Posts by: Katherine Morley
Registration is now open for the fourth meeting of Hirsh’s Anti-Racist Reading Group. This next session will occur on Friday, May 21st from 12pm to 1pm EST. We are excited to announce the reading for our fourth session, an academic article about Asian American health data.
Discussion questions about the reading are forthcoming and will be posted in the document with the link to the reading a week in advance. Community guidelines will remain the same as the last sessions’ guidelines. However, as always, please feel free to reach out if you would like to add other guidelines!
Please follow this link to register for the event.
In past sessions, students, staff, and faculty from across the Boston campus have attended. The discussion has benefited from the sharing of perspectives from across disciplines and roles to understand and address racism in the health sciences. If you’re thinking about joining us—even for the first time—we welcome everyone within the Tufts community to join regardless of field or title!
We hope you’re able to join and look forward to the discussion!
Post contributed by Andrea Kang, Amanda Nevius, and Christina Heinrich
[Content Warning: race-based violence against BIPOC, particularly Asian communities]
May marks the start of Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month in the United States. While celebrating milestones and accomplishments of Asian communities is important, so is reflecting on the racialized violence that Asian communities have experienced in the past year and beyond. In order to aid in learning about how racialized violence against Asians has existed in the fabric of the United States, as well as how that impacts health disparities in Asian communities, we have created a new landing page in our Anti-Racism Resources Guide. This rotating landing page focusing on Asian communities also hopes to help highlight parallels between the sufferings of other marginalized communities in the United States in order to recognize the fact that all those who are minoritized are being harmed under the same systems of oppression of white supremacy.
On Tuesday, March 16, 2021, 8 people were murdered in Atlanta, GA at two separate Asian spa locations. 6 of the 8 who were killed identified as Asian and all but one were women. While not all who were killed identified as Asian, many have voiced that these murders happened because a white man targeted Asian women specifically to eliminate his sexual temptations. (More reporting can be found online at the New York Times through this link).
These murders, however, are not the only violent acts that have been perpetrated in Asian communities. As the organization Stop AAPI Hate reports, out of the reported incidents alone, there have been 3,292 incidents in 2020 and 503 incidents that have occurred thus far in 2021 (for the National Report from Stop AAPI Hate and more, visit their website). This violence towards Asians have ranged from spitting, verbal abuse, death, and more. From the stabbing of a 36-year-old man in New York City’s Chinatown, to elder Xie Xiaozhen being punched in the face by a white man in San Francisco, to the murder of elder Vichar Ratanapakdee also in San Francisco, to children as young as 2 and 6 years old being stabbed at a Sam’s Club in Texas, many reports have gone viral. Furthermore, while these attacks have mostly occurred in East Asian and Southeast Asian communities, for decades, the Middle Eastern and South Asian communities have been targeted due to the 9/11 tragedy. Most recently, the Sikh community was attacked in Indianapolis where 4 of 8 victims identified as Sikh. Many more Asians have suffered attacks without their stories being reported or cared about in mainstream media, at their schools, and at their workplaces.
These incidents of hate and violence are not happening in a vacuum. The goal of the resources shared on our new landing page is to provide context for the racialized violence against Asians in the United States, explore its impact on the health sciences, and aid in unlearning these harmful practices.
As always, if you have suggestions on additions to the resource guide, please feel free to fill out the survey linked here.
Post contributed by Andrea Kang, Amanda Nevius, and Christina Heinrich
All of us here at Hirsh Library would like to give a warm welcome to new students starting this month! We’re delighted have met some of you already and are looking forward to meeting those we haven’t yet! While you might not see us physically in the library, we want to assure you that we are here to help virtually during online staffed hours. Please don’t hesitate to reach out via chat, email, or text if you have any questions.
Hope your semester is off to a good start!
Panicking about your personal statement? Feeling threatened by your thesis? Never fear, Writing Consultants appointments resume later this month!
Registration is now available for 45-minute long appointments, conducted over Zoom. This semester, appointments will be held on Tuesday and Thursdays from 10am-2pm, and Sundays from 1pm-5pm.
Spots go fast, so sign up now! Never met with a writing consultant before? Visit our Writing Consultants Guide for more information about what she can help with and how to prepare.
Image by Rachel Burkum from Pixabay
The end of the semester is finally within sight! Hirsh Library will be operating with modified hours from Saturday, December 19th through Sunday, January 3rd.
The full schedule is as follows:
Saturday, December 19th-Sunday, December 20th: Closed
Monday, December 21st-Wednesday, December 23rd: 7:45am-5pm
Thursday, December 24th-Sunday January 3rd: Closed for Tufts Winter Break
We will reopen for regular hours at 7:45am on Monday, January 4th.
Best wishes for a happy and very healthy new year from all of us here at Hirsh!
Hanukkah starts this evening at sundown and ends next Friday, December 18th. Also known as the “festival of lights,” Hanukkah commemorates the re-dedication of the holy temple in Jerusalem following the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century B.C.E., when one night’s worth of oil miraculously lasted for eight nights. Here’s a brief rundown of the story and traditions if you want to know more!
Foods fried in oil are a staple of Hanukkah celebrations (latkes, anyone?), but since we’re a health sciences library, we thought we’d share some ideas we’ve found for healthier Hanukkah foods:
Healthy Takes on Traditional Hanukkah Recipes from Chowhound
6 Easy Ways to Make Your Hanukkah Meal a Healthy Feast from Real Simple
18 Vegan Hanukkah Recipes from One Green Planet
Apricot Gelt from Martha Stewart
However, because it is a holiday, we can’t resist sharing the only sufganiyot (jelly doughnut) recipe you’ll ever need.
Wishing you a Happy and Healthy(-ish) Hanukkah from the Hirsh Health Sciences Library!
Getting ready for the National Board Dental Exam (NBDE) or the Integrated National Board Dental Exam (INBDE)? We have supplementary study aids available for you to use for free, whether you are able to come to the library in person or not.
Electronic Resources
For those studying remotely, check out Board Vitals. It features question banks for both the NBDE and INBDE that you can use to mimic taking an exam online, and it gives you reports on your performance, including things like the average amount of time spent per question. You also can look at the Board Guide provided by the ADA for each exam. We also have the book First Aid for the NBDE Part 1 available electronically.
Hard Copies
For those with the ability to come to the library physically, we have more supplementary study aids. Please be aware that these remaining resources were created for the NBDE. Some of our study aid books include Kaplan DentEssentials, Dentin, and Mosby’s. See the full list and details on how to find and check them out for Part 1 and Part 2 by following their respective links.
We also have the Dental Decks flashcards for NBDE Part 1 and Part 2. These cannot be checked out and must be used within the library. See full details.
We hope you will find these supplementary study aids useful! We have oriented your SLAC representatives to these aids, so you may reach out to them for more details. We are also always happy to hear suggestions or requests from you. Please feel free to reach out to the library’s Dental liaison, Amanda Nevius, amanda.nevius@tufts.edu with any questions or suggestions.
Post contributed by Amanda Nevius
Thanksgiving break is almost here, which means a chance to relax and recharge! Due to the holiday, we will be having altered online staffed hours next week.
Monday 11/23: 7:45am-8:00pm (regular hours)
Tuesday 11/24: 7:45am-8:00pm (regular hours)
Wednesday 11/25: 7:45am-5pm
Thursday 11/26 – Sunday 11/30: Closed
All of us here at Hirsh hope you have a happy, healthy, and above all relaxing break, and we will be back online to assist you when we return to normal hours on Monday, November 30th !
In late June, the Tufts Libraries Council (TLC) published a Statement of Solidarity and Commitment in support of community protests against police brutality and systemic racism. TLC pledged to discuss and commit to a set of actions demonstrating Tufts Libraries’ commitment to antiracist values. In late October, TLC published a follow-up statement to share actions that have been taken across all the Tufts Libraries to reframe elements of our everyday work with an anti-racist lens and contribute to building an anti-racist community.
We wanted to highlight some of the Hirsh-specific actions here:
- We have created an Anti-Racism Resource Guide which includes:
- Information about the BLM movement
- Resources documenting and addressing racial discrimination in health/medical professions
- Mental health and community resources for those who identify as BIPOC
- Educational material for co-conspirators
- Library staff have formed an Anti-Racism reading group, which held their first discussion in October. We asked them to share a summary of their first session:
In response to suggestions from the Anti-Racism Resources Guide Tea in the summer, Hirsh Library hosted its first ever Anti-Racism Reading Group discussion in October. The goal of this first session was to foster an interdisciplinary space for people across the Tufts community to acknowledge the problem and understand the impact of anti-Black racism in the health sciences. The readings were selected by Hirsh librarians in the fields of biomedical science, dentistry, library science, medicine, nutrition, and public health. If you missed the discussion but want to take a glance at the readings, the reading list is still posted online. The discussion was rooted in the following questions:
- What was the most impactful thing that you learned from the reading and why was it impactful to you?
- Based on your reflections, what are ways in which you as an individual or your profession as a whole can work to address some of the impacts of anti-Black racism in your field?
The 35 registrants for the event included students, staff, and faculty in public health, dentistry, librarianship, nutrition and medicine. The greatest share of attendees were affiliated with the dental school, with the second-largest from Tufts Medical Center.
We were so excited to see people from many different disciplines and positions across Tufts come together to form this space. We hope to hold another reading group discussion sometime in the Spring 2021 semester so keep your eyes peeled for more announcements in the future!
- We are looking into providing a dermatology database that includes images of a range of skin colors, something previously lacking in dermatology textbooks. Our collection does currently contain a number of dermatology books that consider the range of human skin colors. Here is a short selection of titles available online:
- Clinical Cases in Skin of Color : Adnexal, Inflammation, Infections, and Pigmentary Disorders
- Clinical Cases in Skin of Color: Medical, Oncological and Hair Disorders, and Cosmetic Dermatology
- Dermatoanthropology of Ethnic Skin and Hair
- Pediatric Skin of Color
- Skin of Color : A Practical Guide to Dermatologic Diagnosis and Treatment
- Taylor and Kelly’s Dermatology for Skin of Color
- Treatments for Skin of Color
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
In observance of Veterans Day, we will be having shortened online staffed hours on Wednesday 11/11. You can email, chat, or text us with any research, reference, or resource questions between 12pm and 8pm and we will have someone online available to assist you.
Follow us @TuftsHHSL!
Load More...Registration is now open for our next Anti-Racism Reading Group meeting on Friday, May 21st! | What's New @ HHSL https://bit.ly/3ezELT7
Anti-Racism Resources Guide Update: Racialized Violence against Asians | What's New @ HHSL https://bit.ly/3h1Ys7W
Anti-Racism Resources Guide Update: Racialized Violence against Asians | What's New @ HHSL https://bit.ly/3h1Ys7W
Long Thread:
Miracle isn’t a word we use often in medicine
But tonight I was able to join a Zoom w/ other doctors and nurses to talk with one of the sickest COVID patients that we cared for in the ICU throughout the 2020 surge in April/May
He was ventilated on ECMO for weeksFollow Us!
