full conference program - Midwest Chapter MLA

Poster #13
Current Awareness in the Mayo Clinic Libraries: Growing Our Knowing
Authors: Beth Miller, Karen Larsen, Shelby Jensen, Dana Gerberi, Scott Vermeersch, Mayo Clinic Libraries, Mayo Clinic,
Rochester, Minnesota.
Purpose: The purpose of this poster is to describe an updated and enhanced table of contents service developed by the
Mayo Clinic Libraries. The library staff strived to develop a service which would easily link library users to the contents
pages of online and print journals in the Mayo Clinic Libraries. In addition, the library wanted to provide a tool which
would assist library users in identifying and discovering new and related journals, as well as link users to publishers’ web
sites for publishing instructions, RSS feeds and other journal information. Project goals were to create a service which
would be patron-driven, patron-friendly, easy for library staff to develop and maintain, and available to all Mayo Clinic
employees and students at all Mayo sites.
Methods: Library staff collaborated with the Library Systems Analyst to create an in-house database based on the
libraries’ electronic document delivery system. The database has a staff side where library staff enter journal
information, send e-alerts, track users, and generate statistics. The patron side lets users log-in to the system to sign-up
for journal e-alerts and provides access to alphabetical and subject lists of journals for those users wanting to browse
current online issues. The service is accessed through a link on the libraries’ home page.
Results: The Current Awareness Service has received positive feedback from library users and continues to grow in the
number of subscribers and in the number of journals added to the system. Users particularly like the ease of subscribing
to the journal e-alerts with the immediate access to online articles.
Conclusion: The Mayo Clinic Libraries’ Current Awareness Service is a tool which helps connect library users to current
journal information. As with any library system, staff time is required to maintain the journal list and alerts, and to send
out the e-alerts to subscribers. This time is considered worthwhile based on the value our users place on the service.
Poster #14
Hidden Treasures : Dance of Death in the Rare Book Collection of the Taubman Health Sciences Library
Authors: Merle Rosenzweig, Irina Zeylikovich, Anna Ercoli Schnitzer, University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences
Library
The Dance of Death is a late-medieval allegory on the universality of death. It indicates that no matter one's station in
life, the Dance of Death unites all. The images consist of a personification of Death leading a row of dancing figures from
all walks of life to the grave. With the devastation that the Great Plagues brought to Europe, the church took an active
role in addressing mortality and began to emphasize the inevitableness of death. In the Rare Book Room of Taubman
Health Sciences Library, one finds an early artistic example from the frescoed cemetery of the Church of the Holy
Innocents in Paris (1424). Our poster is a unique representative selection from a collection donated by Dr. Aldred Scott
Warthin (1866-1931), a University of Michigan pathologist who was greatly interested in all aspects of the Dance of
Death and who wrote the book, "The Physician of the Dance of Death: a historical study of the evolution of the dance of
death mythus in art." These images depict examples from the Warthin Collection ranging from renderings by Hans
Holbein the Younger to Dance of Death art from World War I.