• Director's Desk
• Faculty Profile - Arnold Schwartz, MD, Professor of Pathology and Surgery
• Emerging Technologies - Instructional Support
• Tool of the Quarter - A Researcher's Dream Database...Scopus
• Meet Kathy Lyons, Himmelfarb's Circulation Desk Manager

Today's students generally work in a dynamic, electronic environment. They search the literature online, crunch statistics in the cloud, collaborate on projects through shared online spaces, use social networking tools to stay in touch with each other, and read most of their textbooks, lecture notes, and source materials online - often with portable devices. All of this behavior is so easy and natural that few students stop to think about the professional impact of their activities in the electronic environment. Recently, the Library has collaborated with the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, and the Health Sciences Programs to present a series of workshops on e-professionalism. These workshops are designed to heighten awareness of maintaining personal and patient privacy, differentiating social and professional behavior, and understanding concepts such as respect for intellectual property.

The Library also worked with the School of Public Health and Health Services to incorporate many of these concepts into its recent professionalism workshop. One aspect of all of these workshops that has been particularly successful is the use of real life stories related to e-professionalism. As we all work to improve future workshops, I would like to ask our readers to send their insights to our workshop coordinator, Gisela Butera, at gisela@gwu.edu. What tips and thoughts would you share with students about creating a professional presence online? Do you have examples of professional blogs or websites that you would like to tell students about? Thank you in advance for sharing. Have a wonderful spring.

Himmelfarb Library continues this feature in our newsletter that lets us become better acquainted with our friends and colleagues in the Medical Center. In this issue we learn more about Arnold Schwartz, MD, Professor of Pathology and Surgery.

Tell us a little bit about your current position or research/projects.
My academic title in SMHS is Professor of Pathology and Surgery with a joint appointment in SPHHS as Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health. My academic duties are in clinical service as a senior pathologist at GWUH, in formal and informal teaching of medical students and residents, and in collaborative research investigations in pathology, molecular medicine, epidemiology, and occupational and environmental diseases.

What has been your biggest professional challenge?
Professional challenges have evolved with my tenure at GW over the past 29 years as a faculty member. My department has changed markedly over the last two decades and the entire medical center has needed to respond to both internal and external forces and demands. In the current environment of the three separate units of the GWUH, SMHS and the MFA, my current challenges are promoting academic productivity, nurturing junior faculty, and maintaining a sense of humor.

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As online information resources continue to evolve, some resources are creating components specifically designed to support instruction. AccessMedicine and AccessSurgery are two online resources which are developing both interfaces and content for instructors to complement the full-text textbook and audiovisual components already available.

AccessMedicine provides full-text access to more than sixty core health sciences textbook titles including Harrison’s Online, Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Disease, and Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine. In addition to this core textual content, AccessMedicine provides enhanced multimedia materials including video (e.g. Ultrasound-Guided Central Venous Catheter Placement), audio/podcast updates (e.g. Harrison's Online update on ‘An Increased Risk of Stroke Identified with Subclinical Atrial Fibrillation’), and images. AccessMedicine also provides modules specifically designed to support instruction and instructors:

If you are looking for a robust database that is multi-disciplinary and easy to navigate with an intuitive interface - try exploring Scopus.

Launched in 2004, Scopus is a large international research database providing access to abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed literature. It contains over 46 million records to articles in 18,500 peer-reviewed journals including open access journals as well as conference papers. One of the strengths of the database is that it covers 100% of MEDLINE, allowing you to conduct a comprehensive search within medicine and other health-related disciplines. In addition to medical literature, it provides research coverage in the physical, technical, and social sciences.

As Himmelfarb Library's circulation manager, Kathy Lyons has been the face students and faculty most associate with the library for the past seven years. Need to check out a book, pay a fine, use a copier, troubleshoot the pay for print, or find a reserve item? Kathy can, and on a daily basis does, help with all of that. It's a demanding job and the start of a new semester is always busier than normal. This January the addition of a turnstile to control access to the library made it even more so.  Kathy takes it in stride.

A successful circulation manager requires several qualities. One of the more important is the ability to multi-task. Most mornings Kathy is answering phones, while checking in returned materials, while tallying register receipts from the day before. Being good at troubleshooting unruly machines, especially of the printer/photocopier variety, is another major asset. Good humor and patience round out the list. She's heard every excuse on the planet for why a book could not be returned on time. But Kathy still manages to wear an understanding smile and calmly explain the Library's policies after hearing the latest creative reason why Bates Guide... is coming back three weeks late. It's all part of the territory and Kathy's learned to roll with it.

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