Health Care for All: Pitt Hosts National Exhibit and Events

Health care reform has been a contentious political issue in the United States for more than a hundred years. Often, the public associates health care reform with presidents and national leaders, but communities, workers, activists, and health care professionals have made their voices heard in the debate about whether and how to make quality health care available to all. The traveling exhibit For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform tells the lesser-known story of how movements of ordinary citizens helped shape the changing American health care system. HSLS is pleased to be hosting this national exhibit, providing events and access to educational resources for Pitt courses this fall semester.

Accompanying this exhibit are higher education modules—available formatted for Canvas or Elentra—which can offer a valuable historical perspective for courses with topics surrounding American health care access and policy. HSLS is providing these supplementary educational modules for Pitt instructors to augment your students’ experience of this exhibit. These modules have been adapted from content from the National Library of Medicine.

Also, save the date for a panel event on Monday, September 23, 2024, at 4 p.m. in Alan Magee Scaife Hall. Continue reading

New Open Access Publishing Agreement with Elsevier

We are excited to announce that the Health Sciences Library System, in partnership with the University Library System, has signed a new publishing agreement that allows Pitt and UPMC corresponding authors to make their articles open access, at no cost to the author, in eligible Elsevier journals. By choosing to make your article open access, your work will be immediately available to anyone (not just subscribers), giving your research more exposure. Publishing open access may also increase your academic research impact.

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A Successful R Bootcamp Week

In response to the rising demand for coding and data analysis skills, HSLS has been actively providing R workshops. Traditionally, these workshops—R: Introduction, R: Data Wrangling, and R: Data Viz—were spread over several weeks, which sometimes made it challenging for participants to maintain learning momentum. While these sessions remain available for viewing, HSLS has now introduced a more intensive learning experience to better meet participants’ needs.

This past June, Dr. Jenna Carlson elevated our approach by hosting an engaging four-day online R bootcamp. Tailored for both beginners and those seeking a refresher in R coding, the bootcamp covered essential data analysis techniques, including data manipulation, summarization, and visualization. With over 200 registrants, it became one of the largest workshops ever hosted by the HSLS Molecular Biology Information Service.

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Scoping Reviews and Systematic Reviews: What’s the Difference?

Systematic reviews and scoping reviews both use transparent and reproducible methods to synthesize evidence. However, the purpose of a scoping review is quite different than that of a systematic review, and so are several steps in the scoping review process. These differences include:

The research question(s)

Systematic reviews evaluate effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of interventions, or prevalence, incidence, or etiology of a disease. A typical research question might be:

  1. What is the cost-effectiveness of blood glucose self-monitoring in type 2 diabetes mellitus in high-income countries?

Scoping reviews describe, rather than evaluate, literature. A scoping review may clarify a key research concept or describe characteristics of studies addressing a particular research topic. Research questions might include:

  1. How is the concept of “rehabilitation potential” defined in studies of individuals with acquired brain injuries?
  2. What are the major components of fatigue management interventions offered to adult patients with multiple sclerosis?

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Advancing Research and Technology Transfer: A Project for Zimbabwe

Both Pittsburgh and Zimbabwe based professionals gathered at a table with some appearing on a screen as webinar participants.

Librarians, research managers, and scholarly communication experts from higher education institutions in Zimbabwe participated in the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), Advancing Research and Technology Transfer. Exchange programs like this are one of the many ways the U.S. catalyzes university partnerships.

Their national program is arranged by World Learning. The Pittsburgh segment of their program is coordinated by GlobalPittsburgh.

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Learn @ HSLS: Filtering Your Results in PubMed with Custom Filters

Enjoy this online, self-paced module at a time and place that works best for you.
This module was developed by Michele Klein Fedyshin.
Access the module for Filtering Your Results in PubMed with Custom Filters*

This module explains the utility of a custom filter in PubMed, then describes and demonstrates how to create one. Filters reduce the number of articles in your retrieval using the limits it sets. The module uses the example of creating a clinical journal filter in PubMed. Subsets of this clinically useful journals filter can also be input to drill down to articles in adult, pediatric, mental health, or high clinical usage journals.

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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: R.T.H. Laennec and His Breakthrough Invention

A thin piece of wood carved into a tube, which slightly flares on one end. The other end is attached to a flat round wood piece.
Typical unmarked, one-piece wood Fergusson monaural stethoscope (ca. 1890) from Falk Library’s collection. The chest-bell end rested comfortably on a patient, while the flat part with a small opening would cover the physician’s ear.

Listening to the sounds of the body is an old diagnostic technique, reported as early as the 16th century BC in an ancient Egyptian work known as the Ebers Papyrus. For centuries though, the only way to assess the sounds of the human body was to use an unaided ear on the patient’s chest. René Théophile Hyacinthe Laennec introduced mediated auscultation by inventing a stethoscope, a device to aid a physician in listening to the chest sound.

The invention was born in 1816 when the young doctor, reluctant to use a direct auscultation method on a person with a higher weight, rolled a piece of paper into a tube in the moment of need and carved the tool from wood shortly thereafter. The sound not only travelled through the improvised tool, but it was also easily and clearly audible. Thus, Laennec started to use the new device from that moment on.

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HSLS Staff News

HSLS Staff News

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

News

Colleen Ashley has been promoted to Communications Design Specialist. In this role, Colleen will lead high-impact marketing campaigns and content creation in a variety of channels including web, social media, print and digital communications, collections exhibits, and event coverage. She will work closely with individuals and teams at HSLS, as well as form partnerships with Pitt contacts and groups, to work towards HSLS’s strategic marketing goals. Colleen joined HSLS in 2023 as the Marketing and Web Specialist.

Helenmary Sheridan, Data Services Librarian, is leaving HSLS to become a Senior Research Data Management Consultant at Duke University Libraries. Since joining the library in 2018, she has helped countless researchers to understand metadata, write data management and sharing plans, and integrate open science practices into their research workflow.
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