Health Librarians' Interest Group

The meeting's initial focus was on federal resources such as PubMed and whether or not they have become less reliable.

The first topic of discussion was about the new nursing school partnership between Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and St. Peter's Hospital. It appears the first program year for the school's students will be at ACPHS, the next two at St. Peter's Hospital for clinical work, then the last back at ACPHS.

The Caring Gene® Career Pathways Training (CPT) program was discussed - https://caringgene.org/

Federal budget cuts and their effects on library funding were discussed - the NYS Department of Health is heavily reliant on federal funding and they are concerned about upcoming cuts to their budget and possible staffing cuts as a result.

The group considered whether or not the various important research databases provided by the NIH are being maintained, and whether the staff who had been doing so are still employed.

Discussion on AI in the health and academic field began with the use of AI by the NLM to aid human staff with the creation/application of the MESH  subject headings for Medline.

There was much discussion on student and faculty use of AI and what librarians need to do to help both. The effect that AI is having on reference service was also discussed - most reported that reference service numbers have been steady, or increasing recently, but all agreed it would be good to revisit this topic in another year. This could possibly be done in a joint meeting with the Reference, Instruction, and Outreach interest group.