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Starting fall of 2020, GW staff, faculty, and students have free digital access to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. This new access is available in response to the GW Student Association’s request for better access to legitimate and reliable news sources. 

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For the New York Times, users must create a NYT account with their GW email address. Create a password for the account that is different from your NetID password. You will get access to digital content via the website and the New York Times app. All content is available except for NYT Cooking and Crosswords which require separate subscriptions.

For the Washington Post , access is only available via the website, not the app. There is no need to set up a separate account.  As long as you are signed in with your NetID on the device and browser you’re currently using you should get passed through to Post content.  

For the Wall Street Journal , users must create an account with their GWmail address and identify whether they are a student or staff/faculty. Students will need to provide a graduation date. Again, do not use your NetID password for this account. Use a different password when setting it up. The account provides access to both website and app content for the Journal.

There is a GW Libraries page with more information, including what to do if you already have a subscription to one of these publications that’s linked to your GWmail address, and contacts for technical assistance.

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.

Halloween nights conjure memories of sweet indulgence and sugar hangover - candied apples, candy corn, candy, candy, candy!!  Need a break from all the calories? Here’s a few healthier options for celebrating that don’t take the treat out of the holiday.

After you’ve carved the pumpkin, clean the seeds and roast them. Try Cinnamon and Sugar Roasted Pumpkin Seeds from Simple Comfort Food.  Or if you prefer a savory kick, check out Cajun Spiced Roasted Pumpkin Seeds from allrecipes.com.

Cinnamon and Sugar Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Celebrating at home with the kids this year? Here’s a few kid-friendly recipes to make the night special and add some wholesomeness to the sugar rush.

Peanut Butter Caramel Popcorn from myrecipes.com reduces the sugar load from traditional caramel popcorn balls and packs a punch of flavor with peanut butter, almonds, and vanilla.

An option for popcorn that doesn't involve pb or nuts - Halloween Bony Fingers from University of Nebraska Lincoln Food. Gather candy corn, popcorn, see through gloves and ribbon and assembling is a simple activity for the kids. Just make sure the gloves are powder free and food safe.

Halloween Bony Fingers

Putting together Apple Monster Bites from crayonsandcravings.com is another way to involve kids in pre-party prep. PB free variations on this recipe are available at Two Healthy Kitchens and HGTV. They’re super cute and healthy to eat when complete!

Apple Monster Bites

The easiest of healthy snacks are Tangy Pumpkins from Woman’s Day. Peel oranges or clementines and insert a small celery stick in the top for a stem.

The grown ups will enjoy Crud Ités with Green Slime dip, also from Woman’s Day. Another more hearty dip option is Chicken and Garlic Vampire dip from Cooking Light.

Got extra candy (of course!!)? Use those caramels, mini chocolate bars, M&Ms or Reeses Pieces in Chewy Caramel Mystery Cookies from Martha Stewart. Sadly, not low cal, but worth the treat!

Himmelfarb Library is allowing most books in the reserves collection to check out for a week. Reserves books are located behind the Circulation Desk and most titles directly support classroom learning and board study. In addition, some materials that were previously on reserves have been moved to the basement level stacks and now checkout for three weeks and are eligible for up to two renewals.

You can check the location of physical materials in Health Information @ Himmelfarb search tool. Change the default search from Online Access to Himmelfarb Catalog as shown below.  

Materials supporting the first and second year MD program are available in a collection that can be browsed and searched

When you’ve located a title you want to borrow, click the title to open the full record and then check under Locations to see where copies are located and if they’re currently available to check out. Courtyard pickup services are available to Himmelfarb patrons that do not currently have access to the physical library.

By signing in, you’ll see the option to request Courtyard pickup services as shown below.

Faculty are encouraged to make as many materials available to students in electronic form as possible. See more information on Himmelfarb’s reserves services for faculty or contact mlbrsv@gwu.edu for assistance.

 

A Special Collections gallery is now available in Health Information @ Himmelfarb, the library’s catalog and discovery service.  You can now browse through special collections contents or search easily within a collection.

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To access, click the Special Collections option from the top Health Information @ Himmelfarb menu as shown below. 

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The following collections and resource lists are currently available:

Note that some collection items may not appear in the gallery due to current quarantine restrictions. 

To search within a collection, use the Search inside the collection button at the top of the resource list.  You can also change the default sort using the Sort Items button. 

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To see availability and location of collection items, open the full record and check the Get It area. 

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Many collections include electronic content. Healthy Living collection books and the Humanities and Health collection are located in the alcove on the first floor. Equipment and the Historical Collections are kept behind the first floor Circulation Desk.

To inquire about collections availability or learn about borrowing options while library access is restricted, contact the Himmelfarb Circulation Desk at mlbcir@gwu.edu or 202-994-2962.

As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the rise in many US states, here are some trusted sources for tracking the situation in the DMV.

Departments of Public Health:

DC Coronavirus Data - Includes daily numbers tested, positives, and lives lost. Scroll down for the DC Re-Opening Tracker and data by ward, neighborhood, and demographic break outs. Tables include data for cases, quarantine and deaths of public safety personnel. Check the Press Releases area on the home page for a detailed daily summary of Coronavirus Data including trends graphs for transmission and positivity rates, and contact tracing data. Total Positives Map by Ward image for Washington DC

DC Hospital Status Data - Includes daily ICU, ventilator, and bed capacity, COVID hospitalization counts and total patient counts.

Maryland Coronavirus Disease 2019 Outbreak and Data Dashboard - Cases and testing by county, ICU and Acute bed capacities, percentage positive rates and testing volume 7 day averages since March 2020. Cases and deaths by age, gender, race and ethnicity.

Maryland COVID-19 in Congregate Facility Settings (Nursing Homes) - Staff and resident cases and deaths reported by county and facilities.

Virginia Department of Health COVID-19 Dashboard - Includes total counts and graphic representations of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Demographics tab provides breakouts by age, sex, race and ethnicity. Interactive localities tab provides options for counts or rates, and bar chart generation by health district and locality. Outbreaks tab shows outbreak data by setting/facility type, including long term care and correctional facilities. MIS-C tab tracks cases of Multisymptom Inflammatory Syndrome in Children by health district.

Virginia Department of Health Data Insights - Includes case and testing data by zip code, COVID-like illness visits to EDs by health regions, and modeling data from the UVA COVID-19 Model.  

Other Sources:

COVID-19 Watcher (Cincinnati Children's & University of Cincinnati) - Tool merges county-level COVID-19 data from The New York Times with sources from the U.S. Census Bureau, mapping the data by metropolitan area.

COVID Community Vulnerability Map -  Drill down into communities by zipcode or manipulate the map to view populations most vulnerable for severe outcomes if infected with a COVID-like virus and the socioeconomic factors driving that risk.

Virginia Hospital COVID-19 Dashboard - Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association provides counts of confirmed cases and pui currently hospitalized, ICU beds and ventilators in use, and hospitals with supply shortages.

State Health Workforce Estimator - From the Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at GW, it provides state-level data for considering different strategic approaches to ensure sufficient heath workforce for COVID-19. A Contact Tracing Workforce Estimator is also available.

Washington Post Known Coronavirus Deaths and Cases in DC, Maryland and Virginia - Deaths, cases, daily and cumulative counts for each state, daily deaths per 100,000 residents, deaths by county and city, and hospitalizations by state.

Additional monitoring sites, data dashboards and calculators are available on the COVID-19 Research Guide Epidemiology page. The Health Care Resources page includes capacity calculators and models for hospital utilization. Check the Literature, Database, and Data Resources page for open data sets.

After Himmelfarb Library closed its physical space, we made changes to Health Information @ Himmelfarb to make searching for electronic content easier.  The default search mode was switched from Articles + Himmelfarb Catalog to Online Access.  The online access search limits items retrieved to those available full-text online. This includes article, book chapter, and e-book content, as well as some streaming media.

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Searchers can still search physical content by switching the search mode to any of the “catalog” options:

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Requesting holds on books and Consortium Loan request options are turned off until Himmelfarb and other Washington Research Library Consortium libraries reopen. Library users can continue to request items that can be sent digitally through our Documents2Go service.

Have you ever wanted to keep filters you applied in a search active throughout a search session, or easily remove all of them? Now you can! A new enhancement allows setting and keeping multiple filters active with “Remember all filters” or removing all with “Reset filters”. These options become available at the top of the left column menu whenever filters are applied.

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If you have questions about Health Information @ Himmelfarb or need assistance with searching, contact Himmelfarb’s Information Desk staff!

The expanded Research Guide is a one stop for the latest health care and public health focused news, research, literature resources, and clinical guidelines on COVID-19.  It also includes the latest University news and resources for the GW health care community.

The News page includes breaking news, regularly updated newsfeeds like Kaiser Health News and NEJM’s Physician First Watch, and podcasts. Check out JAMA’s regular Q&A’s on COVID-19 for CME credit and CDC’s weekly COCA calls.

The Literature, Database and Data Resources page has portals developed by trusted publishers like BMJ, Springer Nature, and Wiley, and targeted search services like NLM’s LitCovid. Datasets include those that populate Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Dashboard and sequence data from NLM Genbank.

Additional pages support clinical, laboratory, and infection control services, and resources for specific medical specialties. Among these are Airway & Management guidelines by Dr. Jeffrey Berger, GW Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, and a Critical Care Primer on resources for non-ICU clinicians called on to support ICU patients, developed by Laura Abate at Himmelfarb.  Also access Master Protocols from University of Washington and UCSF here.

Public health and emergency management resources include tracking maps and dashboards, as well as critical resources from CDC and WHO (daily situation summaries and guidance). State and local public health department COVID-19 information and emergency management agencies are also listed.

The guide will be updated regularly and we encourage you to share any resources we’ve missed by emailing himmelfarb@gwu.edu.  As always, our team of health sciences librarians is here to assist you with using any of these resources or other information needs at this time. Email us or chat us Monday-Thursday from 8:30am-8pm and Friday 8:30am-5pm.

Most of us are aware of the critical information resources on COVID-19 provided by the CDC and WHO. Many trusted publishers and literature search services in the health sciences now have devoted sites with resources for health care and public health professionals. These resources and more are now available on Himmelfarb’s Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Research Guide.

Here’s a sampling of resources on the guide:

Along with these resources you can find trusted sources for news, clinical guidelines, drug trials, health department information, and protective measures for health care professionals on the Research Guide

Do you know of resources not included on our guide that you would like to recommend? Send them to himmelfarb@gwu.edu or jlt@gwu.edu.

In response to the University’s move to online classes and some student populations being off-campus during that time, Himmelfarb Library has extended due dates for print materials coming due March 14 through April 5th. Those materials are now due by end of day Monday, April 6th, 2020. Please contact the library’s circulation managers at 202-994-2962 or mlbcir@gwu.edu if you need to extend due dates beyond then or have other questions about borrowing physical materials.Himmelfarb Library Circulation Desk

We expect that Documents2Go interlibrary loan services for digital book chapters and articles will continue as normal. Delivery of some physical materials from other libraries may be delayed as they have closures or reductions in service. Contact document delivery staff at mlbdoc@gwu.edu or 202-994-2860 with any questions about borrowing materials from other libraries.

Himmelfarb Library will remain open 24/7 with service desks open regular hours until further notice.