This year the library has increased its support of the humanities by increasing the number of authors we host through our speaker series, providing author signing and book giveaway opportunities for the UNMC community, providing logistical support for other groups hosting humanities events, and by our support for history through the Wigton Heritage Center exhibits. We have more to share in the coming months on how the library supports the humanities. This spring, we hosted three excellent authors who all happened to be alumni of UNMC. Amy Haddad, Ph.D., read from her recently published book, An Otherwise Healthy Woman. Dr. Haddad, a College of Nursing alum, shared poems from the perspective of a caregiver, a health care professional, and a patient undergoing cancer treatment. Another College of Nursing alumnus, Mark Darby, shared his thoughts on the writing process with his book, Pharaoh’s Midwives. Finally, Dr. Janet Gilsdorf, MD, presented on the History of Meningitis at the 13th Annual Richard B. Davis History of Medicine Lecture. Dr. Gilsdorf, an alum of the College of Medicine, received an Honorary Doctorate of Science degree in 2015. A highlight of her visit to UNMC was handling several books from the library’s rare book collection featured in her lecture.

As we near the end of another academic year, the library is grateful for the inspiration we derive from working with UNMC’s students. We are lucky to work with students across the colleges and programs. We adjusted our support of our non-Omaha-based students by extending our de-stress events to Norfolk, Scottsbluff-Gering, Kearney, and two Lincoln locations. Library administration continues working with Student Senate in making furniture and service adjustments to our physical site with a focus on student wellness. Their input continues to make the library a better place for students.

Finally, I want to thank the library staff and faculty who had a great academic year providing services to UNMC’s students and faculty. The staff and faculty always consider the best way to meet the needs of the UNMC community. This support includes everything from working on a systematic review, troubleshooting electronic access to a journal, delivering an article, transcribing oral histories, teaching a class, consulting on a 3D print, processing an archival collection, or doing hundreds of other things. They also maintained their research portfolio and professional service commitments. A round of applause to them!

Students are sometimes guided to create scoping or systematic reviews as part of their coursework. Both types of publications (and their close variations) provide an in-depth research experience and an independent path toward publishing. Time to completion can differ; scoping and systematic reviews typically take 12 months or longer to complete. 

Systematized review projects help students learn the steps involved in a systematic review, but with an abbreviated approach. Systematized reviews can be completed within 6-12 months. These reviews attempt to include elements of the systematic review process while stopping short of systematic review. Stopping short means not reaching the “exhaustive” search requirements that are part of best practices for systematic reviews. Instead, a systematized review might have strategies that include date limitations or may use only two or three databases. 

For these reviews, students first define their research question and break it into answerable parts. Then, they identify keywords and create a concept table. Next, the team’s systematized review consultation with a librarian mirrors those of a systematic review: a review of a project protocol, a discussion of prior similar works, and a review of the preliminary search. Librarians conduct the final comprehensive search, modifying and translating the strategy as needed, then providing a set of results. Students review and appraise the results, navigate decisions on inclusion, and begin to draft the paper. 

The steps above trace the first three steps of locating and using relevant information in an evidence-based practice approach: 

For best success with systematized reviews for groups in a course, we invite faculty members to reach out with plan ideas, timeline, expectations, and student group structure. Librarians have experience supporting students’ systematized review projects and providing instruction in using literature in evidence-based practice. We look forward to the creation of partnerships to encourage students’ growth in research information literacy.

The over-and-under manipulation of individual fibers into cloth is neither a heroic nor a precious activity. It is a simple repetitive process, which, when plied with thoughtful intention, artistic vision, and inspired craftsmanship, becomes the agent for textile objects of legend. For three decades, Nebraska artist Mary Zicafoose has been creating woven tapestries that are as visually compelling as they are narrative. Reinterpreting centuries old weaving traditions into contemporary cloth, her work engages viewers in intimate dialogues between vibrant dyes, intricate patterns and archetypal shapes. Her image making, based on geometric and metaphysical symbols, is saturated and layered using a very old and revered resist wrap textile process called ikat. These three tapestries – Chroma, Envy and Indigo, from her Mountain for the Buddha series – are built around the classic and powerful metaphysical triptych of the trinity expressed as mountain, pyramid, and temple, using the archetypal shape of the triangle. These designs are colorful and painterly, as they interweave the three bodies of enlightenment.

The McGoogan Library hosted its first-ever Living Library event on March 24, 2022. The event brought together people from UNMC, Nebraska Medicine, and the Omaha community to help dismantle prejudices and smash stereotypes. Participants of the event checked out a “living book” for 30-minute one-on-one conversations. These living books were volunteers from our community who agreed to openly share their unique experiences and inspiring stories with participants. The event created an opportunity for real conversations with real people as individuals from different backgrounds came together in a safe space to engage in candid conversations. There were a total of 29 paired discussions between members of our UNMC and Nebraska Medicine community and our living books, with seven of those discussions taking place via Zoom. Topics available included intimate partner violence, asexuality, reconnecting after adoption, coming out in the workplace, pursuing racial justice, fertility issues, overcoming generational cycles of trauma, and more. Feedback from event participants was overwhelmingly positive and included the recommendation that we host the event again. It was also recommended that we allow our living books to be checked out for longer than 30 minutes. The library looks forward to fostering these diverse conversations again in the near future.       

Carrie Meyer, head of Special Collections and Archives, and Erin Torell, rare book librarian, are teaching a health humanities course for the High School Alliance this semester. High School Alliance is a program giving juniors and seniors in Omaha area public schools who are interested in health sciences careers the opportunity to take courses from UNMC faculty. Students meet twice a week for “Science and the Art of Decision Making.” The instructors use humanities subjects like history, art, poetry, narrative writing, medical ethics, and oral history to teach practicing empathy, improving observational and listening skills, and honoring different points of view. Meyer and Torell, along with other faculty members in the Special Collections and Archives department, DiAnna Hemsath, archivist, and Darby Kurtz, archivist and public historian, have used rare books, artifacts, art, and archival material for in-class activities. Interacting hands-on with rare books and artifacts has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that the students have enjoyed. Students have viewed 16th century obstetrics books and 17th century surgery books. Other activities have included handling medical/surgical books from the American Civil War and late 19th- and early 20th-century pharmaceutical bottles.

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