Director’s Reflections…Welcome to HSLS!

Barbara Epstein
HSLS Director
bepstein@pitt.edu

As we enter a new academic year, the staff of the Health Sciences Library System is pleased to welcome new and returning faculty, staff, and students in the six schools of the health sciences: Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Dental Medicine, Public Health, and Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.

We offer a wide range of services, collections, and comfortable spaces. Here are some highlights to get you started.

Our website, www.hsls.pitt.edu, functions as our virtual “front door.” Here you can easily find a list of popular resources, services, quick access to print and electronic resources, full-text searching of all of our e-books, A-Z lists of our e-journals and databases, news and announcements, upcoming classes and events, and much, much more. Our collection is very extensive, but if we don’t have something you need, our document delivery service can usually provide it within days at no charge to you.

Be sure to connect with the Liaison Librarian for your school or department. These librarians are integrated into undergraduate and graduate programs, and collaborate with faculty to support instruction, research, and scholarship. They provide formal instruction and customized orientation sessions, collaborate on research projects, and provide assistance with researching health and biomedical topics.

HSLS Research & Instruction Librarians are experts in advanced literature searching. If you will be working on a clinical guideline, a systematic or scoping review, an IACUC protocol, or other in-depth project, we can design and build the required complex literature searches, with supporting documentation so that the final searches are transparent and reproducible.

The Molecular Biology Information Service offers access to licensed software to support next gen sequencing, gene regulation, pathway analysis, microarrays, and genetic variation data analysis. Our bioinformatics specialists provide regular workshops and individualized consultation.

HSLS Data Services Librarians offer consultations and customized training to help you organize and describe your research data, write data management plans, create data visualizations, identify appropriate data repositories, cite datasets accurately, comply with data sharing policies, and preserve your data for long-term access. Our newest project is the Pitt Data Catalog, which provides a searchable and browsable online collection of datasets generated by Pitt researchers.

Falk Library, on the second floor of Scaife Hall, offers comfortable seating, individualized seating and group study rooms, and lots of technology, including computers, scanners, printers, and photocopiers, and even a charging bar. Visit the Technology Help Desk on the Library’s upper floor to borrow equipment such as laptops and phone chargers, reserve a group study room, or consult with an assistant about a technology question or project. Pitt Wi-Fi is available throughout the library. Accessible technology is readily available, including accessible computer stations, and specialized software.

We’re here to help you succeed, so check us out!