Ohio Resource Libraries: Tour Day 3

Posted by Elizabeth Kiscaden on June 8th, 2017 Posted in: Site Visits

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After a questionable stay at our roadside motel, Linda and I woke up not-quite-as-early (remember, this is eastern time, so everything feels early to us!) and hit the local McDonalds for a surprisingly good cup o’ joe and egg sandwiches, then it was off to Wright State University to meet with Sheila Shellabarger and our own Bette Sydelko. We had a discussion of the challenges of opioid addiction in the Dayton area and the potential of partnering with researchers at Wright State on an outreach project with the library. We took a peek around their lofty library facility and compared it to our own brutalist library facility, Hardin Library. Did you know that Wright State Library has a Starbucks on the main floor?!?

From Dayton we drove to Cincinnati, for our final visit at the excellent Donald C. Harrison Library at the University of Cinncinnati. A complete renovation of the library was completed in 2008, and Linda and I salivated over the beautiful glass and hobbit-home study spaces, while director Leslie Schick shared the story of the painful five years during renovation which displaced the library. We had a chance to meet with both Leslie and assistant director, Lori Harris, to learn about the support their staff of experienced informationists offer to researchers on campus. Leslie and Lori shared a recent event supporting data services on campus, called UC DATA Day, which featured Mike Huerta from the NIH and the National Library of Medicine as a keynote speaker. A tour of the facility included a stop at the Winkler Center, a medical history center located within the building. Not only was this the location of a successful lecture and exhibit on African American Physicians in Cincinnati (rock on Jennie Porter!), but it is home to an amazing set of medieval medicinal containers that was created for the world’s fair.

During the tour, we had the opportunity to meet with Tiffany Grant, who was successful in utilizing the NLM administrative supplement for informationist services to add her support to a grant funded project on campus. We’ll be working with Tiffany to present about her experience at one of our Kernel of Knowledge expert speaker sessions later this summer.

This was the end of our visit to Ohio, and I want to extend a sincere thank-you to all six of the resource libraries that we visited this week in Ohio. Thank you for sharing your successes as well as challenges within your institutions – and thank you for allowing us to present opportunities for partnering with the Greater Midwest Region office and to solicit feedback. Jolene…. we’ll catch you in October!