Raluca Serban
Raluca Serban has been a Library Technician at the University Health Network since 2012. She is an active member of the Instruction Group and the Outreach Team, where she enjoys coordinating the workshop schedule, developing workshops, exploring the foundations of adult education and contributing to workshop promotion. Outside of work, Raluca keeps busy with her energetic six year old, fuels her days with copious amounts of coffee, and indulges in late night reading whenever she can.
Sessions
INTRODUCTION
What began as a straightforward question: 'Should this skeleton still be on display in the library?' evolved into a deeper inquiry. This presentation will explore a hospital library’s investigation into the origins, ethics, and future of human remains held in our library space. It will also discuss the experience of collaborating with an academic program to create a meaningful, ‘real-world’ learning experience for students in a forensic anthropology program.
DESCRIPTION
As part of this project, a literature review was first conducted to explore the ethics of the use and display of skeletal human remains in medical education. This exploration led to concerns and questions about the origins, educational value, care, and dignity of the individual in our library. Our team engaged experts from our organization's bioethics department and an academic forensic anthropology department to assess the skeleton’s provenance and determine actionable steps to move forward.
OUTCOMES
Through collaboration with bioethics and forensic anthropology, this problem was leveraged into a learning opportunity for budding forensic anthropologists. Through this exercise, our team received a report confirming the individual’s descent, age and sex. Further, practical recommendations were provided by a forensic anthropology expert, informing our team’s decisions.
DISCUSSION
Throughout this project, we learned about institutional accountability, the ethics of human artifact stewardship, and the importance of respectful decision-making when the past meets the present. Through this presentation, we will share our process, findings, actions, and lessons learned.
INTRODUCTION
We are a team of library professionals dedicated to enhancing the instructional processes within our team while also designing accessible and impactful learning experiences for our users. Based on a literature search of both published and grey literature related to accessible instruction and best practices, we found no resource that addressed best practices for instruction in hospital libraries.
DESCRIPTION
We developed a comprehensive guide for our library team covering internal library processes, accessibility, multimodality, interactivity, and best practices for diverse learners. We will share our process for developing the guide, as well as the guide itself.
OUTCOMES
It was important to assess the usability, accuracy, and completeness of the guide, to ensure that our team could easily develop and offer the most accessible instruction possible. Feedback will be presented from several sources: test users applying the guide to sample instruction products, our institution’s Accessibility Council, and surveys of our team as well as outside health sciences library professionals.
DISCUSSION
While accessibility remains a guiding principle, it comes with real world constraints such as institutional, technological, or contextual challenges. Our guide offers practical strategies for enhancing the planning and delivery of asynchronous and synchronous sessions. The guide will officially launch in January 2026, followed by broad sharing across health sciences libraries and an anonymous usage poll in summer 2026. A regular review schedule will help keep the guide relevant, inclusive, and responsive to evolving needs.