Posts by: Kathryn Houk
That’s right- your favorite Tufts library is now on Instagram! We want to see how you study (or not) at the library, and want to hear from you what you’d like to see on our account.
Follow us at tuftshhsl, and be sure to tag your photos with:
- @tuftshhsl
- #hhslstudybreak or
- #stuckinhhsl
What do you think? What kinds of photos would you like to see from the library? Any great ideas on how we can encourage you to interact with our new account? Let us know via email or in the comments!
The Hirsh Library will soon be subscribing to Natural Standard – the leading evidence-based resource on alternative and complementary medicine.
You can find information like:
- Professional and Bottom-Line monographs on thousands of CAM therapies
- Evidence-graded lists of CAM therapies for diseases and conditions
- Drug interaction and symptom checkers
- Calculators and patient handouts
In an effort to gain more insight into how HHSL spends its time, we have begun taking statistics on all of our patron interactions.
Don’t worry! We don’t record any information that would make an individual identifiable; however, we do need to know what your status is and which school or center you are a part of. When we ask who you are after having an interaction with you, it is merely for our recording purposes. (And if we forget to ask these questions, if you voluntarily tell us we would be delighted!)
So what kinds of patterns are we looking for when collecting this data? We are looking at statistics such as:
- which groups use the library most frequently,
- what types of questions we get,
- how long it takes to answer questions,
- when we seem to be the busiest throughout the week and day, and
- how many interactions we have with our patrons in a given amount of time
RefWorks: An Introduction
Thurs, January 30th, Noon – 1:00pm
Sackler 510
Want to streamline your research with your writing? Interested in tools to help manage your citations and bibliographies? This one-hour session will introduce you to RefWorks, an online citation management program. RefWorks allows you to create a personal database of references and generate bibliographies in a variety of formats.
This workshop will cover the basic functions of RefWorks, including:
- how to set up an account
- importing citations from research databases, such as PubMed and Google Scholar
- formatting bibliographies in styles, such as APA and JAMA
This session is for absolute beginners – no previous experience is required! But if you are already a RefWorks user, this session will be a great refresher for you!
Space is limited, so please REGISTER HERE by January 29th.
** HHSL Open Workshops are open to ANY Tufts community member. We welcome students, faculty, staff, clinicians and members of our affiliate hospitals. If you are allowed in the Sackler building, you are welcome at a workshop!The library fondly remembers Dr. Richard Blacher, a generous advocate of the library who had a great interest in his field and treated all with kindness and humor. He passed away peacefully at Tufts Medical Center last night, January 16th 2014.
Dr. Blacher practiced psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center and in Waban, Mass. for over 65 years. After graduating from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1948 he did his residency in Psychiatry at NYU and Mount Sinai Schools of Medicine. During his illustrious career at Tufts, “Dick” became nationally known for his contributions in the psychiatric care and counseling of patients with cardiac disorders. He was an integral part of Tuft’s heart transplant program, and the hospital and his colleagues will dearly miss him.
You may have recently heard about a new feature related to PubMed called PubMed Commons. The Commons was imagined as a place for researchers to provide thoughtful comments or commentary on published items found in PubMed. From NCBI:
“… this service is an initiative of the NIH leadership in response to repeated requests by the scientific community for such a forum to be part of PubMed. We hope that PubMed Commons will leverage the social power of the internet to encourage constructive criticism and high quality discussions of scientific issues that will both enhance understanding and provide new avenues of collaboration within the community.”
Who is eligible?
- Those who have a published abstract, article, review, letter, editorial, etc. indexed in PubMed
How can I participate?
- Sign up for a MyNCBI account if you don’t already have one
- Get an invite:
- Check to see if your email is already in the database of eligible participants by going here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedcommons/join/
- OR ask a colleague already active in the Commons to send you an invite
- OR send your first and last name and .edu email address to a librarian, and it will be submitted as a list for NCBI to register (then use the link above)
- After signing up, log in to your NCBI account before you begin browsing/searching PubMed
- You will then see a link on every abstract view that allows you to add a comment to that record
Some guidelines:
- You cannot comment anonymously
- Comments are monitored by the community and can be flagged/reported as inappropriate
- More Guidelines can be found here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedcommons/help/guidelines/
Do you have a new year’s resolution to better understand how the library and its resources can help improve your research? You should! Join us at the Hirsh Library for our Information Mastery series January 6-10th to learn about just a few things the library has to offer! Wish you could master the art of PubMed? Wondering about some of the other resources the library has access to for building your collection of resources or exploring bioinformatics topics? Is a poster or abstract submission in your future?
Register HERE to attend one or all of the workshops and start the new year with new skills to make you a better, more efficient researcher!
Hirsh has revamped their learning guides and put them in a new system. Need help finding databases to search, looking for tips on how to find reserve items, or need the PBL Toolbelts? We’ve got all this and more in the Hirsh Health Sciences Library Research Guides.
On the main page, you will see that guides created based on academic subjects are arranged in collapsible menus based on category. Expand the category of interest to see all the individual guides.
The “Other” tab contains guides related to general library resources, services and miscellaneous tutorials. It will be a great resource, so be sure to check them out as you visit to see the new guides as they are added!
All of the guides in the new system have similar coloring and layout, so you can easily identify if you are in a HHSL Research Guide. We’ve even already migrated over the PBL Toolbelts.
What do you think? Let us know at the desk, or by dropping us an email or phone call. Is there any topic you’d like covered in a guide?
No, it’s not a spiffy button that you wear, it’s a neat bookmarlet that allows for the collection of information about paywalls standing in the way of research. The button was dreamed up by Medsin-UK and the Right to Research Coalition (Washington DC), as a way to gather information about how frequently and where researchers are running into paywalls, as well as to try and provide the user with an open access version of the blocked content. From the “About” page for the project:
Every day people around the world such as doctors, scientists, students and patients are denied access to the research they need. With the power of the internet, the results of academic research should be available to all. It’s time to showcase the impact of paywalls and help people get the research they need. That’s where Open Access Button comes in.
The Open Access Button is a browser plugin that allows people to report when they hit a paywall and cannot access a research article. Head to openaccessbutton.org to sign up for your very own Button and start using it.
Vision for the Button:
“A fair and just world in which access to research is a reality for all”
Mission of the Button:
A tool for advocates detailing quantitative and qualitative information about the lack of access to scientific literature
A tool for the public and professionals to more easily access scientific literature within the current system
- Creation of a platform for further innovation.
Sign up for your very own button HERE and be a part of the Open Access movement.
In honor of Thanksgiving, we have set out to describe the ‘evidence’ behind the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Enjoy…
Cranberry Sauce
Cranberries for preventing urinary tract infections.
Jepson RG, Williams G, Craig JC.
Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews. 2012 Oct 17
Findings: “…cranberry juice cannot currently be recommended for the prevention of UTIs”
Bottom line: Well, cranberries are still pretty tasty.
Stuffing and Mashed Potatoes
Low-carbohydrate diets and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies.
Noto H, Goto A, Tsujimoto T, Noda M.
PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e55030. Epub 2013 Jan 25.
Findings: “Low-carbohydrate diets were associated with a significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality and they were not significantly associated with a risk of CVD mortality and incidence.”
Bottom line: Eat the stuffing.
Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potato for type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Ooi CP, Loke SC.
Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews. 2012 Feb 15
Findings: “There is insufficient evidence to recommend sweet potato [as a therapy] for type 2 diabetes mellitus.”
Bottom line: Sweet potatoes are still very good for you if you have type 2 diabetes (but leave the marshmallows off the top, capesh!).
and, of course…
Turkey
Does Turkey Make you Sleepy?
Ballantyne, C.
Scientific American. November 21, 2007
Findings: Goble, goble, zzzzzzzzzzz…..
Bottom line: Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Contributed by Research & Instruction Librarian, Amy LaVertu.
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