Introducing the New Streaming Media Collection

You can now easily access recorded lectures, video protocols, healthcare training guides, and other health sciences videos on HSLS’s new Streaming Media website. From this central site, you can navigate to databases that house thousands of instructional videos produced by the wider health sciences community, such as AccessMedicine, ClinicalKey, and Bates’ Visual Guide to Physical Examination. On-campus users can view these videos without providing additional login information, but off-campus access will prompt a Pitt Passport login. You can also find links to HSLS’s YouTube channel to view lectures given by visiting scholars or watch workshops presented by Pitt postdoctoral fellows.

Thumbnails of Bates Guide videos

To view the full collection of health sciences videos, visit the new Streaming Media website. For assistance, contact the Technology Help Desk at 412-648-9109 or hslshelp@pitt.edu.

~Julia Reese

Women Physicians in WWI: New Exhibit at Falk Library

Unsung heroes—women physicians who were rejected from the U.S. Medical Corps but decided to join the efforts of World War I anyways. These women, who were eager for the chance to serve their country and advocate for their capabilities as medical professionals, are the subject of a traveling exhibit by the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA). Falk Library is now hosting the exhibit of photographs, books, and a 15-minute video that details their remarkable stories.

Esther Pohl Lovejoy, MD
Esther Pohl Lovejoy, MD

One such physician, Esther Pohl Lovejoy, MD, started a humanitarian relief program in WWI for families affected by the war called the American Women’s Hospitals Service. Dr. Lovejoy would later write, “Our Government provided for the enlistment of nurses, but not for women physicians. This was a mistake. It is utterly impossible to leave a large number of well-trained women out of a service in which they belong, for the reason that they won’t stay out.” She went on to direct the American Women’s Hospitals Service for 47 years, and was awarded the keys to the city of Retimo for her service in Greece. Her story and others are highlighted in the online exhibit materials by the AMWA that accompany the onsite exhibit display. Continue reading

Changes to the HSLS Online Collection for 2019

Journals added to the HSLS online collection for 2019 include:

  • Aging Clinical and Experimental Research
  • Cancer Treatment and Research Communications 
  • Evidence-Based Practice
  • JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology1
  • Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Journal of Animal Science
  • Journal of Complex Networks
  • Journal of Language Evolution
  • Midwifery
  • Nature Biomedical Engineering
  • Nature Human Behaviour
  • Neuro-Oncology Practice
  • Pediatric Dentistry
  • Translational Stroke Research
  • Work, Aging, and Retirement
  1. Availability forthcoming.

HSLS continually adds new open-access journals, so visit our E-journals A-Z list and click on “Show Select Subject” to view titles in your area of interest. Continue reading

NEJM Resident 360

You probably already know that HSLS subscribes to The New England Journal of Medicine. But did you also know that our subscription gives you free access to NEJM Resident 360?

Resident 360 is a platform for residents, fellows, medical students, and physicians that offers career advice, discussion boards, quizzes, and lots of additional information to help you as you begin your medical career. Resident 360 is broken into seven different sections, each offering information on a different aspect of medicine or residency. The sections include: Continue reading

Fad or Smart? Artificial Intelligence and Semantics for Literature Searching

There are two approaches to literature searching: improvised discovery, and structured query, each with corresponding online platforms. Discovery is fast and generates ideas, but is generally not reproducible, since it does not use controlled vocabularies. This limits its use for systematic reviews or other published research, for example. Building a query to find citable new evidence is time-consuming, but structured searches using controlled vocabularies are reproducible. Before starting a search in either type, consider your purpose: are you generating ideas? Or documenting reproducible methods? Both methods have value, and HSLS librarians can help you fit both into your research workflow.

New discovery search engines use semantics and artificial intelligence as alternatives to traditional indexing. Additionally, they search the full text of documents, rather than the title and abstract only, resulting in larger but more precise retrieval than traditional title/abstract databases. Their interactive dashboards are optimized for on-the-fly analysis. Try the following three products as examples of current discovery search tools.

 

LENS.org, in six languages, integrates global patent data, regulatory and business data, and scholarly medical literature using both indexing and artificial intelligence. It is completely free to all users. Special filters or “lenses” help searchers identify and analyze various aspects of research, such as the impact of publications on global patents, using its PatCite tool. The structured Scholar Search interface offers filters that retrieve specific funding agencies, or biological sequences in patents (see PatSeq tool). All data sources are open and freely accessible by anyone.

 

Dimensions from Digital Science incorporates natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in its search of over 50 million full-text publications, preprints and other documents. Dimensions connects multiple data sources from the complete research lifecycle, enabling robust research analysis. The free version links publications, citations, and altmetrics, with the dashboard supporting analysis of researchers, fields of research, institutions, locations, and research metrics. Because Digital Science owns ReadCube, Figshare and other research services, expect related links. Its weakness may be its restriction to the NIH Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) research indicator, which applies only to NIH and PubMed publications.

 

Semantic Scholar from the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence was developed to make highly cited papers easily accessible to academics. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are used to search over 40 million papers, presentations and conferences indexed in PubMed, Springer Nature, Frontiers, Science, MIT Press, Clinical Trials, IEEE, and other sources. Enter search terms or a title, and Semantic Scholar produces a concise list of relevant results. A simple layout, PubMed filters and links to “Highly Influential Citations” and “PDFs” makes it easy to review and save references. A recent review available in JMLA has additional details.

Research discovery may be faster and more effective using one of these tools. Find your favorite and experiment! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Andrea Ketchum, at ketchum@pitt.edu or 412-648-9757.

~Andrea Ketchum

Subawards Extend NNLM MAR’s Reach

Kate Flewelling
NNLM MAR
Executive Director

This year, NNLM MAR provided about $450,000 in subawards to Network member organizations in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. Subawards are typically small (this year’s range from just $600 to $20,000) and allow NNLM MAR to expand training of National Library of Medicine resources and increase the access to and use of high quality health information across diverse populations around the region.

Examples of funded projects include:

Library Moon Walk: Over twenty public libraries in 10 counties in New York State are getting staff training on health information resources, hosting health programming, and encouraging their patrons to track their steps in an effort to walk to the moon. The project celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing and serves as a preview for the 2019 Summer Reading Theme, “A Universe of Stories.” Continue reading

Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Le Rouge, Avis Très Important Aux Personnes Attaquées de Hernies Ou Descentes, Paris 1784

We know very little about the author of an unusual book on hernia found in the Falk Library Rare Book Collection. Jean Pierre Le Rouge was a surgeon at the College of Surgeons in Paris and at the Hôtel-Dieu in the second half of the 18th century and was the author of two books on hernias. He had 17 years of experience working at the biggest hospital in Paris, Hôtel-Dieu, when he published his first popular work Avis très important aux personnes attaquées de hernies ou descentes [Translation: Very important notice to people attacked by hernia] in 1784. A year later, in 1785, his thesis Dissertatio anatomico-chirurgica de perfecta inguinalis herniae simplicis curatione [Translation: Thesis on the treatment of inguinal hernia] appeared. Both books are very scarce.

The popular tract may be considered an early example of consumer health information. It consists of five chapters, in which the author (1) explains the causes and characteristics of different hernia types; (2) gives advice on limiting physical activities when wearing hernia trusses; (3) points out the need to wear supportive bandages or pessaries; (4) discusses palliative treatment focused on reducing hernias by means of bandages illustrated with the cases from his hospital practice; and (5) provides a composition of a plaster for the radical cure of a hernia. Continue reading

HSLS Staff News

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

All author names in bold are HSLS-affiliated.

Publications

J. Donovan, T. Chung, M. Klein-Fedyshin, Research & Clinical Instruction Librarian, published “A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Parental Drinking and Adolescent Drinking” in PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews, 2019: CRD42019119545.

B. Fields, R.L. Turner, Coordinator of Liaison Services, M. Naidu, et al., published “Assessments for Caregivers of Hospitalized Older Adults” in Clinical Nursing Research, 2018: 1-21.

J.T. Hanlon, S. Perera, P.J. Drinka, C.J. Crnich, S.J. Schweon, M. Klein-Fedyshin, Research and Clinical Instruction Librarian, C.B. Wessel, Head of Research Initiatives, et al., published “The IOU Consensus Recommendations for Empirical Therapy of Cystitis in Nursing Home Residents” in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, December 24, 2018. Continue reading

Classes for February 2019

Painless PubMed, Monday, February 4, noon-1 p.m.

Searching for Dollars: Grant Seeking to Support Research, Wednesday, February 6, 4-5 p.m.

Introduction to Tableau for Data Visualization, Monday, February 11, 9-10 a.m.

Introduction to the Pitt Data Catalog, Tuesday, February 12, 2-3 p.m.

Future Proof your Data: Planning for Reuse, Wednesday, February 13, 11 a.m.-noon

RNA-Seq & CLC Genomics, Wednesday, February 13, 1-4 p.m.

File Naming Best Practices, Thursday, February 14, 10-10:30 a.m.

Data Drop-In Session, Friday, February 15, 8:30-10:30 a.m.

Basic EndNote, Tuesday, February 19, 10-11 a.m.

Save & Customize Your Searches in PubMed, Wednesday, February 20, noon-1 p.m.

Pathway Analysis, Wednesday, February 20, 1-4 p.m.

Painless PubMed, Friday, February 22, 9-10 a.m.

Crafting a Data Management Plan, Monday, February 25, noon-1 p.m.

Advanced EndNote, Tuesday, February 26, 10-11 a.m.

Variant Detection & Analysis: CLC Genomics & IVA, Wednesday, February 27, 1-4 p.m.

Basic Python through Jupyter, Thursday, February 28, 1-4 p.m.

Continue reading