The Ruth Lee Briscoe Papers contains the professional and personal papers of Ruth Lee Briscoe, long-serving librarian and director of the Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Briscoe served the library from 1914 to 1946 as the first professionally trained librarian. During her tenure the library changed and grew. Briscoe was an avid researcher and routinely published pieces in the School of Medicine’s Bulletin. The collection provides insight into the library history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore through the lens of a long-serving library director and well-respected member of the school; it also provides insight into library history generally as well as historical events at the University.

Most of the materials in the Cyril C.H. Feng Papers come from Feng’s time as director of the University of Maryland at Baltimore Health Sciences Library from 1977 to 1990. They provide a glimpse into the business of the Health Sciences Library during a time of growth and reorganization and medical library administration generally. Feng was especially interested in integrated library systems.

Despite having an ideal setup in their labs for wet work, researchers often lack the computational infrastructure to analyze the magnitude of data that result from “-omics” experiments. In this innovative project, the library supports analysis of high-throughput data from global molecular profiling experiments by offering a high-performance computer with open source software along with expert bioinformationist support. The audience for this new service is faculty, staff, and students for whom using the university’s large scale, CORE computational resources is not warranted because these resources exceed the needs of smaller projects. In the library’s approach, users are empowered to analyze high-throughput data that they otherwise would not be able to on their own computers. To develop the project, the library’s bioinformationist identified the ideal computing hardware and a group of open source bioinformatics software to provide analysis options for experimental data such as scientific images, sequence reads, and flow cytometry files. To close the loop between learning and practice, the bioinformationist developed self-guided learning materials and workshops or consultations on topics such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s BLAST, Bioinformatics on the Cloud, and ImageJ. Researchers apply the data analysis techniques that they learned in the classroom in the library’s ideal computing environment. © 2018, Medical Library Association. All rights reserved.