[Asis-l] NCBI user education/training programs cut

[Patricia Dawson]

        ***Please Excuse Cross Posting***

For those of you interested in NCBI's user education and training 
programs, please see the note below outlining
the demise of these due to budget cuts.

Pat Dawson, MS, MLS
Assistant Professor I-Librarian
Moore Library
Rider University
2083 Lawrenceville Road
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
pdawson at rider.edu

Messner, Kevin R. Dr. wrote:

> > MLA Mol Biol/Genomics SIG folks:
> >
> > Many of you have likely heard over the course of the last few weeks that
> > NCBI has discontinued their user education and training programs, effective
> > immediately.  For those of you who have attended or organized the NCBI Field
> > Guide and Mini-courses (and especially those of you who had upcoming
> > programs scheduled!), you know that this represents a significant blow to
> > many libraries' molecular biology outreach programs.  The NCBI User Services
> > staff have provided for several years an excellent starting point for
> > librarians and biologists working with NCBI's genetic, genomic, and
> > structural tools.
> >
> > For further details on the decision, I am appending at the end of this
> > message the text of emails sent by NCBI staff regarding this change.
> >
> > I have heard that some of you have already begun to respond to this at an
> > institutional level, beginning to form plans to try to provide continued
> > support to your user communities.  Some others of you (like me) are just
> > starting to discuss what to do.  For those of you who have depended on
> > NCBI's outreach visits, I would very much like to hear your thoughts on
> > questions such as:
> >
> > - how will you continue to provide training opportunities for your user
> > groups?
> >
> > - how will trainers continue their own education and current awareness of
> > NCBI tools?
> >
> > - what partners on your campus can you work with to provide support?
> >
> > - are these tasks that can be accomplished on an institutional level, or are
> > cross-institution collaborations a model to explore?
> >
> > - is there a role for relevant library association groups in addressing this
> > (this SIG, SLA DBIO, ACRL, USAIN)?
> >
> > - ???
> >
> > Please respond to this list -- this is a topic of broad interest.  I look
> > forward to hearing your thoughts and plans!
> >
> > Best,
> > Kevin
> > Molecular Biology and Genomics SIG convenor
> >
> > Kevin R. Messner, Ph.D.
> > Brill Science Library
> > Miami University
> > Oxford, Ohio 45056
> > 513-529-7204
> > messnekr at muohio.edu
> >
> >
> >
> > ----
> >
> > Here are the communications we've received from NCBI about the program
> > termination.  Thanks to Andrea Dinkelman at Iowa State for forwarding these
> > mails to me.
> >
> > >From User Services staff:
> >
> > "Because of budgetary constraints, NCBI is having to make reductions in
> > some of its programs and the education programs are affected.
> >
> > "Unfortunately, this means that we will not be able to teach the
> > mini-courses scheduled at the Iowa State University for this coming
> > March. At this point we cannot reschedule the course or accept requests
> > for future courses.
> >
> > "I apologize for any inconvenience that the cancellation causes to your
> > educational programs. Feel free to contact me if you have questions."
> >
> > We're told that the NCBI Education web site's handouts/course materials
> > "should remain up for the foreseeable future."
> >
> > >From David Lipman, NCBI Director:
> >
> > "Thank you for taking the time to write me about the discontinuation of
> > NCBI's training programs. It is clear from your letter that you have led
> > valuable efforts to foster bioinformatics training and outreach at Iowa
> > State University, and I am very appreciative of those efforts.
> >
> > I share your disappointment that NCBI training classes have been
> > suspended. Unfortunately, we are in a period of very tight budgets and
> > are having to make difficult decisions about reductions in our programs.
> > While the classes have been eliminated for now, we did retain a number
> > of people from our training and education group to assist in user
> > support and to work on making our resources easier and more intuitive to
> > use.
> >
> > I am hopeful that budgets will improve and that at some point we will be
> > able to reinstate many of our training activities. When that time comes,
> > I hope I can count on you and other dedicated librarians to facilitate
> > NCBI training efforts.
> >
> > Thanks again for your interest and your support."
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > molbio mailing list
> > molbio at molbiosig.mlanet.org
> > http://molbiosig.mlanet.org/mailman/listinfo/molbio_molbiosig.mlanet.org
> >   
>