2020 Issue

In accordance with University policy and Scaife Hall operating hours, Falk Library is open Monday-Friday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m.

Getting to the library:

Prior to coming to campus, please complete the University’s Daily COVID-19 Health Check.

Entry to the library is via Scaife Hall’s fourth floor main entrance. Tap your valid Pitt ID at the guard station’s card reader and proceed to the health screening stations for a temperature check, symptom review, and a fresh face mask.

The Scaife Hall elevators are limited to four people at a time. Please consider taking the staircase down to the library’s second floor location.

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If you have not heard of ORCID, you might at first think this article title has a typo. Even spellcheck suggests: did you mean orchid? In this case, we aren’t talking about the flower, but instead the acronym for “Open Researcher and Contributor ID.” This is a unique, 16-digit number assigned to you that makes your scholarly works easily findable and correctly attributed. This number is associated with a profile on the ORCID website, where you can choose to include information about these works. This is not limited to journal publications. Instead, your profile can encompass every academic contribution that you wish to document, including educational qualifications, conference proceedings, grants, lectures, datasets, and beyond.

Not only does ORCID help summarize academic contributions in a single location, but it provides other identification benefits as well. For example, attribution questions can arise when people are publishing under similar names or if someone changes their name. With ORCID, ambiguity or concerns with author name discoverability are reduced. Continue reading →

Due to space restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, study seats at Falk Library are currently limited. To ensure that you have adequate space and time you need to study, you will soon be able to reserve a seat online before coming to the library.

To get started, go to the online study seat reservation page and click on “Reserve.” You can filter available study spaces by location (main or upper floor) and type (scanning station, computer seat, or table/desk seat). To make a reservation, simply select a study space, the date and time you’re planning to visit, and enter your name and e-mail address. Reservations can be made for up to four hours and can be booked up to ten days in advance. Continue reading →

A recent study in Pittsburgh found that Black women had worse birth outcomes and a higher risk of maternal mortality than women of other races. What are the factors that lead to this? While you may know that health outcomes are influenced by gaps in care due to systemic factors that put populations at risk, finding relevant research and data is not always straightforward.

The language that authors use to describe their research and populations of interest varies across disciplines and has evolved over time. The databases that are used to find this research may have outdated keywords or complex controlled vocabulary. For example, to find articles in PubMed with a focus on Black women, you might use the subject heading “African Americans.” However, this research could also be indexed with terms such as “Minority Groups,” “Minority Health,” or “Healthcare Disparities.” The search terms that you use will influence the results you retrieve, so it is important to brainstorm different search strategies to reduce bias.

Finding relevant research is imperative, but you may also want to locate data that can be used to demonstrate social determinants of health and health outcomes. For example, the CDC Wonder system provides access to birth data (1999 to most current available) and linked birth/infant death data (1995 to most current available). Both include an incredibly wide collection of variables: pregnancy risk such as prior C-section, eclampsia, and hypertension; socio-demographic characteristics such as mother’s birth country, race and ethnicity, and educational attainment; pregnancy history and prenatal care characteristics; and mother’s risk factors such as BMI, weight gain, and smoking.

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The PubMed Clinical Queries page now includes a new category for COVID-19 searches. Links and bookmarks created for the legacy PubMed Clinical Queries page have been redirected to the new page.

The PubMed Clinical Queries page will initially include COVID-19 Articles and Clinical Study Categories. The new COVID-19 filter strategies are published in the PubMed User Guide and may evolve over time.

*Derived from J. Chan, “PubMed Clinical Queries Update Coming Soon,” NLM Technical Bulletin, September-October 2020;(436):e8