Skip to content

Month: November 2020

Published on
A photo of a table setting with two drinking glasses, a basket filled with corn and small gourds. There is a plate with a paper napkin and a fork on top. A brown paper tag with 'Thank You' written on it is tied to the fork.

The end of the year is the perfect time for self-reflection and expressing gratitude towards the people, places and moments that made the year special. This year it feels more important than ever to pause and find moments that fill us with a sense of peace and gratitude. When asked what they’re thankful for, the Himmelfarb staff had plenty to say. Here are some of the many responses we are thankful this year:

Friends, Family & Other Amazing Individuals:

  • “I am thankful for my beautiful backyard and son who loves to grill. They made it possible to have safe, socially distanced family dinners all summer.”
  • “I am thankful that I am in relatively good health and that my family is healthy and we have what we need to make it through these tough times.”
  • “Of all the things that transpired in 2020, I am most grateful for the outcomes of my family four immediate members that have looked Covid-19 in the face and come through this scourge. I am also grateful for the arrival of my first great-granddaughter, a glimmer of joy in an otherwise dim year!”
  • “I’m grateful for time with my family. My husband and I have two teenagers who are more and more independent, but I’ve loved getting more time with just the four of us.”
  • “I’m grateful that everyone in my family is healthy and well, and grateful for the company of my immediate family (including my kitties) who are home with me.”
  • “I am grateful for my family. I am grateful for Zoom because my father’s side of the family has been meeting every Friday night since March and it has been so reconnecting, refreshing and energizing for us!”
  • “I’m grateful that, everyday, I get to come home to my Sweetie and our tuxedo cats.”
  • “I am so thankful for my family, my fantastic boyfriend, and my Himmelfarb coworkers! Also I am very thankful for the wonderful holiday food that is about to come.”
  • “I’m grateful to still have my dad, who’s been dealing with a lot of health issues this year, with us and (relatively) healthy.”
  • “I’m grateful that I can still connect with friends and family who live in different states.”
  • “I am grateful for all the amazing teachers and child-care providers who are willing to hang out with my kids all day at considerable risk to themselves so that I can work. Those people were always fantastic and this year they get even more points for being some of the best humans on the planet.”
  • “I am grateful to all my friends! Ever since quarantine I have missed them so much. Staying in contact with them has been so important to my mental health and well-being!”
Photograph of the corner of steps leading to a door. On the ground is a medium sized pumpkin. On the first steps is a smaller pumpkin. White boots sit on the topmost step.

Self-Fulfillment:

  • “I think that one thing that I’m super thankful for during 2020 is that I’ve finally been given permission to thrive as an introvert...I’ve truly embraced the ‘safer at home’ mantra during these past nine months and am grateful that I can embrace my inner introvert and that the pressure to socialize has subsided.”
  • “One unifying theme of the various relationships, friends, families, opportunities, etc. I am thankful for this year: connection...While I have found that the transition to remote work and constant screen time has tended toward speeding me up, opportunities to connect with others, with nature, and with myself, keep me from running away.”
  • “This year I was able to meet regularly with women who love to write and talk about storytelling. We meet every Saturday from 1-4 pm via Zoom and spend most of our time working on our individual different writing projects. It’s helped me develop my skills as a writer and storyteller. And it’s nice to write with a small group of people who are dedicated to their craft.”
  • “I’m grateful for my art classes that transition to a virtual classroom setting and for my watercolor teacher for creating a Facebook group where we can post our paintings and continue to support each other in our art journeys.”
  •  “I’m also grateful for my garden which has helped to keep me occupied and enjoying time outdoors.”
  • “I have a new appreciation for DC’s proximity to national parks and hiking trails. Getting to visit my favorite hiking spots and finding new parks to explore this summer and fall has been great.”

What are you thankful for this year? Who or what made 2020 special for you? However you spend Thanksgiving on Thursday, we hope you continue to stay safe, cherish the time with loved ones and enjoy some excellent food!

Published on

Photo by Finn on Unsplash

We’ve all had a lot of handle this year, and we’ve had to learn how to manage our lives differently because of the pandemic. We’re all spending more time at home, and less time in a traditional office or classroom setting. Our lives at home may look very different than they did nine months ago. With everything going on in the world right now, it’s no wonder that many of us are feeling more stressed, anxious, depressed, socially isolated, having trouble sleeping, or all of the above. 

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the ways in which we would normally cope with these issues may not be available in the same way they were before the pandemic. It’s okay if you find yourself struggling with mental health right now - you are not alone.

Taking care of your mental health is just as important as taking care of your physical health. GW provides resources to help you take care of your mental health. So take some time for yourself and explore these options:

Resources for Students:

Resources for GW Employees:

So whether you are a GW student, faculty or staff member, GW provides numerous resources that can help you focus on your mental health and help you manage life during the pandemic. Take some time to focus on yourself and your mental health. You are worth it! 

Published on
Video source: https://www.youtube.com/user/BodyViz

Looking for a stunning new way to view human anatomy? Himmelfarb Library now offers BodyViz 3D Anatomy Software, an interactive program that draws from a database of digitized MRIs and CT scans to render extraordinary 360° anatomical views. Developmental and pathological views are also included in the software’s library. Students can “dissect, study, and visualize the human body from head to toe, just as they would in the cadaver lab." (bodyviz.com)

How to reserve and access the workstation

The BodyViz workstation is located in the 3rd floor Levine Lounge, next to the glass-door entrance to the Bloedorn Technology Center. Its use is currently restricted to students, staff, and faculty who have physical access to Himmelfarb. Due to social distancing restrictions, the BodyViz space is currently limited to two concurrent users at a time. To help us maintain safe usage of the space, you will need to reserve a time slot in advance using our online reservation form. When you get to the library for your session, you will need to stop by the first floor Circulation Desk to check out the wireless keyboard and mouse for the workstation.

Learn more about it

For more information on BodyViz, visit the library's BodyViz research guide. Faculty interested in learning about how they can use BodyViz to enhance their courses should contact Ian Roberts (imroberts@gwu.edu) for an initial consultation. To request support in using the software, or to arrange a consultation, please contact Steve Bryant at seeker04@gwu.edu. 

This software has been made available thanks to a generous grant from the GW Hospital Women’s Board.

Published on

Yes, believe it, it is already November! As is tradition to many, this is a fantastic time of the year to remember what we are most thankful for. Despite the pandemic, and the other list of things that have happened this year, now might be a great time to ask yourself, what are you thankful for? Is it your family, and friends? Good health, or overcoming health obstacles? Perhaps it is your beloved pet, or a creative hobby. Maybe it is a goal you are working on.

Speaking of goals, what better time to make it a goal to celebrate this Thanksgiving with recipes that don’t break the bank, or your beltline? 

Did you ever think that Spinach dip could be healthy? That’s right, at only 81 calories per serving, Cooking Light’s take on a Caramelized Leek and Spinach Dip has my mouth watering! Looking to try something way different, and just as appealing as a bag of greasy chips and onion dip? Try their Smoked Salmon in Cucumber Cups. I don’t know about you but it would be impossible for me not to go back for seconds...or thirds.

If you, or someone in your family has food allergies EatingWell has a Roasted Fennel & Italian Sausage Stuffing that is dairy, nut, egg, and soy free. Or, check out Food Network’s Gluten-Free Green Bean-Mushroom Casserole with Panko-Style Fried Onion Rings.

For the main course, let’s take a look at this savory Herb Roasted Turkey. The versatility in the ingredients really grabs my attention! (Extra Rosemary and garlic, please.) If you are after a vegetarian main dish, this Sweet Potato, Red Onion & Fontina Tart might certainly suit your appetite. The American Heart Association chipped in with their very own Mom’s Roasted Turkey with Butternut Squash and Asparagus too! 

For Dessert, what better way to impress your Quarantine buddy than with Delish’s Bloomin’ Apples? As one who has a total weakness for all things apples and cinnamon, I’m on board for that one. They also have this, yes you heard it here; a Keto Pumpkin Pie. 

Feel free to check out other fantastic and healthy Thanksgiving recipes at Delish, EatingWell, Brit+Co, and Bonappetit! 

Wishing you and your family and friends, a safe and healthy Holiday season from the Himmelfarb Library! 

Published on
A signpost containing "research," "planning," "development," "analysis," and "strategy."

Himmelfarb Library is excited to introduce a new resource, our Early Career Researchers Guide!

Traditionally, students and early career researchers learn about the research lifecycle from faculty mentors and more experienced colleagues, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made such networking more difficult. To help bridge that gap, Himmelfarb librarians have put together this new research guide to get you started.

Unsure what opportunities are available to you at GW? We’ve compiled the various funding, training, and support resources in one place to make them more easily accessible. Each tab in the guide focuses on a different part of the research lifecycle, helping you hone in on the resources you need depending on where you find yourself in your research. The “Getting Started with Research” tab offers an overview, while each of the subsequent tabs focuses on proposals, literature reviews, publishing, data management, promoting your research, and how to showcase your research as you progress in your career.

Have additional questions after reviewing the guide? You can always contact us at himmelfarb@gwu.edu with questions about research and publishing.

Published on

Frequently used public health titles that are part of Himmelfarb Library’s reserves collections are now available for browsing or searching in a new Public Health Reserves Collection.  The collection includes books and some CDs. 

Physical items in the collection are shelved in Himmelfarb’s first floor reserves area and can be requested at the Circulation Desk. Reserve materials are now circulating for a one week period with no renewals. Users who don’t currently have physical access to Himmelfarb Library can arrange for Courtyard pickup and returns service. If there are electronic versions available, they are included in the collection with links to full-text.

Titles are sorted alphabetically by default. Users can use the Search Inside the Collection feature at the top of the page to search for a specific title or topic within the list.

The Public Health Reserves Collection is part of the Special Collections Gallery in Health Information @ Himmelfarb. Many of our public health focused Research Guides now include a link to the collection.

Also new to Special Collections is a collection of Himmelfarb Library’s Core Titles which includes public health resources.

Published on

What are preprints?  

  • Preprints are research manuscripts posted prior to peer review. Depending on the preprint server, manuscripts may be screened for privacy concerns or potential harm. For instance, “All manuscripts uploaded to medRxiv undergo a basic screening process for offensive and/or non-scientific content and for material that might pose a health risk”.
  • Preprints are not peer reviewed, and they are not final research products. The NIH offers guidance about “Preprints and Other Interim Research Products”, such as datasets and code. 
  • Preprints can enable timely discussion of research, especially in rapidly evolving fields. The publication of research via journal articles is often delayed by the formal peer review process. 

Where can I find preprints?

How do I evaluate preprints?

  • Because preprints have not undergone peer review, they require more critical analysis for potential issues that might be caught during peer review.  
  • Members of the scientific community engage with preprints in a variety of ways. Some platforms, such as F1000Research, post reviewer comments alongside the article. However, preprint reviews and critiques are rarely so easily located. Often, further searching will be necessary to find cross linking to social media discussions about a preprint. 
  • Researchers can find reviews and critiques of COVID-19 related preprints on review sites and overlay journals, including NCRC from Johns Hopkins, and Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 from MIT. Generally, while review sites link to preprints, preprint servers do not link to reviews.
  • Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview offers a browser plug-in that alerts readers to reviews of preprints: for instance, this September preprint has a review. 
  • SciScore uses AI to detect indicators of rigor and reproducibility in a manuscript. Follow @SciScoreReports for updates on COVID-19 related preprints evaluated with this tool. 

I found a preprint and reviewed the discussion around it. Now, how do I cite it?

  • Since the rapid dissemination of COVID-19 research via preprints, the need for clarity in citing preprints in reference lists has grown more urgent. Where possible, citations should include the version and preprint status; this is specified in Vancouver Style. Some preprint servers provide no version control, though others, for instance those using OSF Preprints or Jupyter Notebooks, do include version control. 
  • The DOI should also be included, as well as the server name, to assist readers in identifying and locating the preprint cited. Note, medRxiv provides versioning and DOIs. If you cannot find the preprint‘s DOI, search the preprint title in crossref.org or preprint servers.
  • For more information on citing preprints and potential problems, see this Scholarly Kitchen blog post.

What should I be aware of when reading and citing preprints?

  • Across the research landscape, there is an increasing focus on transparency and reproducibility, encouraging authors to share interim research products, including preprints, datasets, and computer code. (Note: Data sharing is mandated for federal grant recipients.) Locating and analyzing research data and code may be especially important when appraising preprints, which have not undergone peer review. Preprint servers have varying abilities and infrastructure to link to research data. Read the full text of the manuscript to find mention of, or, better yet, links to, datasets and code on repositories, such as figshare, dryad, GitHub, and Zenodo. You can look for subject data repositories on the website re3data.org. Often, datasets link to preprints, but preprints do not reliably link out to the data. 
  • Before citing a preprint, check if the research has been published in a peer-reviewed article since the preprint’s posting. While some servers link to published articles, there may be a time lag or other technical reasons that prevent automatic linking. Authors are encouraged to ensure links are posted from preprints to articles, but this is not 100% reliable. Try searching the preprint title (though titles may change between posting and publishing) in PubMed, Google Scholar, or CrossRef to check for a published, peer-reviewed article.
  • And remember, any changes to the standard of care need to be based on authoritative evidence. Do not change guidelines based on evidence found only in a preprint. https://blogs.gwu.edu/himmelfarb/2020/06/17/revisiting-medrxiv-in-the-age-of-covid-19/ 


For more information about preprints in general and to learn how and where to upload a preprint of your own: see the Himmelfarb preprint guide.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/hNe0RsaZDI4nfO9ouPAXzlpfaec-HK2SebQXkrNFq5XJFNVQHWrIQUxHIVQ_9POopoRzp6hpMNT47ulQBPMMAY9WOkKnALN77ks4rZ3sx9FRIr-xO6mKqzmUHluV_Vtj6YHrExRR

Published on

In a statement released on October 29, the NIH announced the development of a new policy on data management and sharing for all researchers receiving NIH funding.  The policy will require researchers to submit a data management plan as part of the budget justification section of their NIH funding application.  The overall goal of this new policy is to ensure that data resulting from NIH-funded research is made accessible to the public.  To achieve this, data management plans will require potential funding recipients to describe how they will responsibly organize, protect, and maintain research data while making it freely and easily accessible to the public.

   This policy will not go into effect until January 25, 2023, allowing NIH-funded researchers time to bring their data management practices in line with the new policy.


   Need help developing a data management plan?  Feel free to contact the Himmelfarb Library’s Research Support Librarian, Tom Harrod (tph@gwu.edu) for assistance in this process.  

Published on

Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library is happy to provide access to the Open Textbook Library (OTL), a repository of nearly 800 open access e-books. The OTL is provided by the Open Education Network, a collection of approximately 120 higher education institutions, including the Washington Research Library Consortium, of which Himmelfarb Library is a member. The OTL seeks to provide a comprehensive repository for open access textbooks and is continually adding more titles from its partner institutions. 

An open textbook is a print or digital text with an open copyright license that makes it free for anyone to use. They are usually written by faculty authors or other educators who aren’t finding the book they need and take it upon themselves to create a new resource. Authors can receive financial compensation for their work, either with a grant from their university or by open access providers, such as OpenStax. However, the most common return is less financial and more about “the satisfaction and convenience of having a textbook that’s tailor-made for your course, and affordable for your students” (Schmieder, 2018).  

Open Access has no bearing on the quality of information presented. As the Open Education Network puts it, they “leave quality judgements to faculty with expertise in the subject area.” Faculty interested in using open textbooks should review them the same way they do any other potential textbook. In addition to undergoing review during publication, the Open Education Network also invites faculty to review open textbooks. 

In addition, the Open Education Network provides resources for students, faculty, librarians, and others who are interested in writing their own open textbooks. They also offer publishing support for patrons of member institutions (including Himmelfarb patrons!). 

Free and electronic open access resources are especially valuable right now, at a time when physical access to libraries is restricted for so many, and when buying textbooks may be a financial strain for students, faculty, and institutions. Open access resources can help fill the gaps where existing resources are lacking. 

The OTL includes a broad range of subject areas, including Medicine, Engineering, Education, and  Law. You can view the health science titles here or view the full collection here. The books can also be found in the Himmelfarb catalog. You can consult the Open Education Network’s FAQ page for more details. If you have additional questions about the quality of open access resources, or how to obtain OAR beyond the Open Textbook Library, you may contact imroberts@gwu.edu. 

References

Open Education Network website. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/faq 

Schmieder, E. 4 Questions authors are asking about open textbooks. Textbook & Academic Authors Association website. August 21, 2018. Accessed October 21, 2020. 

4 Questions authors are asking about open textbooks

Published on

ORCID iD. Scopus Author Profile. NIH Biosketch. Web of Science ResearcherID...

Keeping up with your author profile in numerous systems can be a daunting task. Have you ever changed your name? Published under variant forms of your name? Moved from one university to another? If any of these are true, chances are that you may have multiple author profiles in multiple databases. This means that when people look at these systems, they don’t necessarily see the full scope of your research history and scholarly output. Let the Himmelfarb Library help you with our new Researcher Profile Audit Service!

What is a Researcher Profile? A researcher profile is a system that connects you to your scholarly output. There are a wide range of research profile systems--there are author identifier systems such as ORCiD, ScieENcv, Scopus, and Web of Science’s ResearcherID; there are search engines with author profiles such as Google Scholar; and there are social networks for researchers such as Mendeley and ResearchGate. Having accurate researcher profiles is important for differentiating your works from other authors with similar names, helping you to comply with funder requirements, and demonstrating your impact for promotion and tenure purposes. For more information, explore our guide on Researcher Profiles. 

Why Might I Need an Audit? Navigating the multitude of systems can be challenging. Many researchers begin the process of setting up profiles, but then abandon the process due to a lack of time. Others have changed institutional affiliations and need to have profiles merged. And still others would benefit from having profiles linked in order to maximize time management. An audit of your researcher profiles in prominent systems can help to differentiate you from other researchers, allow you to quickly demonstrate your impact for professional advancement, and help you to build a professional network. 

How We Can Help If you are a faculty member or student with the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the Milken Institute School of Public Health, or the School of Nursing at the George Washington University, the Himmelfarb Library would like help you take control of your researcher profile using prominent systems such as ScieENcv, ORCiD, Scopus, and Web of Science’s ResearcherID. We can help you with setting up profiles, merging multiple profiles within the same system, and more. We can also assist to ensure that your profiles are complete and help to streamline the process of maintaining your profile.

Interested? Submit a Consultation Request and we'll get back to you within 2-3 business days

Viewing Message: 1 of 1.
 Notice

This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. Visit GW’s Website Privacy Notice to learn more about how GW uses cookies.