Three HSLS staff members celebrated significant employment anniversaries in the 2024 academic year. In honor of their milestones we asked each of them to tell us about themselves and their work with HSLS.
HSLS Staff News
The HSLS Staff News section includes recent HSLS presentations, publications, staff changes, staff promotions, degrees earned, and more.
News
Happy anniversary to the HSLS employees who reached important milestones in FY 24. For everything you have done to help Pitt and HSLS succeed, we applaud you!
40 years:
- Mary Gail Merlina, Main Desk Circulation Manager
35 years:
- Sue Burke, Document Delivery Assistant
25 years:
- Małgorzata Fort, Head, Digital Resource Development
5 years:
- Mady Engel, Administrative Specialist
HSLS Resources to Support Pitt Courses
Summer is traditionally a time when faculty work to review, redesign, or develop new courses for the fall. HSLS supports this work by licensing relevant resources and providing opportunities to collaborate with liaison librarians.
HSLS hosts an online collection that includes high-quality educational resources. Faculty can use content from the collection to build courses more efficiently. Additionally, highlighting complementary study resources to students increases equitable access, limiting pressure to purchase outside study tools. As an example, in 2023 HSLS partnered with health sciences anatomy instructors to license Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy. Course instructors can link to videos to complement course content, and students can be directed to the self-assessment exams for extra practice.
Publishing Over the Summer?
Whether you’re embarking on a publishing project soon or have already started writing your manuscript, it’s good to think about which journals you might submit to as early as possible. Even if you know some of the important journals in your field, it’s good to have backup options in case your manuscript isn’t accepted into your top-choice journal or if your research is multi-disciplinary in scope. Luckily, there are many tools and resources available to help identify journals that could be a good fit for disseminating your research.
HSLS Librarians Receive Innovation in Education Award
HSLS faculty members Kelsey Cowles, Rebekah Miller, Rachel Suppok, and Sera Thornton are recipients of an Innovation in Education Award from the Provost’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence (ACIE) for their proposed project “The Case of the Charming Clinician: An Instructional Medical Misinformation Escape Room for Health Sciences Students.” These awards are given annually to recognize faculty for projects that represent advances over existing methods to promote and support student learning.
Expanding the Genome-Wide Association Study
A genome-wide association study (GWAS) explores the human genome to uncover genetic variants associated with a range of outcomes, including diseases, laboratory measurements, and social factors. When the first GWAS was published in 2005, the process was both time-consuming and costly. Since then, technological advancements have significantly streamlined these studies, making them faster and more accessible to researchers. Despite the proliferation of GWAS, the majority have focused on European populations, leaving potential genetic links to diseases in other ancestral groups largely unexplored. This lack of diversity highlights a critical gap in genetic research. With the rise of personalized medicine initiatives, there is a pressing need to expand GWAS to include these historically underrepresented groups, ensuring that the benefits of genomic medicine are accessible to all populations.
Learn @ HSLS: Single Cell RNA-Seq Data Analysis using Partek Flow
Join us for this class:
Wednesday, June 26, 1-4 p.m., Online
Taught by Ansuman Chattopadhyay and Srilakshmi Chaparala
Register for Single Cell RNA-Seq Data Analysis using Partek Flow*
This workshop is on single cell RNA-Seq analysis with multiple samples using HSLS-licensed Partek Flow software.
Target Audience: Experimental biologists seeking to learn how to analyze the single cell data generated through experiments or retrieved from a publication or a repository such as GEO. The software covered in the workshop operates through a user-friendly, point-and-click graphical user interface, so neither computer programming experience nor familiarity with the command-line interface is required.
MLA ’24 Annual Meeting Participation
The Medical Library Association held its Annual Meeting, MLA ’24, both virtually and in person in Portland, Oregon, from May 18-21, 2024. Congratulations to those from HSLS who participated in and contributed to the meeting:
Presentation
Kelsey Cowles, Research and Instruction Librarian, presented “Health Misinformation Resilience Programming in Public Libraries: Community Outreach by Academic Librarians.” Co-authors were Rebekah Miller, Research and Instruction Librarian, and Rachel Suppok, Research and Instruction Librarian.
Poster Presentation
Kelsey Cowles, Research and Instruction Librarian, presented the poster “Clarity, Creativity, and Competition: Tailoring Library Research Instruction for High School Audiences.” Co-author was Rachel Suppok, Research and Instruction Librarian.
Apply for the NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is accepting applications for its Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine. The fellowship provides individual awards of up to $10,000 to support research using the NLM collection.
Fellows may conduct their research onsite at NLM by studying the collection in the NLM Reading Room or remotely using NLM digital resources, including datasets and digitized and born-digital collections. Project proposals embracing innovative research methods and tools for the digital humanities are welcome. Support for research in collections that are intellectually related to those of the NLM will be considered, but the overall proposed research must be primarily rooted in the use of the NLM collection.
Visit the Fellowship website for more details about the application process and to apply. Applications are due by September 30, 2024.
HSLS Staff News
The HSLS Staff News section includes recent HSLS presentations, publications, staff changes, staff promotions, degrees earned, and more.
News
The Hospital Libraries Caucus (HLC) of the Medical Library Association (MLA) has awarded Michele Klein Fedyshin, Research and Clinical Instruction Librarian, the HLC Scroll of Exemplary Service, which is an MLA Section Sponsored Award.
Amos Glenn has been promoted to the role of Instructional Design Manager. He has been part of the NNLM All of Us Program Center (NAPC) team since 2016. In this role, Amos will continue supporting the NNLM All of Us Program by leading the NAPC Instructional Design team in prioritizing learning objectives and needs to support All of Us audiences and in developing innovative online courses, programs, and learning technologies to enhance the learning experience.
Tips for Submitting Successful NIH Data Management and Sharing Plans
The HSLS Data Services team has provided feedback on dozens of Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMSPs) since the new NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy went into effect in January 2023. We’ve also read comments from NIH program officers (POs) to the researchers who submitted their plans, usually when we’ve been asked to help revise a plan in response to PO comments. These tips are intended to supplement our NIH Data Management and Sharing Guide to help you craft a comprehensive yet concise plan that will meet POs’ expectations.
Calling All Users of Ovid Resources
Are you a user of HSLS’s Ovid resources, such as MEDLINE, APA PsycInfo, Obstetrics & Gynecology, or Critical Care Medicine? HSLS is currently evaluating these and other resources we license from Ovid (four databases and over 300 e-journals) as our contract with this vendor comes up for renewal. We value the input of HSLS patrons during this process and welcome you to fill out a survey about your use of and opinions on our Ovid resources. The survey is a single page and should take less than ten minutes to complete.
Please follow this link to take the survey by May 31, 2024. All responses will be anonymous unless you choose to identify yourself. We thank you for your participation in our collection development decisions!
Get the Apps for Micromedex, UpToDate, and More with the HSLS Mobile Apps Guide
Did you know that some of your favorite HSLS resources are available as mobile apps? Just like you would visit the HSLS website first for direct access to a resource, you can visit the HSLS Mobile Apps guide for the links you need to get authenticated access to apps. The menu of apps includes the Micromedex Drug Reference app, the UpToDate app, the Access app, the ClinicalKey app, and more. These mobile apps allow you to view content such as drug information, e-books, articles, calculators, videos, and more in a mobile-friendly format. The way you access our subscription content in each app varies, so start by selecting an app on the HSLS Mobile Apps guide and review the “Create an Account” information.
Learn @ HSLS: Identifying and Combating Health Misinformation
Enjoy this online, self-paced module at a time and place that works best for you.
This module was developed by Kelsey Cowles, Rachel Suppok, and Rebekah Miller.
Access the module for Identifying and Combating Health Misinformation*
Health misinformation is a widespread problem, with false or misleading information about both longstanding health concerns and emergent situations spreading rapidly. Sometimes questionable health information is obvious, but it can also be difficult to recognize and can potentially reach millions of people. This module will discuss strategies for identifying health misinformation and contextually appropriate methods for addressing it.