The months of December and January always mark for me the time when I start to see “top 10” lists appearing on discussion forums, blogs, websites, and via direct mass email services. For some reason they catch my attention and peak my curiosity.  Depending on the theme of the list, I often wonder if I can predict what the list might reveal!

Some of the lists I review are for sheer entertainment, for example: 

• The 10 Best Books of 2017 (as selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review)
• The Top 10 Gadgets of 2017

Other lists provide useful insights and prompt me to reflect on how the MSK Library is supporting our knowledge workers, and to consider whether there are any additional approaches that we should be using to engage our library user community.

• The Top 10 Library Stories of 2017 (Publishers Weekly looks back at stories that captivated the publishing world)
• Top 10 Trends at the 2017 Charleston Library Conference (as shared by Morgan Kubelka, Library Services, Wiley)
• OCLC Top Stories of 2017
• NLM IN FOCUS – a look inside the U.S. National Library of Medicine (not really a top 10 list but still very interesting to review!)

And still other lists provide me with a chance to see what the top science research stories were last year — how scientists impacted the world of scholarly communication by sharing their research findings and how interested readers reacted.

• 2017 Breakthrough of the Year from Science (AAAS)
• The 2017 in news: The science events that shaped the year from Nature
• The Altmetric Top 100 – what academic research caught the public imagination in 2017?
• Highly Cited Researchers in 2017 from Clarivate Analytics – see who’s made the list from MSK

I hope you take a moment to view my “top 10” list from 2017 and if you have one that you think worth sharing, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services and Avid List Reader

In less than two weeks, 2017 will be over.  This year has been incredibly busy for the library staff.  In addition to the day-to-day services that we provide, we have been able to achieve the goals that we outlined at the beginning of the year.

We published our first Synapse Publications Report which covers the 2016 scholarly research works of our MSK authors.  We also launched the first version of our Library Dashboard to showcase and share a few key usage metrics.  We upgraded the software (ILLiad) which supports our Document Delivery Service and solicited feedback about this service via an online client satisfaction survey.  The response from users was excellent, with 592 individuals sharing their thoughts about the value this service provides to them, as well as, their ideas for improvement.

Finally, we spent a large portion of the year working on Tri-Cat’s replacement and on improving our user community’s experience when searching for information, journals, books, and resources from the Library Website.  In 1Q2018, users can expect to see a new discovery feature configured to search the MSK collection and beyond.  By using this search interface, users will be able to manipulate their search results and sort them by relevance, date, popularity, author, title and more.  I hope that I have peaked your interest……stay tuned as information will be forthcoming on our blog, via Twitter (@MSKCC_Library), OneMSK, and email announcements.

In closing, on behalf of the MSK Library Staff, we want to take a moment to wish our User Community a delightful holiday break and a “very” extra special New Year.

All the best and see you in 2018!

Cheers!
Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services