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It’s that time of the year again, a time for trick or treating and a time for treats, sweets, and ghoulish get-togethers with friends and family.Even if you do not participate in Halloween, or are planning to spend this time at home, there are bound to be some fantastic autumnal dishes for you! 

If you are looking for a cheesy and spooky appetizer, this Mummy Brie wheel will be sure to lure your choice of cracker in! If cheese is not your thing, you can always show off your skills by making these adorable Halloween sushi balls! Additionally these Beer Battered Squash Rings might even change a picky eater’s mind on squash! 

On a budget? This Sweet & Salty Halloween mix will save both time and recipe. If peanuts are a problem, feel free to substitute with cashews, almonds or any nut of your choice.

For an entree, how about these green Monster Wraps? These are sure to be a hit with olive fans, and you can fill with your own favorite fillings! If you are looking to impress, this Seared Salmon with Sweet Potatoes is not only perfect for the season, but also a recipe that is pleasantly low in calories. Vegetarians, why not try this tempting Vegetarian Chili? It is guaranteed to keep you warm on a brisk Autumn day.  

For a sweet treat, why not compliment your Coffee or Latte with a flakey Pumpkin Hand Pie? Simple and easy to make, these very orange Candy Corn Cupcakes would be a fantastic addition to any party get together. Lastly, for those who celebrate Dia De Los Muertos, why not test your skill at decorating on these gorgeous Day of the Dead cookies

Whatever the occasion may be, Halloween or simply a time to celebrate a bountiful Autumn, we wish you a safe and joyful October, and can’t wait to assist you in your studies in November! 

Medical librarians have been important advocates for health literacy, so it’s appropriate that we celebrate the profession the same month we recognize the importance of health literacy. Healthy People 2030 updated their definition of health literacy to include both personal and organizational health literacy:

  • Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.
  • Organizational health literacy is the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.

The National Library of Medicine and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) play a key role in delivering health literacy programs and information resources. MedlinePlus piloted in 1998 as a consumer health information website. It provides a trusted, evidence-based information resource that includes resources in Spanish and over 40 other languages on medical topics, tests, drug information, and genetics. Health check tools including calculators and questionnaires are available.  MedlinePlus Connect is a free service that allows linkage of patient information to the EHR.

Medical librarians support health literacy through programs like InformationRx services that provide tailored patient education materials assembled by librarians to patients at the request of attending physicians. Medical librarians also do outreach initiatives, like train the trainer programs for community lay health workers, frequently supported by NNLM grants. The Medical Library Association provides consumer health information specialization training for librarians who provide health information services to the public.

Medical librarians have been active in the fight against the Covid infodemic. At the Eskind Biomedical Research Library, Vanderbilt University, librarians supported nursing staff to make sure they had easy access to the most up to date information when communicating with patients and they did outreach to nurse educators and patient advocacy groups. The Medical Library Association maintains a Covid-19 Resource Guide for Patients and the Public.

Looking for quality consumer health information resources? Himmelfarb Library has a Consumer Health Resources Guide including patient education materials from AccessMedicine and ClinicalKey for Nursing, consumer health websites, and drug information. Need more help?  Contact our reference staff at himmelfarb@gwu.edu or chat us!

Walker P. (2021). The library's role in countering infodemics. Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 109(1), 133–136. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2021.1044

Whitney, W., Keselman, A., & Humphreys, B. (2017). Libraries and Librarians: Key Partners for Progress in Health Literacy Research and Practice. Studies in health technology and informatics, 240, 415–432 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5724359/

Image of a virus with a syringe injecting a vaccine.
Photo by Ivan Diaz on Unsplash

With the development of COVID-19 vaccines, there has been a renewed interest in all things vaccine related and vaccine development has taken center stage on the global stage. In support of vaccine research, Springer Nature has compiled key resources on the past, present and future of vaccine research in a new Evolution of Vaccines resource that is available to you through Himmelfarb Library! Simply request access to these resources by completing a short form, and you will have access to these fantastic resources. 

In the Past: Laying Down the Groundwork section of this resource, you will find a collection of historical perspectives on breakthroughs in vaccines throughout history, a timeline of vaccine milestones, a poster presentation of the history of antibodies, webinar recordings, infographics, and ebooks on vaccines. Learn about the origins of vaccines in the mid-1500s in China and the 18th century accounts in India, the development of the smallpox vaccine, the first live attenuated vaccines, to the development of TB vaccine and tetanus vaccine and much more in the Nature Milestones in Vaccines of this resource.

In the Present: The Latest Developments section of this resource, you will find case studies, blog posts, videos, review articles, and article collections all related to current vaccine developments. In the Future: What We Can Expect section of this resource, you will find review articles, perspectives, podcasts, blog posts, and article collections that explore how vaccines might progress in the future. 

Also included in this collection are two short videos that do a fantastic job of explaining how vaccines work and how vaccines are developed:

How Vaccines Work

How Vaccines are Developed:

To learn more about the past, present, and future of vaccine research, explore The Evolution of Vaccines: Insights into the Past, Present and Future.

Are you looking for ways to increase the impact and visibility of an upcoming publication? Would you like to use social media to get the word out, but aren’t sure how to do so effectively? One option is to include a ‘Tweetable Abstract’ in your paper’s abstract when you submit it for publication. In today’s world, Twitter can be a fantastic tool to help promote your research. Twitter can help you share your research with other researchers, journalists, decision makers, and the general public.

A tweetable abstract is a one or two line summary of your research, 280 characters or less, that communicates the main conclusion or the key message of your paper. Many publishers are now asking authors to include tweetable abstracts alongside traditional abstracts so the publisher can promote your article online. Tweetable abstracts are even showing up as part of article abstracts in databases such as PubMed and Scopus!

Screenshot of record from PubMed that includes a tweetable abstract.

Once readers find your article, this tweetable abstract makes it easy for them to share your work on Twitter, thus expanding your potential audience even further. Here are some tips and tricks to help you create a tweetable abstract:

  • Keep it short! Twitter has a 280 character limit (characters - not words). Your abstract must be within this limit. That said, when it comes to Twitter, less is more. Shorter tweets tend to have more engagement with users.
  • Communicate the main conclusion or the key message of your paper. Here’s an example of a Tweet that does this from JAMA:
Screenshot of a JAMA tweet:

"Randomized trial among patients with in-hospital cardiac arrest found that administration of vasopressin and methylprednisolone, compared with placebo, significantly increased the likelihood of return of spontaneous circulation"
  • Consider using a leading question to attract interest. You can provide a short answer in your tweet if you have space. Here’s an example of a tweetable question based on an article from the Journal of Advanced Nursing Twitter account:
Screenshot of a tweet from the Journal of Advanced Nursing:

"How can we ensure future nurses have the skills & knowledge to give #EquitableHealthCare?"
  • Avoid jargon - a tweetable abstract should be approachable, not intimidating.
  • Use relevant tags and hashtags to increase the number of people who see your tweet.
  • Turn buzzwords into hashtags.
  • Be strategic about when you post your tweetable abstract. Post it during times you know people are active on Twitter. Avoid posting in the middle of the night. 
  • Include your Twitter handle in your tweetable abstract! This will allow others to reach out to you about your work. Here’s a good example of an author’s Twitter Handle being used in a tweet by the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH):
Screenshot of tweet from American Journal of Public Health:

"A study by @ajmilammdphd and @DrKMSimon et al., suggests a health data disparity - the excessive classification of opioid-involved overdose deaths (OODs) is likely attributable to the race/ethnicity of the decedent."

Want more information on how to create effective tweetable abstracts? Watch this short video from the Society for Conservation Biology to learn more about content, using hashtags, and including your Twitter Handle in your tweetable abstract.

Evidence-Based Healthcare Day 2021: October 20

In honor of World Evidence-Based Healthcare Day, held annually on October 20, we wanted to share some tools to help you keep up with the evidence!

Point-of-care resources like DynaMed synthesize evidence on conditions, management, patient evaluation, and other clinically relevant topics. PubMed searches retrieve original research articles, from case studies to meta-analyses. McMaster Health Knowledge Refinery (HKR) provides tools to search pre-appraised research articles and be alerted to the most relevant and impactful studies. 

McMaster Health Knowledge Refinery (HKR) helps practitioners stay up-to-date on the latest, high-quality, clinically relevant, and practice-changing evidence in fields, including medicine, rehabilitation, and knowledge translation. HKR research associates select articles reporting on treatments, diagnostics, and prognostic studies, as well as systematic reviews, from 100-plus journals, including core titles like JAMA, NEJM, and The Lancet

During critical appraisal, research associates tag articles by type, purpose, population, and clinical specialty, to improve findability. For quality assurance, clinicians check these data, as well as index terms added by indexers. 

While metadata helps users find and filter for relevant articles, the added value comes into play in the McMaster Online Rating of Evidence (MORETM). Practicing physicians, nurses, and therapists evaluate articles for 1) relevance and 2) newsworthiness. Once at least three practitioners evaluate the article, ratings are averaged, and articles receiving scores greater than four out of seven in both categories are added to the Premium LiteratUre Service (PLUS) database. 

Users can create alerts to learn of new articles meeting selected notification criteria, i.e. thresholds for relevance and newsworthiness, specific disciplines and populations, etc. 

To set alerts, users need a free account. Then, they can set alert preferences, create custom dashboards, and identify GW Himmelfarb as their PubMed outside tool https://www.evidencealerts.com/Account/MyProfile#OutsideTool, which links to Himmelfarb content via the Get It @ Himmelfarb button on PubMed. 

EvidenceAlerts is one of many tools to help you stay up-to-date with the latest relevant and newsworthy research in your field. 

Find more tools for keeping up with the literature. 

Consult with a librarian for help setting up tables of contents or search alerts.

And don’t forget to critically appraise the research!

Would your study of anatomical structures benefit from a 3D rendering that you can scale and rotate? Could a collection of infographics aid you as you master illness scripts?

Focused Anatomy Modules

Image source: AccessMedicine

AccessMedicine, your online gateway to Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, has recently released 300+ systems-based anatomy modules that take you on a visual journey inside the human body. These modules focus on common medical conditions, offering 3D views of affected areas of the body with the functionality to rotate, pan, and zoom. Labels identify various parts of the anatomical structure under study, and a brief text description of the condition appears to the left, with a link to a relevant chapter from AccessMedicine library of medical textbooks.  Users can highlight and isolate structural elements, as well as read descriptions of their structure and function. The program includes a drawing tool as well as an option to download the image with your annotations.

Infographic Guide to Medicine

screenshot of IBS infographic
Image source: AccessMedicine

AccessMedicine has also introduced a series of infographics that address common conditions. These infographics, also organized by system, often reflect the template you use when creating illness scripts. Their graphical layout, with illustrations and a spare use of text, can help you with recall and retention.

How to Access

AccessMedicine is available on the library’s homepage under Popular Resources and is accessible from on- and off-campus locations. These modules are featured on the AccessMedicine homepage.

Today we would like to highlight just a few of the many men and women who have changed the health sciences professions.

Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, PhD, RN (1920-2010): Changing the face of nursing

Ildaura Murillo-Rohde who, after witnessing many hispanic communities being treated by mostly non-hispanic providers, was dismayed at what she saw. Determined to change this,, she created the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) in 1975. 

“I saw that I was the only Hispanic nurse who was going to Washington to work with the federal government, review research and education grants, etc.,” Murillo-Rohde later noted. “I looked behind me and thought: ‘Where are my people?’”

Not only did she create the National Association of Hispanic Nurses, Dr. Rodhe was also the first Hispanic dean of nursing at NYU.   Read more about Dr. Rohde’s accomplishments: 

José Celso Barbosa, MD (1857-1921): the “father of the Puerto Rican statehood movement.”

José Celso Barbosa was no stranger to discrimination. Despite this, his determination did not falter in his attempts to help others. 

In 1875, Barbosa left his home of Puerto Rico to New York City. After a brush with pneumonia, he became interested in the field of medicine. Unfortunately, university officials rejected his application, stating that they would not accept students of color. 

Undeterred, Barbosa graduated from the University of Michigan as the first Puerto Rican to receive a Medical degree in the United States. 

He continued to care for soldiers during the Spanish - American war and through the Red Cross he was able to treat many poor patients in Puerto Rico. He articulated that there was a need for employer based health care insurance, which was a radical idea at the time. 

Later in his career, Barbosa founded a party that urged U.S. statehood for Puerto Rico. For that leadership, Barbosa has been dubbed the “father of the Puerto Rican statehood movement.”  Read more about Dr. Barbosa’s accomplishments:

In Washington D.C. and across the country today is Indigenous People’s Day, a holiday that recognizes, honors and celebrates Indigenous people, cultures and history.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day was first proposed in 1977 during the United Nations International Conference Discrimination against Indigenous People in the Americas. “Indigenous Peoples’ Day recognizes that Native people are the first inhabitants of the Americas, including the lands that later became the United States of America. And it urges Americans to rethink history.” The first state to adopt Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a recognized holiday was South Dakota in 1990 and since then more states have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day or celebrate the two holidays together. The movement to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day is still ongoing as more states, towns and localities draft and adopt resolutions to recognize this holiday in lieu of Columbus Day. On October 8th, 2021, President Biden signed a proclamation in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021, stating “On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, our Nation celebrates the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples, recognizes their inherent sovereignty, and commits to honoring the Federal Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations.”

As Indigenous Peoples’ Day becomes more widely recognized across the country, many states and towns hold educational and celebratory events where people can learn more about Indigenous people and tribes. Here are a few ways in which you can observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day this year:

  1. Read a book written by an Indigenous author- The list of published books, articles and other sources written by Indigenous people grows longer every year. “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” and it’s companion book “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People” are texts that offer a different perspective on the pre- and post-colonial Americas. The books also offer a list of citations and sources at the end if you’re interested in learning more about a specific period or topic in Indigenous history. If you’re interested in reading Indigenous fiction, check out “Black Sun” by Rebecca Roanhorse, “There, There” by Tommy Orange, or select a book from Penguin Random House’s list of “Must-Read Books by Indigenous Authors”. 
  2. Attend an event- The National Museum of the American Indian is holding an online event titled ‘Youth in Action: Indigenous Peoples’ Day-Black-Indigenous Youth Advancing Social Justice’ today, October 11th, at 1 pm, with an on-demand video available for viewing after the event. And in November, the museum will hold a week-long Native Cinema Showcase with feature films, short films and panel discussions. The American Indian College Fund held an Indigenous Peoples’ Day concert on October 10th and the recording is now available for viewing. For an updated list of virtual and in person events, check out the ‘Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day’ list from Indian Country Today! 
  3. Learn about Indigenous history and culture- There are two branches for the National Museum of the American Indian, one in Washington D.C., while the other is in New York. The D.C. location is open Wednesdays-Sundays from 10 am-5:30 pm. But if you’re unable to visit the physical location, the museum’s website offers virtual exhibits and educational resources. Start with the handout ‘Unlearning Columbus Day Myths’ or explore the Native Knowledge 360 learning module, which helps students and educators examine their approach to learning and understanding Native history. You can also search their collection with their online database. The virtual collection is divided into several different categories to help you refine your search or explore at your own pace and see if you come across a fascinating new piece of information.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a great opportunity to reflect on a new perspective to American history. It is also a time to think about Indigenous futures and how Indigenous culture impacts our society. No matter how you decide to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day, recognize that learning history from a different point of view is one step in which we can create a more equitable and fair environment for all.

Months or maybe years ago you set up an ORCID. That’s a great first step to having a unique identifier for your research and work. It allows others to find, link to, and credit you for your work even if you have a common name. Some major scientific publishers and funders now require an ORCID to publish with them or submit grant proposals.

ORCiD logo

Setting up your ORCID is just the first step (if you haven’t taken that step yet, here’s how!) Your ORCID needs care and feeding to maximize the benefits to you. Here’s some tips for keeping your ORCID up to date and maximizing its usefulness:

  1. Make sure to add all the variants for how your name appears in works.  Do you sometimes use two initials and sometimes use just one? Do you sometimes use a shortened version of your first name (ex. Jon for Jonathan). Make sure all these versions get added to your account - here’s how.
  1. Published something new or gotten a new grant? Add it!  You can link your ScopusID (here’s a brief tutorial) or figshare to automatically add new works to your ORCID account. 
  1. Add your ORCID to My NCBI or your SciENcv Biosketch and let your ORCID account keep those accounts up to date.
  1. Include your ORCID on your CV, email signature, LinkedIn, ResearchGate and Twitter profiles. It allows others to easily see all of your works.
  1. Need a quick print record of your work? Generate a printable CV using your ORCID URL plus “print”, i.e. https://orcid.org/your_ORCID_here/print

For more information on creating and maintaining ORCIDs, check out our Research Guide or watch our YouTube tutorial.

Himmelfarb Library has a variety of resources to help you publish your research confidently. From citation assistance to avoiding publishing with a predatory publisher, there are many considerations when preparing to publish your research. Himmelfarb Library can help you identify a reputable source and navigate the publication process. Make sure to check out the guides, videos, tutorials and reference services available through Himmelfarb Library!

Research and Publishing Resources:
● Resources for Early Career Researchers Guide:
https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/EarlyCareerResearchers
● Scholarly Publishing Guide: https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/scholarlypub
● Predatory Publishing Guide: https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/PredatoryPublishing
● APA Citation Guide: https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/APA
● AMA Citation Guide: https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/AMA
● Case Reports: https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/casereports
● Copyright: https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/copyright
● Measuring Scholarly Research Impact:
https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/JudgingYourImpact
● Researcher Profile Audit Service: https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/ProfileAudit
 
Services: Researcher Profile Audit Service (RPAS) 
https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/ProfileAudit
 
Video Tutorials:
https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/scholarlypub/video
 
Other assistance:
-Journal Selection assistance (on request; shoover@gwu.edu or tph@gwu.edu ) 
-Publication metrics assistance (on request; shoover@gwu.edu or tph@gwu.edu )