EHSLibrary » Mayden Lecture

Save the Date: Mayden Lecture on Health Literacy will be March 28, 2013

Mary McFarland — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:39:01 +0000

2013 Priscilla M. Mayden Lecture

Health Literacy: A Vital Pathway to Healthcare Transformation

When: March 28, 2013, 1 pm – 4 pm

Where: George and Dolores Eccles Institute of Human Genetics Auditorium, 15 North 2030 East, 1st Floor

Keynote Speaker, Andrew Pleasant, PhD. “Health Literacy: Applications for Enhanced Health System Performance OR . . . How to Change the World with Health Literacy”

Friday morning Workshop: March 29, 2013.

Find more at Priscilla M. Mayden Lecture

eScience and the Evolution of Library Services

Todd Vandenbark — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:06:48 +0000

Please join us for the 2012 Priscilla M. Mayden Lecture on the topic of eScience and eResearch:

When: Wednesday, February 22, 2012, beginning at 1:00 p.m.
Where: George and Dolores Eccles Institute of Human Genetics Auditorium, 1st Floor
Address: 15 North 2030 East, Salt Lake City, UT
Who: Bart Ragon, Associate Director for Knowledge Integration, Research, and Technology at the University of Virginia’s Claude Moore Health Sciences Library.

Live streaming of this event will also be available.

“Science is changing and changing fast. Concepts like the data life cycle, data curation, translational science, high performance computing, and data sharing are having an impact on how science is conducted. At the same time, libraries are adjusting services to meet the needs of highly networked and technically savvy patron groups. eScience is a term that describes the dynamic re-shaping of collaboration and workflows in science and creating unique and important opportunities for librarianship. This presentation explores potential roles for librarians in eScience, how new collaborations might form, and the role of the libraries in the data life cycle.”

The Mayden Lecture is free and open to the public, both in-person and online. More information about this lecture and the leader who inspired its creation is available on our website. Questions? Post a comment here, or contact Jeanne Le Ber, Associate Director for Education and Research, at 801-585-6744 or via email at .

Priscilla Mayden: visionary librarian

Todd Vandenbark — Mon, 09 May 2011 16:19:07 +0000

Priscilla M. Mayden, who served as the first Director of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, passed away this month at the age of 93. Joan Stoddart, Deputy Director of the Eccles Library, wrote a thoughtful summary of Ms. Mayden’s life and contributions to the library profession:

Priscilla Maltby Mayden was born in 1918 in Stoughton, Massachusetts. She received her B.S. from Simmons College in 1941 and her M.S. in Library Science from Columbia University in 1967. She was Hospital Librarian in the Women’s Army Corps, USAF Redistribution Center, Santa Ana, California from 1944-1946, the Chief Librarian at the Veterans Administration Hospital , Bedford, MA. from 1946- 1952 and Chief Librarian at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salt Lake City, UT from 1952-1966. She came to the University of Utah as the Medical Sciences Librarian and then became Director of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library 1966-1985. Ms. Mayden was a member of the Medical Library Association Board of Directors, 1975-1978 and became a Fellow in the Association in 1983. She was also Chair of the Utah Academic Library Consortium 1972-1973 and President of the Utah Library Association 1961-1962.

Priscilla’s friends and colleagues established the Priscilla M. Mayden endowment in her honor upon her retirement in 1985. This lectureship has allowed the Eccles Health Sciences Library to invite knowledgeable and exciting speakers among others such as Dr. Joyce Mitchell, Chair of the U’s Department of Biomedical Informatics who spoke last year about Genetics, Genomics and Biomedical Informatics, and Dr. Ed Shortliff from Columbia University who spoke a few years earlier about the National Health Information Infrastructure.

Priscilla was a visionary in her time, understanding the emerging role of computers in libraries and in healthcare at the bedside. She started the Hope Fox Eccles Clinical Library in the University Hospital in 1983 which was to serve clinical staff with the latest search capability close to the bedside. This small library has recently been relocated and redesigned as a Health Library and now serves the health information needs of patients and families of University Hospital.

In a recent email message to staff, Library Director Jean Shipman wrote:

I had the great opportunity to meet Priscilla (thanks to Karen Butter) a couple of years ago and got the chance to see how powerful of an individual she was at 90. I can only imagine and appreciate her influence during her years as Director of the Eccles Library. I feel that I, the faculty and staff and the users of the Library are benefiting from her vision for the physical building and for the value of information…

It has been a delight to read the many memories shared by the MLA Fellows about Priscilla. I know we all have lost a great visionary, a wonderful spokesperson, a mentor, and a delightfully gracious individual. May we relish in our fond memories and appreciate the legacy she has left for many others to gain the knowledge needed to make this world a better place for all of us.

I invite other members of the library community to tell us about your memories of Ms. Mayden, and how she has influenced or inspired you.

UPDATE: A service honoring Priscilla’s memory will be held on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 5:30 pm at First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City, 569 S 1300 E, Salt Lake City, UT.

Also, an obituary for Ms. Mayden was recently posted on the Salt Lake Tribune website.

Another great Mayden Lecture

Todd Vandenbark — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:52:37 +0000

On Monday, April 18, 2011, Amanda Etches-Johnson gave the 2011 Priscilla M. Mayden Lecture on the topic “From Usability to User Experience.” Designing websites, she explains, should focus not on what the software does, but on what the user does with it. Important design questions to ask include:

How easy is this site to learn?
How efficiently can end users complete their desired tasks?
How easy will it be to come back to this site again later and remember how to use it?
How quickly can the user and site together recover from errors?

If we can understand how the user experiences our site, we can design it to better meet their needs.

Etches-Johnson pointed out that at the core, an academic library website is a research tool, and she advocates that it should focus on frequently asked questions or sought-for types of resources. She also reviewed how one writes for the web; rather than pages loaded with lots of words, they:

should be written in an active voice,
can use short sentences or fragments, and
are only as strong as the weakest feature.

Missed the lecture but want to learn more? Links to the Watch the video of the 2011 Mayden lecture, or browse Ms. Etches-Johnson’s slides.

2011 Priscilla M. Mayden Lecture

Todd Vandenbark — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 23:33:05 +0000

Amanda Etches-Johnson is the guest speaker for the Priscilla M. Mayden Lecture on April 18, 2011. Her talk is titled, “From Usability to User Experience,” and it will focus differences between usability and user experience (UX) in web design for websites. Johnson supports the concept that visiting a website should be “a delightful experience,” and her talk will will provide attendees with ideas and insights into ways to incorporate UX design principles into their interface and web development workflows.

Schedule:

When: Monday, April 18, 2011
Time: 12:30 p.m. Mountain Time
Where: HSEB 2110

This lecture and webcast is free thanks to funds from the Priscilla M. Mayden endowment, and is presented by the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library. More information on this lecture series is available on our library website, including a link to the webcast. A reception with light refreshments will follow, and the public is welcome.