UK Libraries congratulates Markey Cancer Center for NCI designation

Last week I had the privilege of attending the announcement that UK’s Markey Cancer Center achieved designation as a National Cancer Center.  There are only a handful of such institutions in the nation, and Markey is the only one in Kentucky.  This is an impressive achievement years in the making, and it is a powerful symbol of the university’s commitment to making the lives of the citizens of our commonwealth better. 

It is also an achievement of which all of us at UK and in UK Libraries can be rightly proud.  The Medical Center Library (MCL) not only ensured access to essential scholarly and informational resources during the review process, but it has additionally provided Medical Center Library faculty expertise in support of MCC’s education, research, and patient care mission.

Medical Center Library faculty member, Frank Davis, is the MCL’s liaison to MCC and provides many essential services:

• Serves as a member of the Markey Web and Newsletter Planning Group where he attends monthly meetings, provides support for issues related to web design, and assists with newsletter content.
• Maintains a regular current awareness service and EndNote library for MCC administration, including regular updates of publications by MCC authors.
• Provides on-demand research on issues related to grants, including animal welfare database searches, and patient care. The liaison may help with document delivery issues, and evaluate and suggest the best journals for publication submission.

In addition, the portion of the UK Libraries William T. Young Endowment dedicated to the Lucille P. Markey Cancer Center enhances translational medicine and science efforts, pushing advances more quickly from the laboratory into the patient care setting, by selecting and making available the highest quality oncology-related resources so critical in support of the research and patient care initiatives.  This past year the Young Endowment provided roughly $100,000 in direct support of the Markey Cancer Center.

The endowment provides access to scholarly journals needed for research and patient care.  Below are a few core titles reflecting the breadth of the collection:

• Breast Cancer Research and Treatment
• Investigational New Drugs
• Anticancer Research
• American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) suite of journals
• Journal of the National Cancer Institute
• Mutation Research
• Seminars in Oncology
• Cancer Investigation

 We are proud to contribute to the overall success of the Markey Cancer Center by ensuring that UK clinicians, researchers, and faculty have access to the scholarly and technical resources needed to be a world-class cancer research center.