2024 Year in Review: Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library
Throughout 2024, faculty and staff at the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library ensured the continuous availability of library services despite the disruptions from construction both inside and outside the building. Below are a few of the library's notable accomplishments from this year.
Student Success
Finding Evidence-based Information
All University of Utah graduates should be equipped to find, evaluate, and ethically use evidence-based health information. This is especially true as artificial intelligence (AI) is incorporated into researching the literature. AI tools often create articles that do not exist—among other ethical concerns—so strong critical thinking skills are essential when using this technology. In 2024, the library trained 4,632 people in various research skills and conducted 387 education sessions.
National Training Office
As the National Training Office for the Network of the National Library of Medicine, we coordinate and teach a preeminent program of classes for health information professionals that reaches over 33,000 participants per year, including 2024.
Experiential Learning
Experiential learning empowers students to learn by doing. At the Eccles Health Sciences Library, a librarian and two student employees lead simulation-based clinical scenarios in virtual reality (VR) for nursing, dentistry, and other health sciences students. They also create 3D-printed models for medical students and residents to train on. This hands-on approach allows students to practice clinical skills before working with real patients.
For example, the Department of Surgery Skills Lab has been working with Matthew Elliott in the Eccles Health Sciences Library 3D printing lab to customize learning objects for hundreds of medical students, interns, and residents who practice suturing and other surgical skills in the lab.
Advancing Knowledge Through Innovative Research
The Eccles Health Sciences Library serves a dual role in research: It facilitates research conducted by others on campus while also conducting its own studies to evaluate its methods and the impact of its services.
Electronic Resources
The Eccles Health Sciences Library manages two journals in partnership with U of U faculty:
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Utah Women's Health Review: A peer-reviewed journal focused on sex and gender differences affecting the seven domains of health.
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Journal of the Academy of Health Sciences Educators: A unique effort to offer mentoring and pre-publication peer review to help share information on health science education.
A recent article in the journal Neuro-Ophthalmology highlighted one of the library’s unique resources. The article described NOVEL (Neuro-Ophthalmology Virtual Education Library) as “the largest online, open-access, repository of neuro-ophthalmology educational material.”
NOVEL and related educational materials are the result of a twenty-year partnership between the Eccles Health Sciences Library and the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society (NANOS). The NANOS Illustrated Curriculum, developed with NOVEL materials, is the official curriculum of accredited neuro-ophthalmology programs in North America. Beyond the United States, NOVEL has a global audience with more than half a million website visits from 154 countries annually.
Systematic Reviews
Systematic reviews are structured team projects conducted with explicit methodology, including peer-reviewed search strategies. When done correctly, these reviews can affect clinical care and research and are often the basis for large grants. One systematic review often takes more than one year from start to finish, and there are an average of 60 requests each year. The service is so popular that we have a waitlist of 3–6 months for new requests.
Examples of recently published manuscripts resulting from this service include the following:
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Duong, Khanh N.C., et al. “Incorporating Social Determinants of Health into Transmission Modeling of COVID-19 Vaccine in the US: A Scoping Review.” Lancet Regional Health–Americas 35 (Jul 2024): 100806.
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Yellepeddi, Venkata K., et al. “Effectiveness of Atropine in Managing Sialorrhea: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 62, no. 6 (2024): 267–277.
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Vasquez, S.R., Yates, N.Y., Beavers, C.J., et al. “Differences in Quality of Anticoagulation Care Delivery According to Ethnoracial Group in the United States: A Scoping Review.” Journal of Thrombosis and Thrombolysis 57, no. 6 (Aug 2024): 1076–1091.
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Miller, Scott, et al. “The Effectiveness of Intradiscal Corticosteroid Injection for the Treatment of Chronic Discovertebral Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review.” Pain Medicine 25, no. 1 (Jan 2024): 33–46.
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Schmidt, R.L., et al. “Graduate Medical Education in Pathology: A Scoping Review.” Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 48, no. 1 (Jan 2024): 117–127.
Interlibrary Loan
To further facilitate research, the Interlibrary Loan program continued to subsidize the costs of obtaining materials not available through the university's collections. In 2024, the program borrowed thousands of documents from other libraries to serve the educational, research, and clinical needs at the U. The Eccles Health Sciences Library also lent thousands of items to other libraries across the country, including the Office of the President of the United States.
Improving Health Care in Utah
Access to Evidence-based Information
Faculty librarian Christy Jarvis received a $150,000 grant from the National Library of Medicine to improve access to journal articles for Utah physicians. Publisher paywalls limit access to approximately 75% of the biomedical literature found in the PubMed database. This means that a massive amount of information is not accessible to physicians who lack subscriptions to the journals that control this content.
Removing this significant barrier to health information access improves patient outcomes by providing all physicians in Utah with the means to acquire the evidence necessary to support clinical decision-making. Creating a special PubMed interface powered by an article delivery option, has devised a lawful way for Utah physicians to retrieve full-text articles without encountering a publisher paywall. In doing so, a major obstacle to information access was eliminated that disproportionately affects physicians—and their patients—in rural and under-resourced areas of Utah.
This special access to PubMed articles rolled out to physicians across Utah in January 2024. To date, 150 physicians have registered from 16 Utah counties, including 10 rural or frontier counties (Beaver, Duchesne, Grand, Millard, Sanpete, Summit, Tooele, Uintah, Washington, and Wayne). Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 28, 2024, this initiative has supplied 545 articles to physicians who previously lacked access to this content.
Supporting Clinical Rounds
As attending physicians lead residents and students on patient rounds, learners often have questions about patient care that go unanswered. In the past, this was often due to a lack of clinician time or expertise in finding relevant literature. To help resolve this, two faculty librarians have since joined teams in the Department of Neurology as they visit patients.
To date, these librarians have been part of 14 rounding teams consisting of the lead attending physician, 20 residents, and close to 40 medical students. They have answered 151 questions since the beginning this project in December 2023.
While searching the literature for answers, they also provide patients and caregivers with information when requested. In two cases, the literature they provided assisted with accurate diagnoses of rare conditions. In several other cases, treatment plans were changed based on new literature provided by the librarians. Their contributions have become so essential that they regularly receive clinical questions through email concerning patient care, even when not physically rounding with teams. Their services are so highly regarded that they recently gave a presentation for Neurology Grand Rounds to over 60 attendees.
Faculty Awards & Accomplishments
We strive daily to point the way toward informed health care decision-making, better care, and better outcomes. Several of our faculty were recognized for their efforts this year:
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Donna Baluchi received the 2024 Leadership in Inclusive Excellence Awards: Research through the University of Utah Office for Health Sciences Workforce Excellence (HSWE).
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Christy Jarvis recently received a grant from the National Library of Medicine (part of the NIH) for her proposal titled, “Reducing Disparities in Physician Access to Information in Support of Evidence-Based Practice.” This $150,000, one-year grant will enable Eccles Health Sciences Library to provide Utah physicians access to all PubMed journal articles.
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George Strawley was elected as chair of the Health Roundtable of the Utah Library Association. He also received Academy of Health Information Professionals Membership at the Distinguished Member Level, an award from the Medical Library Association.
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Shawn Steidinger obtained her Consumer Health Information Specialist certificate from the Medical Library Association.
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Brandon Patterson was selected as one of the 2024–25 Martha Bradley Evans Teaching Fellows for his proposal titled, “Examining the AI Scholarly Research Writing Landscape.”
Looking Ahead
We spent the past two years in the middle of construction for an earthquake retrofit of our building, which will extend its life for many years. While we anticipate construction through 2025, these improvements reflect our commitment to creating a stronger foundation for innovation and collaboration.
We are also grateful for the positive impact our library has had on the health and quality of life for our campus and Utah communities. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to working together to shape the future of the health sciences. We encourage you to connect with us—whether to explore our resources, partner on projects, or join us in advancing knowledge and care.
