Briscoe Library: Health Information Outreach

Librarians for the University of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio Briscoe library have been providing health information outreach to the Mexico-US border region since 2009. This is a great user-centered service because a huge part of the mission of the library is to provide health information to the community. What makes this project even better is that they have collaborated with other libraries to reach a wider community. This is a vital service to these users because many of the citizens do not have access to authoritative health information outside of these libraries. Their next outreach program is Get Hip scheduled for April 14th at the Texas Library Association Conference . The Get Hip program is designed to provide professional development to K-12 librarians, school nurses, public librarians, and others so that they may be aware of health information services available to the public with the goal that then these professionals can pass this information along to the greater community.

Teaching Evidenced-Based Search Skills

The University of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio's Briscoe Library is teaching Evidenced-Based Search skills to 2nd year Med Students. This is a fantastic user-centered service. There is a definite need for the service as the students must learn to research evidence-based medicine articles to be successful. The librarians were clearly right on the money with the needs of the students. They were only expecting 25 students and instead had 162 on day 1 and 151 on day 2 out of a class of only 250. Some students actually came twice! The students actually asked for the training to become mandatory. This is a fantastic example of librarians meeting the needs of their patrons.