Blogs

Janene Batten receives the Nurses Choice award

by Judy Spak

We are delighted to announce the recent recognition of one of our own by the Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) nursing community.

Janene Batten was secretly nominated and received the Nurses Choice Award. The award is presented to “an outstanding individual who is not a nurse, but one who supports and recognizes the importance of the practice of nursing at YNHH.”  

Janene was presented with the award on September 13th in the YNHH Atrium. 

In her nomination letter, leading nurse researcher Janet Parkosewich, RN, DNSc wrote of Janene: 

The Nursing Research Committee nominates Janene Batten, our nursing librarian. As a founding member of the Nursing Research Committee, Janene has longevity in understanding the needs of nurses, particularly in the Magnet Model domain of new knowledge, innovations, and improvements.

 

As a consultant and educator, she recognizes and values the work of the nurse by tirelessly supporting hundreds of nurses to become familiar with the library's extensive resources and hone their electronic search skills as they work on EBP, quality improvement, research, or academic projects. Avast number of nurses have been influenced by Janene as she is the primary faculty member for the Setting the Stage for EBP class, a program that teaches nurses how to conduct electronic literature searches. She has been a significant contributor to the transition of this offering to a new HealthStream format for 2017. Janene encourages teamwork in finding best evidence to support the delivery of patient care in several ways. She provides the EBP curriculum to teams of new graduates participating in the Nurse Residency Program as they prepare for their residency projects. She has a strong presence in the Nursing Shared Governance Councils. She offers a library tutorial to assure that council members can find the best sources of evidence to guide practice decisions. She is on the faculty of a new program designed to advance EBP skills for a new EBP mentor role developed for all delivery network councils. Janene created the YNHH Journal Club site on the library's nursing website to assure that nurses have easy access to the Journal Club Toolkit, preferred journals, a listing of YNHH nursing publications and more. It is time to recognize Janene's unfailing support and amazing behind-the-scenes contributions that significantly influence how nurses deliver evidence-based care by awarding her the 2017 Nurses' Choice Award.

“The Soviet government is waging a relentless battle against venereal diseases…Participation in this battle is everyone’s duty….”

In commemoration of the centennial of the Russian Revolution, the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library joins the Yale University Libraries--Beinecke, CSSI, Gilmore Music Library, Haas Arts Library, and Manuscripts and Archives in sharing works from our collections pertaining to this era and event. 

Join us to view "A Revolutionary Public Health Campaign," 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Historical Library, Wednesday, September 27, 2017.

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library will show a very rare portfolio of posters, "Venereal Diseases and the Fight Against Them,  1928, created by the People’s Commissariat on Health." Designed for exhibition and use in public lectures, the portfolio was distributed throughout the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

The schedule for the renovation has been modified to accommodate design modifications in the project. 

Construction is now planned to begin sometime in the spring of 2018. We will update this page when we have more information. 

• Supports the selection, acquisition, licensing, discovery, and marketing of collections, databases, and information tools and resources that enhance the clinical, curricular, research and missions of Yale New Haven Medical Center schools, programs, and departments.
• Collaborates with librarians to offer classes, workshops, learning objects, consultations, and information sessions about open access and other scholarly publication trends and issues. Provides advice and guidance to both Medical Library staff and users.
• Works closely with the Medical Library’s Business Manager to provide budget projections for library collections, and to insure the effective management of general account and endowed collection funds, in accordance with university and library fiscal policies. Manages a budget of $4.4M.
• Works with procurement and legal staff at the Yale New Haven Health System and with hospital librarians from affiliated hospitals to negotiate pricing and licenses for clinical point-of-care resources integrated into the electronic health record.
• Understands and keeps current with issues and trends related to scholarly communication, publishing, and emerging information and data sharing, particularly in the health sciences.
• Participates in outreach including the Medical Library’s personal librarian program.
• Serves as a primary point of contact with vendors to suggest developments to user interfaces and development priorities.
• Collaborates with YUL Collections and Technical Services units, including the Director of Collection Development and the Director of E-Resources and Serials Management.
• Utilizes metrics and other evaluation criteria to support data-driven collection development decisions and to implement practices and tools to increase the efficiency of processes and workflows.
• Compiles and analyzes collection usage data from a variety of sources to inform decisions and comply with university library and national library association statistical reporting requirements.
• Manages Medical Library e-resources access and authentication solutions. Investigates and helps resolve e-resources access issues from clinical sites.
• Participates in library planning, committees, and task forces, and engages in campus, regional, and national professional organizations and collaborative activities. May represent Yale to state, national, and international organizations.
• May be required to participate with disaster recovery efforts.

• M.L.S. from an ALA-accredited library school, with a minimum of two years of professional library experience and professional accomplishments, preferably in an academic setting.
• Knowledge of the electronic publishing environment and scholarly communication issues. Demonstrated experience with electronic resources management, including license and product negotiations, vendor relations, and collection development and management. Demonstrated experience with analyzing usage statistics (e.g. COUNTER compliant usage statistics).
• Ability to manage a collections budget and strong Microsoft Excel skills.
• Ability to design and implement effective programs, projects, and services, and bring them to fruition or conclusion in a timely manner to achieve library objectives.
• Excellent organizational skills and demonstrated ability to solve problems and manage complex workflows.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including public presentations.
• Excellent interpersonal and team collaboration skills; and the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, rapidly changing and ambiguous environment.
• Must be able to work with faculty, staff and students in a culturally diverse environment.

• Demonstrated experience with biomedical information resources and tools, as well as knowledge of health sciences libraries and their evolving roles in medical education, biomedical research, clinical practice, and scholarly communication.
• Demonstrated experience and expertise with implementing joint licenses between academic entities and health systems.
• Public services experience and training, preferably in a health sciences library setting.
• Demonstrated ability to manage a collections budget.

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library is pleased to announce the completion of a grant funded to catalog 2,600 glass plate negatives from the Cushing Brain Tumor Registry.  The grant proposal, "Rethinking Early Neurosurgery: The Harvey Cushing Collection," was funded through a National Network of Libraries of Medicine-New England Region Knowledge/Data Management Award.  From mid-February through April 30th 2017,  a team of graduate and undergraduate students carefully inputted information on over 3,000 glass plate negatives into the Cushing Center database, exceeding the estimated amount in the grant. The negatives depict Dr. Harvey Cushing's patients, including histology. 

Harvey Cushing, the pioneer and father of neurosurgery, was born on April 8, 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Yale University in 1891, studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and received his medical degree in 1895. In 1896, he moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital where he trained to become a surgeon under the watchful eye of William S. Halstead, the father of American surgery. By 1899 Cushing became interested in surgery of the nervous system and began his career in neurosurgery. During his tenure at Johns Hopkins, there were countless discoveries in the field of neuroscience.

In 1913, Cushing relocated to Harvard as the surgeon-in-chief at the new Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Cushing continued to operate on several hundred patients a year with remarkable results.  In addition he was relentless in his recording of patient histories and continued his careful attention to the details and documentation of each surgery.

In 1932 Harvey Cushing retired and in 1933 he agreed to join the staff at Yale University, his alma mater, as the Sterling Professor of Medicine in Neurology.  Cushing died in 1939.

The negatives are undergoing rehousing and digitization, and will be made available for research through the Cushing Center database, which brings multiple parts of Harvey Cushing's work together in one place.  The database, still in development, will allow researchers to explore Cushing's medical work and patients.  Please contact Terry Dagradi, Cushing Center Coordinator, for details.