About
The UCSF Library is one of the preeminent health sciences libraries in the world, containing an expansive digital and analog collection of the world’s health sciences knowledge base. Offering a diverse range of services and resources to the UCSF community and public visitors, the Library is a vital resource for learning, engagement and creativity within UCSF and beyond.
Our Mission
Through exemplary services and resources, the UCSF Library cultivates environments that advance science, promote health, and innovate in teaching and learning.
Our Vision
To be a catalyst for discovery, learning, connection, and innovation at UCSF in support of health worldwide.
Our Values
- Facilitate CONNECTION
- Inspire LEARNING
- Deliver human-centered SERVICE
- Apply INTEGRITY to everything we do
- Embrace COLLABORATIVE approaches
- Remain RESPONSIVE to our community
UCSF Library
Posters (4)
Going Global: Librarian Involvement in Outreach & Global Health Research
The mission of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is Advancing Health Worldwide. To that end, the campus engages in outreach to low-and-middle-income countries through research collaborations and other outreach activities. The education and research librarians at the UCSF Library actively work with researchers and programs engaged in global health programming and projects, and provide educational support and online training for learners in Africa and other developing countries. UCSF research librarians support those working in UCSF’s Institute for Global Health, the Global Brain Health Institute, and UCSF’s Global Cancer Program, as well as UCSF School of Medicine projects engaging in global health efforts. This poster will describe the global programming activities on campus and librarian involvement in teaching and supporting learners around the world. The poster will also highlight librarian involvement and collaboration on specific systematic review projects involving researchers from Latin America, Mexico, and Africa. Librarian involvement supports the overall campus mission, but has also led to additional projects and greater visibility for library services and librarian expertise.
Presented at the American Library Association 2024 Conference.
Promoting DEIA Through Outreach, Collections, & Scholarly Communication
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Library has been actively engaged in promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) goals through a variety of approaches, including outreach and education to targeted campus groups, research collaborations, exhibits and public programming, participation in UC-wide groups, and collections. The library has incorporated DEIA into the library’s strategic plan goals, created rubrics for use in the hiring process, and incorporated DEIA activities and goals into the performance evaluation process for library employees. The University of California has also developed transformative publishing agreements with multiple publishers, allowing UC authors the option of publishing their articles open access with no or low article processing charges (APCs). These agreements allow UC authors to maintain their copyrights and encourage young researchers, LGBTQ+ researchers and other minority researchers to publish and promote their projects from the diversity of our campus populations. All of these activities promote UCSF’s PRIDE values of professionalism, respect, integrity, diversity, and excellence. This poster will highlight numerous activities and initiatives both within the library and on the UCSF campus promoting DEIA and beyond that, the campus mission of Advancing Health Worldwide.
Presented at the American Library Association 2024 Conference.
Reaching Diverse Populations Through Targeted Library Services
The mission of the University of California, San Francisco is Advancing Health Worldwide. There are several different programs across the University providing outreach to and collaborating with health providers and learners in developing countries, and programs reaching out to minority students enrolled in high school and undergraduate programs to encourage interest in careers in the health sciences. The UCSF Library has worked to collaborate with campus groups engaged with minority and marginalized populations. This poster will highlight collaborations with our Global Cancer Program, The UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences, The Global Brain Health Institute, SF BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity), UCSF PUP (Pre-Health Undergraduate Program), NEXGENE Girls program, and the UCSF Summer Student Research Program. The poster will also highlight other types of research collaborations between Librarians and investigators working on projects focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or on minority health both in the U.S., and in low-and-middle-income countries. We will share how these collaborations lead to continuing engagement, published papers, and greater exposure of Librarians as active collaborators in the University’s educational and research enterprise.
Presented at the 2023 American Library Association Conference.
Presentations (5)
Life Support for the Open Access Policy
Presented at the 2017 San Jose State University Open Access Conference.
Boosting the Open Access Policy
Presented at the 2017 Charleston Conference.
Increasing Access: Federally Funded Research Results
Presented at the 2015 American Library Association Annual Conference.
Publications (3)
Elevator Pitch Exercise Template and Examples
Use this elevator pitch template for exercises to create a concise and compelling job position or project description. Examples of the template are included describing two librarian positions as well as an open access policy. The template can be modified to describe a product, organization, or idea.
Libraries Take on Policy: Support for Open Access and Open Data
Published in Against the Grain: Vol. 26: Iss. 2, Article 11, April 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.6696
UCSF Open Access Publishing Fund (464)
Open Access Policy Deposits (52)
Leadership development programs for healthcare professionals in low-and middle-income countries: A systematic review.
Background
Leadership development programs are integral to the future success of public health and healthcare organisations. Despite low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) bearing a greater burden of unmet medical needs, fewer professional development opportunities exist in these settings. This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of available leadership development programs for healthcare professionals in LMICs.Methods
This study conforms to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis-P systematic review and traditional meta-analyses guidelines. Articles were identified through five academic databases: Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, ERIC, and Business Source Complete. Eligibility criteria included original research published in peer-reviewed journals on non-clinical, leadership development programs offered to healthcare professionals in LMICs worldwide.Results
Forty-one peer-reviewed articles met inclusion criteria, of which physicians, nurses, and public health professionals were the most common types of providers to attend leadership development programs; no programs exclusively targeted surgeons. The greatest proportion of programs were short-term interventions (ranging from 1 day to 12 weeks). Communication, organizational structure and leadership, and personal development were identified as the three most common leadership themes in the review. Regionally, leadership programs were reported most commonly in Africa, specifically in Anglophone countries. Other regions worldwide, including Latin America and the Caribbean, were underrepresented in the review.Conclusions
The findings from this review identify gaps in leadership development programs for certain groups of healthcare professionals from certain geographical regions, supporting the need for further provision of and participation in these opportunities in LMICs.- 1 supplemental PDF
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Association of tooth loss with morbidity and mortality by diabetes status in older adults: a systematic review
Objective
This systematic review assesses the association of tooth loss (TL), as the exposure, with morbidity and mortality by diabetes mellitus (DM) status, as the outcome, in older adults.Background
Individuals with DM have higher prevalence of severe TL and increased risk of developing morbidities and mortality. No systematic review has evaluated the association between TL with morbidity and mortality by DM status.Material and methods
Comprehensive searches used multiple publication databases containing reports published between 01/01/2000 and 04/21/2021. Two authors independently evaluated included studies for quality and risk of bias using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist for cohort and Center for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) critical appraisal sheet for cross-sectional studies, while a third author arbitrated decisions to resolve disagreements.Results
Thirteen studies met the inclusion criteria: eight cross-sectional and five cohort. Qualitative review of the included studies indicated TL is associated with increased incidence and prevalence of DM. TL is also associated with DM-related morbidities including greater prevalence of heart disease, diabetic retinopathy, metabolic syndrome; poorer health-related quality of life; poorer survival of participants with chronic kidney disease; and increased medical expenditure. Overall, the quality of the evidence reviewed was medium, as per the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine 2011 Levels of Evidence.Conclusions/practical implications
This review found significant associations of TL with prevalence and incidence of DM and adverse DM-related outcomes. An interprofessional team-care approach that includes an oral health component could benefit the prevention and management of DM.Ecological systems in relation to Latinx youth in the juvenile justice system: A narrative literature review
We conducted a narrative review of literature focused on Latinx youth in the Juvenile Justice System (JJS). The goal of this review was to identify the behavioral health needs and social and cultural factors that place Latinx youth at disproportionate risk for contact and entrenchment with the JJS. Ecodevelopmental Theory (ET) was used as the guiding framework for this review, and a total of 16 peer reviewed articles from Embase, PsychINFO, and Pubmed were collected, analyzed, and summarized. Consistent with ET, we organized themes from the literature into the following sections: (a) microsystem (i.e., family, psychiatric care, sexual health care, school); (b) mesosystem (i.e., family and social environment); (c) exosystem (i.e., family and neighborhood context, and bicultural stress); and (d) macrosystem (i.e., generational status, cultural stress, social class). Sociopolitical disparities, such as disproportionate sentencing by social class and trauma stemming from political violence, and intersections of cultural variables (e.g., generational status and acculturation) should be closely considered in any prevention and intervention efforts targeting Latinx youths. More research to understand and address the unique needs of this population is also needed.
Archives & Special Collections Projects (1)
Silence in OCR: What Could Handwritten Documents Tell Us?
This report, produced as part of the UCSF Archives and Special Collections Summer Fellowship program, explores the efficacy of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology in processing archival documents. OCR technology, which automates the extraction of text from images, has significantly advanced recently, providing substantial benefits for archival organizations by making vast amounts of previously “hidden” data more accessible. This study specifically examines the disparities in OCR quality between handwritten and typewritten documents, highlighting that OCR’s effectiveness is considerably lower for handwritten texts. This discrepancy results in biases and underrepresentation in datasets, particularly affecting the accessibility and utility of handwritten documents from historical archives.
Utilizing a dataset comprising documents related to AIDS/HIV activism from the 1980s and 1990s, this project evaluates the performance of three OCR tools—Tesseract, Google Cloud Document AI, and Amazon Textract—across different document types. The objective is to identify the most effective OCR solution for enhancing the accessibility of handwritten documents within the UCSF Archives and Special Collections. The findings aim to contribute to the broader archival field by addressing the challenges of digitizing and utilizing handwritten archival materials, thus supporting more inclusive and comprehensive historical research.