The awards ceremony was held at Quintiles in Overland Park on Jan. 9. Accepting on behalf of the College were Simone Briand, assistant library director, and Julie Steinbach, library assistant. Briand shared her thoughts on the significance of the honor.

“Connecting our patrons with high quality information is rewarding in itself, but gaining recognition from our peers, especially those in larger institutions, brings the satisfaction of knowing that what we do has a positive impact on health sciences education and librarianship on a bigger scale,” Briand said. “It is a tremendous honor.”

Briand went on to say that she and her colleagues always strive to maintain excellence in the library and its offerings, not for awards, but to ensure that users are able to access the most beneficial information for their needs. To that end, they have worked to improve what they can offer their users. The library has expanded remote access to its electronic resources for its off-campus users, and created an online tutorial for distance learners to further streamline the search process for scholarly content in PubMed from home, and to retrieve articles from library subscriptions. These efforts, although often unnoticed, are crucial to users, which is part of the reason why the library was honored by the HSLNKC.

“Much of the work an academic health science library does is quiet and easily overlooked, but contributes greatly to the education, scholarship and research of its college community, alumni and partners in other institutions,” Briand said. “The advance of digital technology has brought new opportunities, but also technical challenges that often go unseen, yet libraries everywhere are rising to the challenge, not only to provide new tools, but to provide new and better pathways to discovery, collaboration and learning. These information services are vital for education and literacy, and it’s great to see that they are valued.”

Marcia Thomas, library director, was unable to attend the awards ceremony, but her efforts are on display throughout the facility. With more than 35 years of service to the College, Thomas has been instrumental in the expansion of the library from a small space with a limited collection of donated books, to a 7,000-square-foot facility housing more than 20,000 print and electronic resources. In 2012, the library provided hundreds of full-text articles through it subscription databases, and supplied 700 articles through Interlibrary Loan.

Other awards presented at the assembly by HSLNKC were: “Outstanding One-Person Health Science Library,” “Outstanding Academic Health Science Library,” “Outstanding Outreach Efforts” and “Excellent Return on Investment.”