continuum | University of Minnesota Libraries

As the hub for all the health professional schools, the Health Sciences Education Center spaces will promote interprofessional education and interaction. Our Health Sciences and Wangensteen Historical libraries will play an important role in the building's interdisciplinary mission.  Here are a few examples of how we are building our space as a service.

The Health Sciences Library will be moving into its new location in the Health Sciences Education Center (HSEC) in July 2020. We are particularly excited by our new service desk, which will welcome visitors into the library space on the fifth floor of the building.

The construction of the new Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine is well underway as we prepare to move into the Health Sciences Education Center (HSEC) in July 2020.

Michael (Mickey) Hafertepe supports medical education as a radiology resident at the UMN Medical School. Working closely with students, Hafertepe has gained insights into the learning process and the challenge of translating health information into medical practice.  Learn how Hafertepe is using 3D printing to help students understand spatial relationships of medical imaging when they are viewing three dimensional anatomy on a two dimensional screen.

Teresa Bisson works with the Bio-Medical Library to bring Virtual Reality to her neurorehabilitation classroom where students are immersed in a virtual experience. Through active learning, Bisson’s students are becoming thoughtful users of technology and leaders in a new health care environment.

Kaylee Morlan was first introduced to the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine while taking a freshman seminar course co-taught by the library's Assistant Curator, Emily Beck. With her sights set on a career in museum studies, Morlan was able to get a job at the library and gain hands on experience in her chosen field.

Michelle Henry-Stanley, PhD, had been looking for a better way to teach the complex topic of genetic recombination using a tactile, hands-on educational tool. She and her co-instructor Donna Spannaus-Martin, PhD, connected with our Makerspace to produce low-cost sets of 3D immunoglobulin gene segments to support new ways of teaching and learning and meet their active learning goals.

When she was in middle school, Kaitlyn Minarsich’s older brother took her to an exhibit showcasing items from the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine where he worked as a UMN undergraduate student. Minarsich is following the family tradition, working at the library to convert a 2013 physical exhibit on Downton Abbey into an updated, online interactive exhibit — just in time for the release of the Downton Abbey movie this fall. Minarsch shared some of her experiences from working at WHL. Here’s what she had to say.

The Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine hosted a charrette to prepare for its new exhibition space in the Health Sciences Education Center. This visioning session brought together a diverse group of stakeholders who shared their ideas for exhibiting, which included involving students, creating pop-up exhibits, and creating partnerships.

Louisa Botten, a first year undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, recently completed an internship at the Wangensteen Historical Library. Read how Botten combined this historical text with modern technology to create an award-wining online exhibit.

You may know Leah Grinvalsky as a Physical Therapy student at the U of MN, but we also know her as a friend to Katrina Simons. This friendship played an important role in Grinvalsky’s first visit to the Bio-Medical Library Makerspace, where she explored solutions to help Simons participate in gaming. Here's what Grinvalsky had to say about her experience creating 3D printed adaptive technology.

Libraries are all about information so it makes perfect sense that we provide state of the art collections. But information isn’t static and the development of new knowledge needs to be cultivated in a supportive environment - that’s where libraries and technology go hand in hand.

Preparing to move a historical collection is complex and requires input and help from many library staff. It also requires close attention to small details. Read about the ‘behind-the-stacks’ tasks we are completing to get ready for the Wangensteen Historical Library's move into the new Health Sciences Education Center in 2020.

When we move into the new Health Sciences Education Center, you can expect to find some familiar spaces such as our service desk and study areas. You will also see new and enhanced spaces that will support the exploration of emerging technologies in healthcare, including a Makerspace, a Data + Visualization Lab, a Faculty Commons, and a Virtual and Augmented Reality Lab.

As with any move, our move into the Health Sciences Education Center offers us a chance to reassess all of the things we have accumulated over time. For our three health sciences libraries, this includes a reassessment of our websites, with a redesign planned in the next year.  

Our new library spaces in the Health Sciences Education Center will be full of new furniture. We're excited about the variety of seating options that will be available to our users, and are happy that we can offer some of our current faves.