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Featured Workshop: Visualizing Research Impact with VOSviewer

HSLS offers classes in a wide array of subjects—citation management, database searching, bioinformatics software, and more! You can quickly view all Upcoming Classes and Events or sign up to receive the weekly Upcoming HSLS Classes and Workshops email.

Featured workshop of the month: Visualizing Research Impact with VOSviewer

Monday, April 25, 2022, noon-1:30 p.m.

Register for this virtual workshop*

Visualizing Research Impact with VOSviewer is a hands-on class that introduces participants to techniques for creating data visualizations with VOSviewer, a software tool used to generate, visualize, and analyze bibliometric networks that include journals, researchers/authors, or individual publications. These networks can be created based on data downloaded from various sources, such as Web of Science and PubMed. Whether they illustrate author collaborations, analyze article citation patterns, or explore research trends through text mining, data visualization can be an effective way to tell your research impact story and add value to a wide variety of reports.

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Sharing Options Available in Microsoft OneDrive

With Pitt’s Box license ending in August 2022, Microsoft OneDrive is now the University’s primary cloud storage solution. Storing files on OneDrive instead of on your computer allows you to access them from any device at any time. OneDrive also natively offers several file-sharing options, enabling easy collaboration that doesn’t rely on endless email chains or access to shared network drives.

OneDrive’s various file-sharing options allow a file’s creator to control who can access a file. These options include:

  • Anyone with the link: Anyone who has the link to the file will be able to access it. This option is useful for non-sensitive files that will be widely shared inside and outside of Pitt. A note of caution—anyone you share this link with can then choose to share this same link with others, meaning that someone may access the file without your knowledge or explicit permission.
  • People in University of Pittsburgh with the link: Anyone who has the link to the file and is a member of the Pitt community will be able to access the file. After clicking on the link, collaborators will be prompted to log in to their Pitt account via Pitt Passport before they can view the file. This option is useful for files that will be widely shared within Pitt but should not be available to anyone outside of the university.
  • Specific people: Only collaborators that you specify by email address will be able to access the file, even if they forward the link on to someone else. This option allows precise control over file access.
  • People with existing access: This option does not change any sharing permissions, and only generates a sharing link that can be accessed by those you have already shared the file with.

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In Memoriam: Jonathon Erlen, Ph.D.

John ErlenHSLS mourns the passing of Dr. Jonathon Erlen, longtime HSLS History of Medicine Librarian, at the age of 75. John retired in January 2019 after a 35-year career at HSLS. Through the years, he shared his love of the history of medicine with generations of students and scholars, including pre-med students in the Honors College as well as graduate students at Pitt’s Center for Medical Ethics, the School of Public Health, the School of Nursing, the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and many others. He treasured his joint appointment in the School of Medicine, and his enthusiastic lectures were especially appreciated by fourth-year medical students completing his month-long elective in the history of medicine. In 2004, he received the School of Medicine Curriculum Committee’s Excellence in Education Award.

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HSLS Staff News

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

Publications

Melissa Ratajeski, Assistant Director for Data and Publishing Services, and Rebekah Miller, Research and Instruction Librarian, co-authored the article:

Ratajeski MA, Miller RS. “Adapting to Changes in Publishing When Searching for Alternatives and Reporting on Animal Research: A Librarian’s Perspective.” Alternatives to laboratory animals : ATLA, 2611929211072862. 25 Feb. 2022, doi:10.1177/02611929211072862

Rose Turner, Assistant Director for Liaison Services and Instruction, co-authored the article:

Bise, Christopher Gene and Cupler, Zachary and Mathers, Sean and Turner, Rose and Sundaram, Meenakshi and Catalani, Beatriz and Dahler, Sarah and Popchak, Adam and Schneider, Michael J., Face to Face Telehealth Interventions in the Treatment of Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review. CTCP-D-22-00121. 3 Mar. 2022, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4029450

Farewell

Carrie Iwema, Coordinator for Basic Science Research Support, is leaving HSLS to become a Senior UX Strategist working with the NIH All of Us Research Program. Since joining the library in 2007, Iwema, capitalizing on her previous experience as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neurosurgery at Yale University, has helped countless researchers through her work with the MolBio Information Service and Data Services.

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Pitt Resources for Bioinformatics Data Analysis: The Four ‘C’s

Does your research involve identifying correlations between gene sequences and diseases, predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences, transcriptomics, metabolomics, or any of the many other ‘omics? If so, then you have a lot of data that requires analysis: a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision making.

The “four ‘C’s” is shorthand to describe broad categories of options for analyzing bioinformatics data, including paying someone else to do it (Core labs), working with another researcher (Collaboration), and doing it yourself either by learning to program (Coding) or using out-of-the-box software (Commercially-licensed tools). The University of Pittsburgh provides numerous options in these four categories to help you with your data analysis needs.

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Featured Workshop: Identifying and Combating Health Misinformation

HSLS offers classes in a wide array of subjects—citation management, database searching, bibliographic management, and more! You can quickly view all upcoming classes and events or sign up to receive the weekly upcoming HSLS classes and workshops email.

Featured workshop of the month: Identifying and Combating Health Misinformation

Wednesday, March 16 from 11 a.m. to noon.

Register for this virtual workshop*

“Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.” –Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General

Most health professionals are keenly aware of the scale of the global health misinformation problem. The anti-vaccination movement is a prime example of the potential power that health misinformation has to convince huge numbers of people and sway health outcomes at a population level. This is far from the only such example. Prolific misinformation about almost any health topic can easily be found online, and the worst misinformation can be both highly convincing and extremely dangerous.

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Honoring the Life and Legacy of Nancy Tannery

Headshot of Nancy TanneryA new philanthropic opportunity is available in honor of Nancy Hrinya Tannery, former HSLS Senior Associate Director and University of Pittsburgh Assistant Provost. The Nancy Tannery Memorial Fund allows colleagues, friends, and family to contribute to memorializing her legacy at Falk Library.

Nancy had a long history of service to the University and to the profession of health sciences librarianship. After a 20-year research career, Nancy joined Falk Library as a reference librarian and advanced to multiple HSLS leadership positions. Nancy left HSLS in 2017 to serve as Assistant Provost and retired from the University in 2020 with emerita status. As HSLS Senior Associate Director, Nancy played a key role in implementing the HSLS strategic vision, along with responsibilities in planning, assessment and innovation, and oversight of instructional programs and reference services.

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Learn EndNote on Your Schedule

EndNote is a popular citation manager that is free for Pitt faculty and students to download. Though HSLS offers several virtual workshops on EndNote every semester, conflicts in your schedule may prevent you from attending these real-time classes. Classes also might not move at the pace you would prefer. To help address these issues, HSLS now provides a set of three interactive online tutorials for EndNote to help you get started with this citation manager whenever you want, at your own pace.

The tutorials are designed for you to follow along with instructions, completing tasks in EndNote as you go. The tutorials feature EndNote 20, which you can download through Pitt’s software download service.

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Celebrating the Career of HSLS Librarian Jill Foust

Headshot of Jill FoustJill Foust, Research and Instruction Librarian, retired on March 1, marking the end of her 33-year career at Pitt. Foust has been a long-time editor of the HSLS Update newsletter, delivering articles about the library to thousands of readers over the past two decades.

In addition to her career as a Pitt librarian, Jill is also an alumna of Pitt’s library science graduate program. After applying to the master’s program, she received a fellowship opportunity through the H.W. Wilson Foundation, which fully supported the pursuit of her degree. After graduation, she spent six years in New York City in corporate libraries, where she gathered information and conducted research supporting the banking and insurance industries.

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Advice from a Quack or a Naturopath?

Random reflections on indigestion, bilious complaints, scrofula… by S. W. Tilke. London 1837.

This curious book is part of our gout collection, which has a few rare items. This book by Tilke, like others in the collection, is also scarce – few copies are known to be in existence. Scarce books typically were published in limited numbers, were so popular that they were read to death, or were too trivial to make it into a library collection. The scarcity of Tilke’s book may be linked to all three reasons. It was written by a self-professed expert, a baker-turned-healer, Samuel Westcott Tilke. Tilke, the owner of an establishment offering medical advice, remedies, and stay-in-clinic treatments, wrote a self-promoting work. It advertised his services, pills, medical preparations, and two products he invented: the Improved Enema Instrument and the Camphorated Spirit Bed Lamp. The language is suitable for the general public, and at one time was annotated with the handwritten notes of a studious reader. This suggests that the book gained some popularity. The presence of multiple underlined passages, marginal notes, and several additions prove that the book was studied with interest.

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HSLS Staff News

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

News

Francesca Yates, Research and Instruction Librarian, served as chair of the Member Arrangements and Networking Subcommittee and was a member of the 2021 MAC Annual Planning Committee, for the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association.

Publications

Michele Klein-Fedyshin, Research and Clinical Instruction Librarian, was acknowledged for her search in the article:

Herbstsomer RA, Stahl ST. Cross-Cultural Experiences of Hospice and Palliative Care Services: A Thematic Analysis. Omega (Westport). 2021 Dec;84(2):551-566. doi: 10.1177/0030222820904205. Epub 2020 Feb 20. PMID: 32077377. Continue reading →

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Free Open Access Publishing with Cambridge University Press

We are excited to announce that the NorthEast Research Libraries Consortium (NERL), of which the University of Pittsburgh is a member, has signed a Read and Publish agreement with Cambridge University Press (CUP) that will waive article processing charges (APCs) for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Have a corresponding author affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh or UPMC.
  • Be original research—eligible article types are research articles, review articles, rapid communications, brief reports, and case reports.
  • Be accepted for publication in a CUP journal covered by the agreement.
  • Be accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2022.

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Working with the HSLS Systematic Review Program: Protocols Will Be Reviewed

A systematic review (SR), like any other high-quality research study, begins with the development of a detailed protocol. A well-written protocol describes a clear rationale for undertaking the review, provides a detailed description of research questions or objectives, lists the primary outcomes of interest, and clearly describes the methods that will be used to find, screen, select, and synthesize data. Documenting this information serves several purposes:

  • It allows investigators conducting the review to plan in advance and anticipate potential problems or issues with their methods.
  • It minimizes the opportunity for arbitrary or “on-the-fly” decision-making during the course of the review that may introduce bias into data collection or synthesis.
  • If the protocol is made publicly available, journal reviewers can assess the likelihood of selective outcome reporting in the final report.

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Featured Workshops: Love Data Week

Love Data Week, February 14-18, 2022, is an international event designed to raise awareness about research data management, sharing, and preservation. To celebrate, HSLS will be hosting a variety of featured workshops*:

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