Fiscal Year 2016 (July 1, 2015 through June 30, 2016) was a productive one for Becker Library. Find details, collection and usage statistics and more in the full FY2016 Becker Library Annual Report and Annual Report Supplement and Appendices, or see key points below.
A CATALYST FOR LEARNING AND DISCOVERY
FY 2016 ANNUAL REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
Accelerating Research
Our primary focus is supporting a cutting-edge research university with innovative tools and services.
- Providing information essential to our scientists, our 6,782 electronic journal titles were accessed 2,600,244 times—an average of 383 accesses per title
- Meeting the demand for data analysis tools, we expanded our site-licensed software collection and training, which now has 491 subscribers throughout the University, reducing cost and improving efficiency for research labs
- Helping researchers prepare stronger grant applications and improve the impact of their work, we saw strong interest in our consultation and training sessions in areas such as infographics, NIH Biosketch and SciENcv, strategies for enhancing impact, and research analytics
- Extending access to research discoveries, we continued to expand our online repository, Digital Commons@Becker, which had 204,886 downloads from 173 countries
- Creating interdisciplinary growth opportunities, we partnered with several departments to offer the highly successful Genomics in Medicine lecture series (with more than 1,100 attendees), as well as an Introduction to Research Computing workshop
- Contributing significantly to research teams, our staff members co-authored ten published systematic reviews
Strengthening Patient Care
We bring expertise and thoughtfully curated resources to clinicians at the point of care.
- Delivering evidence-based information at the point of care, our librarians participated in clinical rounds at both teaching hospitals
- Improving access to clinical resources across the health system, our library was a key member of a BJC and WU team pursuing joint licenses for critical resources such as UpToDate
- Helping patients and families get clear and understandable health information, we worked with St. Louis Children’s Hospital to translate complex instructions into accessible teaching tools
- Teaching caregivers to communicate clearly, we provided health literacy and plain language review services, as well as workshops on writing understandable informed consent documents
- Improving physicians’ understanding of genetic test results, we partnered with Pathology for an innovative training session on next-generation sequencing
Enriching Teaching
We train students to become thorough and agile researchers in order to become better caregivers.
- Helping students become better researchers, our librarians critically evaluated students’ abilities to articulate and structure questions, and to use the best information resources
- Developing new inter-disciplinary learning opportunities, we collaborated broadly to offer the Genomics in Medicine lecture series, genetic analysis software training, and to plan an Introduction to Research Computing lecture series and a symposium on Communicating Science (both offered early in fiscal year 2017)
- Teaching students to communicate better with patients, we provided sessions on health literacy and communication principles to first-year medical students and Saturday Neighborhood Health Clinic volunteers and coordinator