Recognizing a need to be more relevant to its constituents, and aligned with institutional priorities, the Taubman Health Sciences Library redefined its mission, roles, and space. This transformation facilitated innovative, team-based collaborations within the health sciences community and the addition of new roles and responsibilities in academic and clinical engagement, research and informatics, enabling technologies, community outreach, and global health. Library space is being redesigned, and a branch library dedicated to interdisciplinary partnerships has been established. Information gained from this experience will be useful to other libraries faced with budget, resource, and staffing challenges and will offer practical ideas for becoming more integrated into the academic, research, and clinical work of the health sciences enterprise.

ABSTRACT Readily available reference services have been a key component of the University of Michigan Library's (MLibrary) success in supporting and advancing campus research, teaching, and learning. An examination of the evolution of our reference services over the past 10 years suggests strategies and innovative approaches that may well inform future service directions. The purpose of this article is to capture the University of Michigan experience as a way to better understand this evolution and, in doing so, to offer critical concepts to consider when thinking about the development of current and future reference services.

Mathematical models are useful tools for investigating complex systems. By representing physiological systems as models, theories can be tested quantitatively against data from the system. Models can be used to explore new theories prior to experimentation and to design studies to optimize experimental resources. They can also be used as teaching tools to illustrate physiochemical principles. In spite of their usefulness and the time invested in developing models, published models are often underused due to the difficulty in obtaining working versions of the model. To address this problem we have designed a library for mathematical models of biological systems on the Internet. The library contains published models of biological systems in formats compatible with several modeling packages, from the fields of physiology, metabolism, endocrinology, biochemistry, and chemistry. The models can be viewed graphically, model solutions can be viewed as plots against data, and models can be downloaded to be run with software on the user’s own system. The address of the library is: http://biomodel.georgetown.edu/model/ Investigators are invited to submit working versions of published models to the library. Models can be submitted electronically at the time a manuscript is accepted for publication. As journals go online, articles containing models can be linked to working versions of the models in the library. By increasing access to working versions of models, more of the investment in kinetic studies and model development can be realized.

Bioinformationist Defined Bioinformationists are “information specialists who have received graduate training and practical experience that provides them with disciplinary background both in biomedical, behavioral or biological sciences and information sciences/ informatics” as defined by the National Library of Medicine (NLM).1 Informationists or “information specialists in-context” are able to provide a unique perspective in the acquisition, analysis and management of discipline specific information resources. NLM strongly advocates the integration of information professionals into the priority discipline of biomedical studies in order to improve research and decision outcomes.