Message from the Executive Director
Our February started off on an incredible high note! Members of the library team were involved in supporting the 18th Annual Community Engaged Learning (CEL) Conference focused on Ending the Injustice of Generational Poverty held on Saturday, February 1, 2025. The conference featured an inspiring keynote by Donna Beegle, and excellent speakers and attracted 412 attendees.
Chris Gaspard, Associate Library Director for Liaison Services, chaired the CEL Poster Subcommittee, which reviewed 80 abstract submissions. Among the subcommittee members were Jeff Uribe-Lacy, Liaison Librarian to the Schools of Dentistry and Public Health and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and Rajia Tobia, former Executive Director of Libraries, along with two other subcommittee members. I was fortunate to be able to attend and learned a lot from the speakers who were thoughtful and thought-provoking. My favorite part of the CEL Conference was the opportunity to view the 74 student posters presented at the conference. These posters were engaging, thoughtfully presented, and well-written. Each individual student or group of students was extraordinarily well prepared to present and answer questions, and all came across as polished young professionals. It was pure joy to learn about their research projects! We offer our thanks to the team that coordinates this annual conference.
Since last fall, the UT Health San Antonio Libraries have engaged in multiple conversations with leaders and staff of our growing clinical enterprise. As a health sciences library, one of our areas of focus is clinical library services which enables our librarians and library staff to provide clinicians and healthcare teams with information and resources to improve patient care, support evidence-based practice, and enhance medical education and research.
While the Libraries have always provided clinical library services to serve this part of our institution, the opening of the new UT Multispecialty & Research Hospital represents a new era for our institution. With the opening of the new hospital, the Library’s clinical library services program is growing and expanding. We have initiated recruitment for a full-time Liaison Librarian for Clinical Services and hope to have this position filled by April or May. Like our other liaison librarians, this librarian will support evidence-based practice by assisting clinicians in finding, evaluating, and applying the most current and relevant evidence to address specific clinical questions and manage our clinical operations. Their responsibilities will include conducting in-depth searches of the health sciences literature, training clinicians on information resources and search strategies, consulting and collaborating, assisting in selecting relevant resources such as databases and journals, and supporting structured reviews and other information and data services.
In February, some of our work with the new hospital came to fruition as we debuted two new digital full-text resources that support clinical operations as well as offering resources for teaching and learning on the academic side of the institution that will help prepare our students for clinical aspects in their chosen fields. These two new digital resources – featured in this newsletter – are now available for both the clinical enterprise as well as for the entire campus. The Libraries and the new UT MSRH partnered to license Lexidrug™, and the Libraries purchased a license for AORN eGuidelines+, a full-text digital resource.
Finally in late January, we hosted an event to gather student feedback on new task chairs for the public spaces. The students were heavily engaged and helped select two new task chairs for our public spaces – you can read more about it in this issue. We have placed orders for two types of chairs and anticipate their arrival by April. This much needed furniture refresh will make the library more comfortable for our students.
All the best for the spring semester!
Pat Hawthorne
Executive Director of Libraries