his visit to NYC just a few weeks earlier.  Afterwards, a quick meeting with the Life Sciences Working Group allowed us to consider the Life Sciences Steering Committee charge and discuss ideas for data sources for VIVO.  The long day ended with a lovely dinner graciously hosted by Janet McCue and Jean Poland at the Aurora Inn.  The next morning, Carolyn and Kris met with the Library Management Group to share some of the goings-on at the Medical Library, while Diana and Michael met with Mann staff to consider what we can learn from each other.  There followed a rainy trip back to NYC.  One issue mentioned during the visit has come to fruition—the Medical Library’s serial holdings are now included in OCLC!

While we were in Ithaca enjoying our visit, Carole Thompson, the associate director of planning and digital initiatives at the Distributed eLibrary in Qatar, was finalizing plans for her visit to New York City.  Carole arrived on October 24 and attended a day-long workshop on Greenstone Digital Library Software at the Metropolitan New York Library Council offices on the 25th.  In addition to demonstrating the digital library repository, Greenstone, for the Medical Library staff, Carole shared her insight and experience with ERM, federated searching and portals, and strategic planning.  The Medical Library and Archives shared information on our photography collections project and the latest library use survey.  Carole and the New York collection development staff had a conference call with Scott Wicks and others to discuss the technical details of sharing data about the licensing of e-resources.  On October 27, Carole drew the names of prizewinners at our end-of-survey pizza party.  These face-to-face collaborations were very productive and special.  The Weill Cornell Medical Library has recently acquired videoconferencing technology, and we look forward to trying it out with colleagues in Ithaca and Qatar very soon, as collaborative efforts grow and take shape between the two medical campuses and the Ithaca campus.

Next: Research Connection @ Duffield