Sugar - the battle since the 1970's

I ran across this short report on sugar and allegations that the Sugar Research  Foundation secretly funded an 1965 NEJM study that discounted the evidence on sugar. PLoS Biology recently published a study looking at the history of this and other evidence of research not seeing the light of day. See what you think. 

Kearns CE, Apollonion D, Glantz SA. Sugar industry sponsorship of germ-free rodent studies linking sucrose to hyperlipidemia and cancer: An historical analysis of internal documents. PLoS Biology. 2107, Nov 21. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003460. 

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2003460

Spotlight - Kathy Strube, Director of the Aurora Health Care Libraries in Milwaukee, WI

This month we've invited Kathy Strube to shine as our spotlight. Librarians involved in Kathy's purchasing consortia have already heard the news that Kathy is retiring, but many other WHSLA librarians have not. Please join me in wishing her a happy retirement! 

Kathy Strube, Director of Aurora Health Care Libraries

"It is a pleasure to connect with Librarians in WHSLA as I have worked with many of you over the years.  Some of you may not know, but I am looking at only two months left in my medical librarian career.  I’ll be retiring January 5, 2018.

I’m really proud of my hardworking, talented library staff at the Aurora Libraries and will miss them. I thank them so much for their comradery and drive for giving great service doing useful work.  I like the Teddy Roosevelt quote, “The best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

When I first came to Aurora it was just St. Luke’s, Mt. Sinai, and Good Samaritan, later growing to the seven libraries we have now.  In 1992 we started online access to Ovid Medline and then other resources, loading many CDs into many towers before we moved to vendor-hosted access and a library website.  Around 2000, with the help of Ovid Sales Rep Theresa Gernand, we started a buying consortium of eleven large hospital libraries or hospital library systems in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota to obtain better prices for online journals which was new business for vendors at that time.  We parlayed that into deals with other vendors.  (see the short story, “Creating and Sustaining a Hospital Library Consortium for Purchasing Online Journals” in the new MLA book “Health Sciences Collection Management for the 21st Century” due out soon.

Over the years we implemented the EOS integrated library system, started patient rounds, tried a Library Facebook site, and started a Digital Commons repository for Aurora authors’ works and historical materials https://digitalrepository.aurorahealthcare.org/.

Being an old reference Librarian I have so appreciated Aurora’s support to have great online resources and always kept some reference work along with my management duties.  We started joining Aurora workgroups about five years ago as embedded Librarians which has really made us visible and connected in the organization.  We haven’t needed to market ourselves since then.  

Aurora is going to try something a little different when I retire.  The current Manager of Continuing Professional Development will become Director of Library and CPD.  We’ll be hiring a new full time Librarian supervisor and Lucy Webb will become part-time.

As for learning a little more about me, I grew up in Whitefish Bay, moving to Wauwatosa in second grade.  I took off for California after my first year of college with my high school sweetheart (also my crew boss at a summer job trimming Christmas trees near Wautoma), and we both graduated from UCLA.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my History degree so enrolled in Library school when we moved to St. Louis, and got my degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia.  It was required to complete half your credits while living on campus at that time, so that was kind of fun after I was already an old married lady.  Dallas spent part of that time roughing it on an Outward Bound course in Idaho’s Sawtooth mountains.  I did an internship with Barb Grout, a Belleville, Illinois hospital librarian who was in one of my classes, and from that contact got my first job as a hospital librarian in Alton, Illinois working with a great mentor, Judy Messerle who later moved to St. Louis University and became an MLA President.

After daughter, Cheyenne, and son, Dylan were born we moved back to Milwaukee.  There I worked for a year at St. Francis Hospital, then 8 years at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and now 25 plus years with Aurora.

I took a lot of dance growing up and still love moving to the beat at Jazzercise classes.  After vegetable gardening since college days, I gave up my big garden for some patio pots when we recently moved to a condo.  I enjoy cooking when I have the time and won my family’s Christmas cookie contest last year with a chocolate fish cracker, Nutella pine cone cookie.  Typically, I’m a reader.  This year I really enjoyed Lab Girl, Firebrand and the First Lady, and am currently reading Loving What Is.

I have three five-year-old grandchildren and one 8-year-old.  I remember not especially wanting to enter that phase of life – but oh, have I loved it.   More time with them in retirement is in order.  There are more places in the world I want to see too.  We love Cabo in the winter, but Alaska and a Dave Koz cruise are on the list…  I’ve been keeping a notebook of interesting volunteer opportunities so we’ll see where the spirit leads there.  

I wish you all well and have very much enjoyed being a medical librarian with you.  My husband will be relieved that I am no longer bringing home new ways for him to be healthy!"

How do we know when we're full? A Thanksgiving post

When this video showed up in my inbox this morning it made me laugh. What could be more timely this Thanksgiving week, than a post about how we know (or don't) when our tummies are full?

Yes, Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and being grateful. It's about acknowledging those forebears and ancestors that came before us. But it's definitely about food, too. 

I'll be bringing fruit salad and cheesy biscuits to my family's Thanksgiving. What about you? Of, but first watch this video. 

Library terms - or My Sammelband has Frisket-Bite

A librarian colleague shared this with me today. It was too fun not to pass along. How many of these terms do you know?

https://medium.com/@blprnt/my-sammelband-has-frisket-bite-a-short-glossary-of-delightful-library-terms-ca3f1848995f

• palimpsest
• hapax legomenon
• blind tooling
• manicule
• frisket-bite
• temoin
• sammelband
• incunabula

The sore problem of prosthetic limbs - a TED talk

As you've probably realized from how many of them I post on the WHSLA blog, I love TED talks. What I really like about them is being able to learn about unique solutions to larger problems. 

Our post today looks at using technology to make prosthetic sockets more comfortable. I hope you'll watch. 

"What drove David Sengeh to create a more comfortable prosthetic limb? He grew up in Sierra Leone, and too many of the people he loves are missing limbs after the brutal civil war there. When he noticed that people who had prosthetics weren’t actually wearing them, the TED Fellow set out to discover why — and to solve the problem with his team from the MIT Media Lab." https://www.ted.com/talks/david_sengeh_the_sore_problem_of_prosthetic_limbs

NLM's "magical" herb garden

While it might be time to put Wisconsin gardens to bed for 2017, it's never too early to think about what to plant next year. 

Did you know NLM has an herb garden? Tended to by Master Gardeners, NLM has had an herb garden since 1976. It even has it's own website: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/herbgarden/index.html. Maybe their list of herbs will give you inspiration for your 2018 garden.  

WHSLA Librarian of the year - Barb Ruggeri

If you were able to attend the WHSLA conference last Thursday, you know that Barb Ruggeri is WHSLA's Librarian of the Year. Congratulations, Barb! 

Karen Hanus, who nominated Barb, had these kind things to say about her in the nomination form (submitted in July 2017). 

"Barb Ruggeri is a distinguished member of the health sciences library profession.  Barb has deep rooted experience as a medical librarian.  She has been the Clinical Services Librarian at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin for over 10 years.  Prior to her current role, she was the User Education/Reference Librarian at the Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries.  She also worked at Mercy Health System and Waukesha Memorial Hospital.  Barb has provided valuable service to the health care professionals at Children’s Hospital through her work with clinical care teams such as the Rare and Undiagnosed Disease Team. She’s also made significant contributions to resident education through her work at Pediatric Senior Rounds.

Barb has also been an active participant in professional associations.  Barb has served as presiding officer of the Southeastern Wisconsin Health Science Libraries Consortium and president of WHSLA.  Her introduction of the WHSLA Wisdom Chat in 2016 has revitalized communication among WHSLA members and provided an ongoing forum for learning and professional discourse without imposing the need for travel for members or large expense for the association.  Her creativity and innovation has added a valuable service that benefits WHSLA members. 

Barb will be leaving the Medical College of Wisconsin for a new health science librarianship role at Carroll University in July 2017.  But, she will undoubtedly continue to be a resource for WHSLA and a role model for health science librarians.  I am extremely grateful for the contributions Barb has made to WHSLA, especially the WHSLA Wisdom Chat.  I feel that she is deserving of the title of 2017 Wisconsin Health Science Librarian of the Year for this contribution." 

The Smithsonian needs your help (no traveling required)

Since 2013, the Smithsonian has been using digital volunteers, people like you and me, to "help us make historical documents and biodiversity data more accessible". 

It's easy to get involved. First, pick a project you want to help with. Second, read some short training documents. Third, get started by viewing digital documents/images and transcribing them and putting that text data into the system. Don't worry that you're doing it wrong, seasoned volunteers will look over your work before it becomes part of the official record. 

Current projects include transcribing notes of sea slug specimens collected in the Philippines in 1908, field journals on New Mexico wildlife circa 1902, Arctic explorers ship logs from the 1860s, POW journals in German, Japanese, and English, correspondence from art historians detailing provenance, Freedman's Bureau registers of letters from North Carolina after the Civil War, and lab notebooks of the Harvard women who studied, interpreted, and discovered game-changing discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. The list goes on and on. 

Wouldn't it be cool to say you've volunteered with the Smithsonian? Learn more here: https://transcription.si.edu/.