NIH Public Access Policy: My NCBI Tool to Replace eRA Commons for Bibliography Management

As of July 23, 2010, program directors and principal investigators (PD/PIs) will not be able to enter citations manually into eRA Commons and must use My NCBI’s “My Bibliography” tool to manage their professional bibliographies.

In the interest of easing investigators’ bibliography management, improving data quality, and ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy, eRA Commons has partnered with the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) to link NCBI’s personal online tool, “My NCBI,” to Commons. My NCBI offers an online portal—“My Bibliography”—for users to maintain and manage a list of all types of their authored works, such as articles, presentations and books.

For more information, contact the HSLS reference desk, your Liaison Librarian, or e-mail Ask A Librarian.

Parts of this article were reprinted from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) press release.

~ Jill Foust

The National Library of Medicine’s Social Media Tools

NLMYou’d expect the largest medical library in the world to be on Facebook. And so they are.

If you are one of the National Library of Medicine’s 1,443 admirers and visited its page during the first week of May, you could have listened to Director Donald A.B. Lindberg’s podcast about progress on electronic health records or learned about a recent Friends of the NLM conference, The ePatient: Digital and Genomic Technologies for Personalized Health Care. Soon after the page debuted in February, you could have learned about NLM’s Haiti Earthquake People Locator.

And you’d know that NLM’s favorite pages include that of its own National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), plus those of NIH and CDC.

NLM has been expanding its social media presence. You can now choose among 9 Twitter and 7 RSS feeds, in addition to the aforementioned Director’s Comments podcast. First, Twitter:

  • Some feeds are more active than others. Recent oil spill, earthquake, and H1N1 headlines have given @NLM_SIS (Specialized Information Services in toxicology, environmental health, and disaster information) plenty to tweet about. For a steady stream of consumer health news, follow @medlineplus4you.
  • @NCBI just started in March, will keep users informed about new features in NCBI’s literature, molecular biology, and genetics resources, along with news and newly published research. Sample tweet topics: GenBank Release 177.0 and Roadmap Epigenomics data.
  • Feeds such as @NLMGlobalHealth, @nlm_harrypotter and are linked to specific NLM exhibitions (which, by the way, have their own Facebook pages).

In the RSS list:

Don’t forget that you can create an RSS feed from any PubMed search.

NLM_tech

And if @nlm_harrypotter doesn’t satisfy your craving for the supernatural, try Google Reader’s Sort by magic setting.

~ Patricia Weiss

Book Citations Added to PubMed

In April 2010, PubMed expanded its content to include citations for selected full-text e-books from the NCBI Bookshelf. The first books to be added were GeneReviews and Essentials of Glycobiology. A citation is included for each chapter or section of the book.

An example of a display including a book chapter is below.

PubMed_Bk3a

The Abstract display for these book chapters includes an icon link, an excerpt if available, as well as links that go to specific sections within the book text.

PubMed_Bk2a

Records for books and book chapters do not include MeSH terms. Because of this, searches that limit with MeSH terms, such as Humans, Review, and Child, will not retrieve book records. Use keyword searching to retrieve citations for book chapters.

Parts of this article were reprinted from the NLM Technical Bulletin.

~ Nancy Tannery

New E-Books Available

HSLS has purchased 15 new e-books from the R2 Digital Library. R2 aggregates health sciences book content from leading medical and healthcare publishers in a single platform. HSLS now provides full-text access to more than 40 e-books from R2.

Four of the new titles provide subject coverage in new areas among our available e-books. These are:

Titles that may be of interest to faculty, staff, and students engaged in research:

For medical students and clinicians interested in case studies:

Additional titles purchased include:

All of the new titles can be accessed from PITTCat, the R2 Web site, or the HSLS e-books subject list. You can also search the full text using HSLS e-book search.

~ Jeffrey Husted

Director's Reflections…MLA and News from Capitol Hill

Barbara EpsteinI recently returned from the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in Washington, DC.  This is a grand gathering of more than 2,000 health sciences librarians from large and small settings across the United States and beyond.  I attended my first MLA meeting in Cleveland in 1975, and I’ve missed only two meetings since then.  It’s an opportunity to “re-charge my professional batteries,” learn about emerging trends and technology, connect with colleagues, and see what’s going on in comparable library settings.  While I used to lug home notebooks full of ideas for new projects, now my to-do list is electronic.

I was very proud of the many HSLS librarians (listed elsewhere in this issue) who presented papers and posters, and participated in panel presentations and committee meetings.  Our informatics trainee, Katrina Kurtz, won the award for best student presentation!

As a member of the Joint Legislative Task Force of MLA and AAHSL (Association of Academic Health Sciences Librarians), I spent an afternoon on Capitol Hill advocating for support of the National Library of Medicine and NIH.  Among others, I visited the offices of Allyson Schwartz (D-PA-13), who is co-chair of the Congressional Academic Medicine Caucus, and our own Representative Mike Doyle (D-PA-14).

I am especially pleased that Representative Doyle recently introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (H.R. 5037).  Similar to the NIH Public Access Policy, this bill, known as FRPAA, would require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.  This bill was also introduced in the Senate as S.1373.  While FRPAA has a long way to go before it becomes law, it is certainly a positive step toward promoting openness, transparency, and accessibility of publicly funded research results.

HSLS Participation at the Medical Library Association’s Annual Meeting

MLA-10HSLS Librarians were active participants in the Medical Library Association’s Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C. from May 21-26, 2010.

Contributed Papers

Carrie Iwema, information specialist in Molecular Biology, presented “Beyond PubMed: Next Generation Literature Searching” and “Can’t We All Get Along?: The Highs and Lows of Librarian/IT Collaborations.” Co-author was Fran Yarger, assistant director for Computing Services.

Michele Klein Fedyshin, reference librarian, presented “The Reformation of Librarianship into Information Practice.”

Katrina Kurtz, informatics trainee, “Going against Goliath: Knowledge Discovery Using a Library-Developed Specialized Search Tool Versus General Web Search Engines.” Co-authors were Ansuman Chattopadhyay, head of Molecular Biology Information Service and Carrie Iwema, information specialist in Molecular Biology. This paper won the New Voices Paper Award for best student presentation.

Ester Saghafi, reference librarian, presented “The Development of an Online Curriculum in Health Sciences Librarianship.” Co-authors were Barbara Epstein, director, and Nancy Tannery, associate director for User Services.

Nancy Tannery, associate director for User Services, presented “Impact and User Satisfaction of a Clinical Information Portal Embedded in an Electronic Medical Record.” Co-authors were Barbara Epstein, director, Mary Lou Klem, reference librarian, John LaDue, knowledge integration librarian, Charlie Wessel, head of Hospital Services, and Fran Yarger, assistant director for Computing Services.


Poster Presentations

Jill Foust, reference librarian, “Combining Usability Tools for Better Web Site Design: Card Sort and Survey.” Co-authors were Gretchen Maxeiner, cataloging librarian, and Fran Yarger, assistant director for Computing Services.

Carrie Iwema, information specialist in Molecular Biology, “Enabling e-Science: Helping Researchers Locate Bioinformatics Resources.” Co-authors were Ansuman Chattopadhyay, head of Molecular Biology Information Service and Katrina Kurtz, informatics trainee.

Presentations and posters of HSLS participants are available on the HSLS Presentations Web page.

Conference Activities

Ansuman Chattopadhyay, head of Molecular Biology Information Service, participated as bioinformatics panelist in a symposium “The Informationist in Practice.”

Barbara Epstein, HSLS director, conducted a workshop “Building a High-Performance Staff” for new directors of academic health sciences libraries.

Michele Klein Fedyshin, reference librarian, was awarded the Hospital Libraries Section’s Professional Development Award.

Carrie Iwema, information specialist in Molecular Biology, chaired a meeting for the Molecular Biology & Genomics Special Interest Group.

Melissa Ratajeski, reference librarian, moderated a panel on “The Librarian’s Role in the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee: Learn the Laws and Get Involved.”

~ Jill Foust

NLM Associate MaShana Davis Visits HSLS

IMG_0860_cropped2During the week of April 26, 2010, HSLS hosted MaShana Davis, a first year National Library of Medicine (NLM) Associate Fellow. The Associate Fellow program “is designed to provide a broad foundation in health sciences information services, and to prepare librarians for future leadership roles in health sciences libraries and in health services research.”

During her visit, Davis met with various library faculty, attended clinical rounds in the hospital, learned about the role of HSLS in UPMC’s eRecord initiative, and met with the Chief of Library Services at VA Pittsburgh Healthcare Services.  She also gave a presentation to library faculty about her projects at NLM.

Davis earned her Master of Information Management degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2007, and received a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. She previously held a position as the Technical Communications Liaison for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Statistics and Measurement Program. In that capacity, she facilitated communication for participants and other interested parties about the effective uses of assessment tools administered by the Statistics and Measurement Program. She served as the front line of communications for the LibQUAL+®, ClimateQUAL™, and MINES for Libraries projects, and provided training and user education in the technical uses of the project’s Web-based surveys.

~ Nancy Tannery

New Thieme E-Books

The Thieme E-Book Library provides students, researchers, and clinicians with access to an online collection of lavishly illustrated full-color textbooks from Thieme’s renowned Color Atlases and Flexibook series.

Thieme recently added 5 new e-books to their ElectronicBook Library:

  • A Guide to the Primary Care of Neurological Disorders, 2nd ed.
  • Color Atlas of Ophthalmology, 2nd ed.
  • Ear, Nose, and ThroatDiseases, 3rd ed.
  • Neuro-Ophthalmology Illustrated
  • The Retina in Systemic Disease

All of the Thieme titles can be accessed individually from PITTCat, HSLS e-books subject list, or directly through the Thieme E-Book Library. You can also search the full text using HSLS e-book search.

Parts of this article were reprinted from the Thieme Web site.

~ Jill Foust

Rare Dentistry Books on Display

downsized_0518001401HSLS has a large number of rare books about dental health and oral surgery. The books described below, along with other rare gems, are currently on display in the Falk Library lobby and Rare Books Room.

Truman W. Brophy’s influential volume Oral Surgery: A Treatise on the Diseases, Injuries and Malformations of the Mouth and Associated Parts was first published in 1915. The textbook contains a survey of contemporary knowledge about oral surgery, with 909 illustrations and 39 color plates. The author was a pioneer in dentistry who established the Chicago Dental College in 1883 and served on the faculty and as dean for 40 years. Brophy acquired an international reputation for performing oral cleft surgery.

Another uniquely illustrated book on display is a brief exposé by Hermann Prinz, Professor Materia Medica at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the American Dental Association. The Story of the Dentifrice, published in 1938, explores the history of dentistry from its known beginnings in ancient Egypt.  Prinz’s work includes fascinating details such as recipes for dental care in early Greco-Roman times.

downsized_0518001402The wonderful and tiny 1843 and 1844 volumes of Dr. Hitchcock’s Teeth Almanac are miniature almanacs. These are normally housed in the Rare Books Room, though at 2 x 3.5 inches, they may easily be overlooked among the surrounding books. Take note of our smallest treasures as well as the rest of the rare dental medicine books in the exhibit.

~ Sarah LaMoy and Gosia Fort

Systematic Review Workshop: The Nuts and Bolts for Librarians

IMG_0846On April 19-21, 2010, HSLS offered another session of its popular Systematic Review Workshop: The Nuts and Bolts for Librarians. The focus of this intensive 2.5 day workshop is on literature search techniques for completing a successful systematic review.  The first day examined why systematic reviews are done and how they contribute to the evidence base;  publication bias and how a well-done literature search can overcome it; and, the librarian as collaborator and key player in the development of the systematic review’s literature search methodology. Day two examined which databases and grey literature resources to search as well as how to harvest literature search vocabulary. The last day looked at handsearching, project management and search delivery, and PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines.

This is the second time the course was offered.  Course evaluations have been very positive and include the following accolades:

“While I’ve done systematic reviews this course was invaluable in terms of new resources and validating past experience. It’s one of the most worthwhile workshops I’ve attended in a long time.”

“It’s rare that I attend a CE that I get excited about-but this is one of them! Great information. I learned new things and validated things I’m already doing. The instructors are great hosts and I’ve really enjoyed my time in Pittsburgh!”

April 2010 workshop participants came from as far away as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and San Francisco, California.  Participants also included librarians from the University of Miami, University of Pennsylvania, University of Alberta, East Carolina University, Indiana University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Georgetown University, Kent State University, Midwestern University, Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, UCSF Medical Center at Mt. Zion, Christiana Care Health System–Delaware, the Children’s National Medical Center, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the Technology Evaluation Center–Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association in Washington, D.C.

HSLS faculty librarian instructors were Linda Hartman, Mary Lou Klem, Melissa Ratajeski, Ahlam Saleh, and Charles Wessel.

IMG_0854HSLS will offer this course again in July 2010 for librarians and informaticians from the National Institutes of Health and other Department of Health and Human Services facilities.  Another session is planned for November 2010.

For more information about this course, see “Supporting the Evidence: HSLS Systematic Review Workshop for Librarians” in the December 2009 issue of the HSLS Update.

~ Charlie Wessel

Happy Birthday to PubMed Central!

PubMed_CentralPubMed Central (PMC) was launched in 2000, with a mandate to serve as a free digital archive for life sciences and biomedical literature. In the beginning, it contained just two journals, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and Molecular Biology of the Cell.  A number of BioMed Central journal titles, Nucleic Acids Research, The Plant Cell, and Plant Physiology quickly followed.

Today there are more than 600 full-deposit journals as well as collections of articles arising from NIH-funded research, author manuscripts, books and other documents in the PMC archive. The number of PMC users has also increased; on a typical weekday, about 420,000 users access 740,000 articles. A decade after its creation, PMC houses some two million articles. Of these, about 4,200 are by University of Pittsburgh or UPMC authors.

Parts of this article were reprinted from the NLM Technical Bulletin.

~ Nancy Tannery

HSLS Schedule of Classes July-August 2010

HSLS offers classes on database searching, software applications such as Adobe Photoshop, bibliographic management, molecular biology and genetics, and library orientations. For more information, visit the online course descriptions.

Classes are held on the first floor of Falk Library (200 Scaife Hall) in classroom 1 and conference room B, and on the second floor in the Computer and Media Center classroom 2.
All classes are open to faculty, staff and students of the schools of the health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC. Some classes are also held in the conference room at UPMC Shadyside Libraries.

No registration is required for any of these classes. Seating for classes is first-come, first-served, until the class is full. Classes marked with an asterisk (*) qualify for American Medical Association Category 2 continuing education credit. Class schedules are subject to change. Please consult the online class calendar for the most current information.

HSLS ORIENTATION

Introduction to HSLS Resources and Services at Falk Library
(Meet inside entrance to Library)
Offered upon request to groups or individuals. Call 412-648-8796.

CLASSES OFFERED UPON REQUEST AT UPMC SHADYSIDE LIBRARIES

Introduction to HSLS Services at UPMC Shadyside
Offered upon request to groups or individuals. Call 412-623-2415.

Finding Full-Text Articles at UPMC Shadyside
HSLS provides access to millions of full-text articles. It is not always easy to track these down. Learn strategies and tips that will help you save time and frustration when finding full text.
Offered upon request to groups or individuals. Call 412-623-2415.

SEARCHING DATABASES

PubMed Basics* (Falk Library Classroom 1)
Wednesday, July 7            9-10:30 a.m.
Tuesday, August 3            10-11:30 a.m.
Thursday, August 26         1-2:30 p.m.

Why use PubMed? (UPMC Shadyside Libraries)
Monday, July 19                9-10:30 a.m.

Focus on Behavioral Medicine: Searching in PsycINFO* (Falk Library Classroom 1)
Tuesday, August 24          1-2:30 p.m.

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND GENETICS RESOURCES

Gene Regulation Resources* (Falk Library Conference Room B)
Wednesday, July 7            1-3:30 pm.

Bioinformatics for Proteomics Studies* (Falk Library Conference Room B)
Wednesday, July 21          1-3 p.m.

Lasergene* (Falk Library Conference Room B)
Wednesday, August 4        1-3 p.m.

Literature Informatics* (Falk Library Conference Room B)
Wednesday, August 18      1-3 p.m.

SOFTWARE TRAINING

EndNote Basics (Falk Library Classroom 2)
(Note: This class is usually full. Please arrive 15 minutes in advance to ensure seating.)
Tuesday, August 10          11 a.m.-1 p.m. (Falk Library Classroom 2)
Tuesday, August 24          9 -11 a.m. (UPMC Shadyside Libraries)

Adobe Photoshop for Beginners (Falk Library Classroom 2)
Tuesday, July 6                10 a.m.-noon
Tuesday, August 3            10 a.m.-noon

PowerPoint for Beginners (Falk Library Classroom 2)
Wednesday, August 11      10 a.m.-noon

Advanced PowerPoint for Presentations (UPMC Shadyside Libraries)
Wednesday, August 18      10 a.m.-noon

PowerPoint for Beginners and Advanced PowerPoint (Falk Library Classroom 2)
Wednesday, July 14          10 a.m.-2 p.m.

The WOW Factor: PowerPoint for Posters (Falk Library Classroom 2)
Tuesday, July 27               10 a.m.-noon

LUNCH WITH A LIBRARIAN

These informal, brown-bag lunches are held in Falk Library Conference Room B. Bring your own lunch. Drinks and dessert are provided. For more information, visit the online descriptions.

My NCBI a PubMed Tool to Save You Time
Thursday, July 15              Noon-1 p.m.

Your Personal Paper Silo: Making a Dent
Monday, August 9             Noon-1 p.m.

Thursday @ Three HSLS UPMC Shadyside Libraries Information Series
These informal sessions are held in the UPMC Shadyside Libraries’ Conference Room.

The Nuts and Bolts of Publishing an Article: Resources and Strategies for Aspiring Authors
Thursday July 22               3-4 p.m.

Making a Dent in Your Personal Paper Silo
Thursday, August 19          3-4 p.m.

CUSTOMIZED CLASSES
Customized classes can be developed for your department, course, or other group.

LEARNING @ YOUR PACE
These online tutorials provide information on getting started at HSLS, focusing on the Web site and popular resources.

HSLS Staff News

The HSLS Staff News section includes recent HSLS presentations, publications, staff changes, staff promotions, degrees earned, etc.

News

Patricia Weiss, reference librarian, has been elected Vice President of the University Senate. Her term begins July 1.

Publications

Jonathon Erlen, history of medicine librarian published “Disability Studies Abstracts” in The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 6(1):57-58, 2010 with co-author Megan Conway.  Erlen also served as a major contributor to “ISIS Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2009.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Carrie Iwema, information specialist in Molecular Biology published “Next Generation Literature Mining: Third-Party Search Engines Based on MEDLINE” in MLA News, February 2010.

Congratulations

Barbara Folb, reference librarian, received a Master’s in Public Health degree in May from Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health. Folb also received the Dean’s Service Award and completed the certificate in Evaluation of Public Health Promotion and Health Education Programs.