Fiscal Year 2018 (July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018) was marked by increasing demand for innovative services and continued reliance on a world-class collection of resources. Find details, collection and usage statistics, and more in the full FY2018 Becker Library Annual Report and Annual Report Supplement and Appendices, or see key points below.
BUILDING ON STRONG FOUNDATIONS
FY 2018 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 7,498 e-journal titles were accessed 2,879,656 times and our 57,254 e-book titles were accessed 701,072 times.
- Increasing access to basic research computing skills, we partnered with the Center for High-Performance Computing (CHPC) to offer a series of hands-on workshops and developed two new workshops on R and Python. During FY18, 20 sessions were offered with a total attendance of 621.
- Meeting the demand for data analysis tools, we continue to offer reduced pricing on specialized research software tools, which are widely used on campus by over 1,400 users, reducing cost and increasing efficiency.
- Highlighting the importance of effectively communicating science and research, we launched the #SciComm Thursdays series in partnership with the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences. Approximately 300 people attended eight total sessions.
- Extending access to research discoveries, we continued to expand the medical school’s digital repository, Digital Commons@Becker. The repository has continued to grow and thrive and has reached 1.2 million downloads (up 26% from FY17).
- Responding to demand for increased and increasingly robust research analytics and evaluation, we provided reports and services to 23 entities on campus and added another research and publishing support librarian to keep up with increased demand.
Strengthening Patient Care
We bring expertise and thoughtfully curated resources to clinicians at the point of decision-making.
- Increasing the delivery of evidence-based information at the point-of-care, the clinical rounding service expanded to four librarians who spent a total of 30 hours on medical units.
- Integrating information services seamlessly into the hospitals, a clinical librarian was an active participant on six hospital committees.
- Bringing trusted information to patients and families, a Becker librarian at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Family Resource Center provided educational materials to patients and families and participated in community outreach events.
Enriching Teaching
We train students to be thorough and agile researchers who can lead in the age of the physician-scientist.
- Supporting students’ study needs, staff worked to grant students 24/7 card access to the library building in response to overwhelming student feedback.
- Strengthening our partnership with the Office of Medical Student Education, librarians’ instructive session in the Practice of Medicine course was reformatted into a small group exercise to facilitate interactive learning.
- Building on our ongoing involvement with the Institute for Public Health, a Becker librarian lectured in a Clinical Investigation Program course where evidence-based medicine elements were taught with an emphasis on critical appraisal of study methodologies within the literature.
- Working to make patient materials clear and understandable, we helped revise materials for cleft palate patients, and to calculate reading levels of patient materials on post-surgery opioid use.