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.
Here’s a bit of mid-week fun! Last week, we thought we’d check in with Hirsh’s resident dinobrarian to see how she’s doing working from home. In case you missed it, here is the full chronicle of #dinodayinthelife:
We’re sad that Hirsh’s Dinobrarian won’t be handing out candy in the stacks this year, but we thought it’d be fun to check in throughout the week and see what working from home is like for our favorite T. Rex. #dinodayinthelife #dinobrarian pic.twitter.com/AeLMQE9dxZ
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 26, 2020
Monday
Starting the day in the dino way by logging in with a fresh cup of coffee–in a dinosaur mug, of course! #dinodayinthelife #dinobrarian pic.twitter.com/W03IaBcHoP
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 26, 2020
It’s an afternoon of REVISING for Dinobrarian as she alternates between giving feedback to students’ revision assignments and working on revisions of her own on a paper she’s authoring with 6 other librarians across multiple institutions #dinodayinthelife #dinobrarian pic.twitter.com/3QIBOKQWRP
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 26, 2020
Tuesday
Happy Tuesday! Dinobrarian’s spouse has a meeting this morning and is also working from home from their studio apartment, so she threw some jams onto her headphones to go with her PubMed searching. #dinodayinthelife #dinobrarian pic.twitter.com/XcPKdZzt1g
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 27, 2020
#Dinobrarian is a member of the Tufts Libraries Discovery Platform Team, which met this afternoon. This team helps make sure JumboSearch works as best as it can for you Look at all the amazing librarians she works with across Tufts! @TischLibrary @dcatufts & LTS #dinodayinthelife pic.twitter.com/dh9KoGP0qw
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 27, 2020
The WFH day is wrapping up so Dinobrarian is getting ready for her restorative yoga class on Zoom, which means gathering lots of blankets and pillows together! Restorative yoga helps her keep the vibe of the weekend in the middle of the WFH week. #dinodayinthelife #dinobrarian pic.twitter.com/1WuZIUOYCB
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 27, 2020
Wednesday
Dinobrarian spent her morning grading and working on an EndNote Library. Interested in EndNote? Check out our guide on using it: https://t.co/4IJCLtbSdJ. #dinodayinthelife #dinobrarian pic.twitter.com/qbL7Pslbfi
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 28, 2020
This afternoon, #Dinobrarian attended the #ADEAdiversityworkshop on health equity for the #LGBTQIA+ community and fan-girled out over seeing Dominique Jackson from Pose talk about dentistry! #dinodayinthelife pic.twitter.com/DYctpwatUi
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 28, 2020
Thursday
#Dinobrarian spent her morning answering a question on how to bring antiracism into writing a health sciences thesis. See our Anti-Racism Resource Guide for the Health Sciences here: https://t.co/V9A1LB9Q38 #dinodayinthelife pic.twitter.com/Hd3MFij8if
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 29, 2020
Friday
#Dinobrarian is excited to be the librarian on call 2 to 3:30 today! Use the Ask Us feature on our website https://t.co/qojEa09X1B to get assistance from an on call staff member during any online staffed hours: https://t.co/WuQlteR8BZ #dinodayinthelife pic.twitter.com/eIVSu4DFsc
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 30, 2020
To wrap up the WFH week, #Dinobrarian is spending the last bit of the afternoon getting hyped for Halloween with some spooky music and a pile of her favorite candy bar- Sky Bar! We hope you enjoyed following along this week with our #dinodayinthelife chronicle. pic.twitter.com/nsxu9WlMyc
— Hirsh Library (@TuftsHHSL) October 30, 2020
Attention first-year medical students! With anatomy starting this month, take advantage of the virtual anatomy tools available through the library. Through the HHSL website you can access the virtual models in our collection. This post highlights two of our most popular resources. If you have questions for library staff about anatomy resources, sign up for Virtual Anatomy Tools Office Hours, occurring from 12pm-1pm on November 10.

Anterior Triangle, Hyoid Muscles and the Hypoglossal Nerve 6) Sternohyoid Muscle © Scholar Educational Systems, Inc 2001-2019. Used under Tufts – Hirsh Health Sciences Library License. Accessed 2 Jan 2019.
Net Anatomy (everything you want; nothing you don’t!) contains a catalog of dissection images with labels and descriptions. The Test feature hides labels—a handy tool for doing self-assessments as you study.

Dissection: ankle and foot superficial dissection © Informa UK Limited 2019. Used under Tufts – Hirsh Health Sciences Library License. Accessed 2 Jan 2019.
Anatomy.TV by Primal Pictures is another database of images, comprised of 3D, interactive models. It has a few more bells and whistles to explore than what’s in Net Anatomy.
Investigate a more extensive list of Hirsh’s anatomy resources from our Anatomy Research Guide.
Post contributed by Christina Heinrich.
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