Himmelfarb Library Blog - Journals

Trial: Journal Watch

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:14:00 -0500

Himmelfarb Library is pleased to offer you the opportunity to survey a trial of Journal Watch. Journal Watch reviews over 180 scientific and medical journals to present important clinical research findings and insightful commentary.

The following specialties are available as a part of this trial: Aids Clinical Care; Cardiology; Dermatology; Emergency Medicine; Gastroenterology; Infectious Diseases; Neurology; Oncology and Hematology; Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine; Psychiatry; and Women's Health. Journal Watch has also made available an Audio Service, which features Expert Interviews; Clinical Conversations; and the specialty of General Medicine.

You can access Journal Watch content through the Himmelfarb Library Electronic Journals webpage. The trial period runs from now through November 31, 2009. If you have questions or comments, please contact Serials Librarian Steven Brown at mlbswb@gwumc.edu.

Request & Recommend Resources to Himmelfarb

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:16:00 -0500

Himmelfarb Library welcomes recommendations from faculty, students and staff members for materials of all types that we may want to add to our collection. Because of your research, clinical, and educational expertise, you may be aware of an information resource that would be valuable to our collection, and we want to hear from you!

Although the final addition is dependent upon a number of factors, we depend upon your input to identify high-quality materials. Once a request is made, we will review the specific title, balance it with the other titles in the same area, and keep you aware of the final disposition. We will also provide any training necessary.

Please do not hesitate to contact us to make us aware of your request. You can submit requests and recommendations:

Purchase Request Form
By contacting the individual responsible for that area of the collection:

Books: George Paul (202-994-3682, mlbgpp@gwumc.edu)
Journals: Steve Brown (202-994-9756, mlbswb@gwumc.edu)
Audiovisuals: Catherine Harris (202-994-9453, mlbcrh@gwumc.edu)
Software: Alexandra Gomes (202-994-1825, mlbawg@gwumc.edu)
Databases and Electronic Textbooks: Laura Abate (202-994-8570, mlblea@gwumc.edu)

By making your request known to your Library Liaison.

Please help us with your special knowledge as we try to make our collection one of the best available.

Psychiatry Portal: PsychiatryOnline

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:00:00 -0500

PsychiatryOnline provides a single portal to access high-quality psychiatry information for clinical care, research, and education by providing full-text access to the DSM-IV, seven core psychiatry textbooks, six journals, APA practice guidelines, patient education information, and self-assessment quizzes.

PsychiatryOnline provides access to the current edition of the DSM, the DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It also provides full-text access to prior editions of the DSM going all the way back to the original edition. These prior editions are provided for reference only, so information from them won't be included in your search results. In addition to the DSM, PsychiatryOnline provides access to resources to assist you in clinical work:

DSM-IV-TR Handbook of Differential Diagnosis (First, 1st ed.): A succinct reference to help ensure that all important diagnoses that need to be ruled out during a clinical evaluation are considered.
Symptom Index: An important tool for differential diagnosis, taken from DSM-IV-TR Handbook of Differential Diagnosis.
Cases from DSM-IV-TR Casebook and Its Treatment Companion (Spitzer, 4th ed.): Real-world cases that bring DSM diagnostic criteria and treatment to life.

PsychiatryOnline provides access to the current editions of a core set of textbooks published by American Psychiatric Publishing. All textbooks are available in full-text format, and can be searched or browsed for information. PsychiatryOnline's textbook collection includes:

All American Psychiatric Association journals are provided in full-text format beginning with the 1997 issues and continuing through the present. You can also link to the full-text journals from databases including PubMed, MEDLINE, and Scopus. PsychiatryOnline's journal collection includes:

PsychiatryOnline provides full-text access to the APA's practice guidelines. The APA guidelines are intended to provide evidence-based recommendations for the assessment and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

To help patients understand psychiatric diagnoses and therapies, PsychiatryOnline provides access to a set of materials created specifically for patients and their families. PsychiatryOnline's patient educations materials include:

You can use PsychiatryOnline's self-assessment area to evaluate your knowledge of subject matter in different areas. The self-paced, online quizzes are based on content in four of the core online textbooks.

Access to PsychiatryOnline is provided via the Himmelfarb Library website. Remote access is available to all GWUMC faculty, students, and staff; information and instructions for remote access are available from the Library's Off-Campus / Wireless Access webpage. PsychiatryOnline can also be accessed via Blackberry/Treo PDAs/smartphones. Users will automatically be re-directed to a web version which is optimized for viewing on mobile devices.

Before your first mobile visit, you will need to create a free personal "My PsychiatryOnline" account. To create an account, access PsychiatryOnline from the Library's website using a desktop or laptop computer, then click the "My PsychiatryOnline" link and follow the instructions for creating an account. Your "My PsychiatryOnline" username and password will then give you access to the mobile site.

2nd Floor Closed & Quiet Study for Boards

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:53:00 -0500

The 2nd floor of Himmelfarb Library will be closed from Tuesday, July 15 through Monday, August 3 for the final phase of construction.

To provide dedicated quiet space for 4th year medical students studying for boards, the following areas have been reserved for their use:

6 carrels in the Bloedorn Technology Center (3rd Floor Himmelfarb)
Study room/lounge adjacent to the Bloedorn Technology Center (3rd Floor Himmelfarb)
Rooms T2 and T3 (Basement/Terrace Level Himmelfarb)

MS3 Clerkships: Information Resources

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:31:00 -0500

A new web tutorial, MS3 Clerkships: Information Resources, is available for 3rd year medical students which links to information resources relevant to each of their clerkships. The tutorial provides a tab for each clerkship (e.g. OB/GYN, Pediatrics, etc.) and provides links to 'best bets', key textbooks, handheld resources, and research article databases. The tutorial even includes a list of the EBM publication types to help identify high-quality clinical information.

Himmelfarb Library's print and online collections are extensive, so these lists are by no means exhaustive, but indicate promising places to start an information search. As always, if you have questions, please ask us! We're reachable by phone, email, or IM.

Historia Medicinae new GWUMC journal

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:19:00 -0500

GWUMC students have published a new online journal for articles on the history of medicine, Historia Medicinae. The journal is student run and has published its inaugural issue. Historia Medicinae will cover "all periods of medical history from classical and ancient medicine to historical developments in modern medicine."

The first issue includes articles on:

A Desire to Control: Contraception throughout the ages by Megan Evans
An Open Letter to (Future) Clinician-Historians: On the relevance of the American Association for the History of Medicine by Kristen Ann Ehrenberger
An Early Hope of Psychopharmacology: Bromide treatment in turn-of-the-twentieth-century psychiatry by Howard Chiang

Historia Medicinae can also be found on the Library's e-journals webpage beginning on Tuesday, April 28.

Where are Himmelfarb Library's bound journals?

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:55:00 -0500

To create additional study space at Himmelfarb Library, bound journals which were formerly located on the 2nd floor of Himmelfarb Library have moved. Many of these bound journals are now available in on-site storage, while others have been moved to off-site storage. Information on the location of all bound journals can be found by searching the Library Catalog.

If you need an article or issue which is located in on-site storage, simply complete a brief online request form. The volumes which you request will be retrieved from our on-site storage facility and can be picked up at Himmelfarb Library's Reference and Circulation Desk after one hour.

If you need an article which is located in off-site storage, please submit your request electronically via our Documents2Go Request Form. The articles that you request will be ready with two to four business days. Articles can be delivered to you via email, or printed copies can be picked up at Himmelfarb Library's Reference and Circulation Desk.

Electronic access is also provided for the majority of the Library's journal collection; users can access electronic journals by searching the Library Catalog or accessing the E-Journals webpage.

Image: Anonymous. (circa 1930-1941). The Stacks. [Online image]. Retrieved February 5, 2009 from http://www.oregon.gov/OSL/photos_1930_1941.shtml

Compare journals using the Journal Analyzer

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:39:00 -0500

Researchers often want an objective way to identify the most influential journals in their field when looking to publish their work. We have written previously about a few online tools for comparing journals. Now Scopus, a powerful bibliographic and citation database, has released Journal Analyzer.

Journal Analyzer is a easy-to-use graphic tool for comparing up to 10 journals at a time. You choose the journals and Scopus gives you interactive graphs and charts starting in 1996 with the following information:

Total citations - the number of citations received by that journal each year
Articles published - the number of articles published in that journal each year
Trend line - the number of citations divided by the number of articles published each year

To access the Journal Analyzer, click on the Analytics tab at the top of the page in Scopus. Give it a try next time you're looking to compare journal performance.

Neglected Infections and Poverty

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:02:00 -0500

A review article on the Neglected Infections of Poverty in the United States of America was published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases recently. This article, written by GWUMC faculty member Dr. Peter Hotez, describes the hidden diseases of poverty - ascariasis in Appalachia and the South, dengue fever in the U.S.-Mexico border region, trichomoniasis in inner cities - which are "characterized by their high prevalence, chronic and disabling features, and disproportionate effect on the poor." In this article, Dr. Hotez describes not only the specific diseases, but also how these conditions are part of a cycle of poverty with profound effects on child development, pregnancy outcomes, and worker productivity. To complement this article, Himmelfarb Library provides access to the following information resources:

Atlas of tropical medicine and parasitology / Wallace Peters, Geoffrey Pasvol.

Stacks RC961 .P46 2007

Huppatz, C., & Durrheim, D. N. (2007). Control of neglected tropical diseases. New England Journal of Medicine, 357(23), 2407.
Medical management of vulnerable and underserved patients : principles, practice, and populations / edited by Talmadge E. King, Jr., Margaret B. Wheeler.

Stacks RA418.5 .P6 M437 2007

Image: Lange, D,. (1936). Migrant mother. [Online image]. Retrieved July 1, 2008 from http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/lange/aa_lange_power_2_e.html.

Do vaccines cause autism?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:02:00 -0500

Today's edition of the Washington Post features an article entitled Fathering Autism which is about a father's experience caring for a daughter with autism. The father in the article is GWUMC's Dr. Peter Hotez who is the Walter G. Ross Professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and the principal scientist for the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative. In the article, Dr. Hotez describes his daughter and his family's life as well as the suggestion that autism is caused by mercury or thimerosal, a mercury derivative, which used to be used as a preservative in vaccines. To learn more about this controversy, the following materials may be useful:

Baker, J. P. (2008). Mercury, vaccines, and autism: One controversy, three histories. American Journal of Public Health, 98(2), 244-253.
Doja, A., & Roberts, W. (2006). Immunizations and autism: A review of the literature. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 33(4), 341-346.
Hughes, V. (2007). Mercury rising. Nature Medicine, 13(8), 896-897.

You can explore additional information on this topic in Himmelfarb Library's print and electronic collections. Image: Finkenstaedt, M. (2008). Autism in a Doctor's Family. [Online image]. Retrieved July 1, 2008 from http://www.washingtonpost.com.

Is that a psychedelic light show?

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:06:00 -0500

"Is that a psychedelic light show?" This question begins a Washington Post article about a patient's experience with a detached retina. The patient and author of the piece, Bob Guldin, saw odd flashes of light and floaters before first seeking medical care. After seeing what appeared to be a curtain rising across his field of vision, he sought care at the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates where he was seen by Dr. Fadi Nasrallah. Diagnosed at 1 p.m., his surgery occurred at 6 p.m. and the patient was home by 10 p.m. You can learn more about the patient's condition and treatment from Himmelfarb Library's online and print collections:

Retinal Detachment in FirstConsult/MDConsult; Brief, evidence-based information including diagnosis, treatment, outcomes, and prevention.
Gariano RF, Kim CH. Evaluation and management of suspected retinal detachment. Am Fam Physician 2004;69:1691-8
Retina / editor-in-chief, Stephen J. Ryan. Stacks RE551 .R43 2006 V 1
- Volume 3 Surgical Retina, Section 2 Retinal Reattachments: Surgical Principles and Technicques
- This book is part of a three volume set of which one or all can be checked out of Himmelfarb Library.

Image from: A.D.A.M., Inc. (2008). Detached Retina. [Online image]. Retrieved June 4, 2008 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/9931.htm.

Keep up -- top journals by specialty

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:26:00 -0500

The Ebling Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin has created an incredible resource you can use to stay up-to-date with journal articles by specialty.

They have compiled the RSS feeds for the tables of contents of 2400+ biomedical and health sciences journals and grouped them by subject. Rather than looking up the feeds for individual journals and subscribing one-by-one, you can quickly subscribe to all the feeds in a subject area or just the feeds for the top journals in that subject.

For example, if you are interested in keeping up with journals that focus on emergency medicine you would:

Go to that subject listing and select either top journals (10 journals from American Journal of Emergency Medicine to Shock) or all journals (44 journals from AACN Advanced Critical Care to World Journal of Emergency Surgery).
Click on the "quick subscribe" link.
Follow the instructions at the top of the page to save the OPML file.
Log into your feed reader and go to "import" to import the OPML file.

Your feed reader will now contain a folder for the subject category and you will be automatically subscribed to the table of contents for all of those journals.

These feeds will contain the table of contents for new journal issues when they are published. To access the full-text of the articles you will need to go through Himmelfarbs e-journals page and log-on if you are off-campus.

Click here to access the Ebling Librarys feed listing.

New to using RSS or have questions? Ask us.

Is that image for real? Images in research articles.

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:58:00 -0500

Theres an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the frequency with which altered images appear in scientific journals. The article focuses on images from one young researchers articles. When one journal found that submitted images had been altered, an inquiry was begun which led to an Office of Research Integrity investigation and to retractions of previously published articles. The event had serious consequences for the researcher who resigned from her position and will be ineligible for grants from the U.S. government for five years. The article discusses the ease of altering images due to their availability in digital format, and also that the alterations are not necessarily intended to be duplicitous. Some researchers view alterations as methods to clarify the data, whereas publishers regard alterations as corruptions of the original data which can lead to misrepresentations or misinterpretations of the research. Journal publishers have started using a variety of methods to try to protect themselves from publishing altered images including random checks of submitted images, thorough examinations of images, and the establishment of image guidelines. If youre interested in reading more on this issue, the following resources may be useful:

Couzin, J. (2006). Don't pretty up that picture just yet. Science, 314(5807), 1866-1868.
Natures Guide for Digital Images
American Society for Microbiologys Instructions for Authors on Image Manipulation
American Association for Cancer Researchs Publications Policies includes sections on Image Acquisition and Analysis, Image Manipulation, Image Composites, as well as specific instructions on Electrophoretic Gels and Blots and Microscopy.

Image Citation: Schuller, S. (2007). How E. coli causes diarrhoea. [Online image]. Retrieved May 30, 2008 from http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/. Note: use of this image should not suggest that it has been altered.

Keep Current with the Academe

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:28:00 -0500

The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper devoted to the news of academia, is now available on Himmelfarb's E-journals page. Take advantage of the Chronicle Online either on the E-Journals page, or register online to have it conveniently delivered to your email every morning.

To sign up for the daily email service, point your browser to: https://chronicle.com/services/create_account You will be asked to create a username and password, and to enter your email address. Next, select which daily messages you would like delivered, and click "create new account" to finish registration for this service. Just remember that if you are off-campus when you receive these emails from the Chronicle, you will need to login to the VPN/GWireless system to access the full-text.

If you have any questions about the new online access to the Chronicle, or need assistance signing up for the daily email service, call Betsy Appleton at 202-994-9756, or email her at mlbeaa@gwumc.edu.

Virtual research communities

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Scopus and ScienceDirect can now be used with a social bookmarking service, 2collab.com, allowing you to bookmark and comment on specific articles. Your bookmarks and comments can be kept private, or can be shared with other individuals or with specific groups. How does it work? Each article in Scopus and ScienceDirect links to the 2collab.com website. Click on the link to bookmark the article and/or comment on it. You can set your preferences to specify which groups (if any) you join, and who else (specific groups or general public) can see your bookmarks and citations. To get started with, follow these simple steps:

Create a personal account on 2collab.com.
Click on the bookmarking icon by articles in Scopus or ScienceDirect.
Login to your 2collab.com account (if necessary).
Select your preferences regarding if you would like to share the article with others (e.g. make public) and which groups (if any) you would like to share.

Why use social bookmarking or 2collab.com? While you can use 2collab.com to simply keep track of articles that interest you, its greater strength is as a collaborative tool that allows you to share and comment on research that is useful to you and your colleagues, and to learn about other research articles from similarly interested individuals. 2collab.com allows you to create and join interest groups, to learn about articles that were interesting to others in your field, and to share your comments and read comments from others.