To comply with orders about limiting nonessential personnel on campus, the health sciences library is closed. 

• The library writing consulting service, which is email-based, should continue unaffected.
• Library faculty regularly monitor the shlibref@lsuhsc.edu email and their own emails. Find your liaison librarian here.  They are also happy to host Zoom meetings. 
• The library will process interlibrary loan requests in the hopes they will be filled. However, obtaining some articles may be limited due to the number of other libraries closed. 

We remain committed to providing as much assistance as we can during this fluid situation. Library administration will re-evaluate the closure as new guidelines are issued by the campus. 

Library faculty have assembled a guide to resources for the novel Coronavirus. Major publishers, including the Lancet and BMJ, have made many of their resources on the virus freely available without a subscription. Key clinical resources like DynaMed and UpToDate have collected resources about the virus. The guide also features a link to genomic data about the virus.

Frances O’Callaghan, talented and respected local artist, generously drew sketches of 9 paintings completed by the patients in the Arts in Medicine (AIM) program at Feist-Weiller Cancer Center. The health sciences library is pleased to partner with Arts in Medicine to display 7 of those paintings this spring. The following paintings will be on display on the first floor of the library:

·        Variation: The Bath, 2011

·        Variation: Cowboy Watering His Horse, 2011

·        Twins, 2012

·        Variation: Chicken Holding Flowers, 2012

·        Variation: Anna Washington Derry, 2013

·        WWII Veterans, 2013

·        Azaleas, 2014

Copies of the other 2 paintings, from private collections, are displayed at the library front desk.

For more information about the Arts in Medicine program, or to volunteer, contact Julie Burton.

For biographical information about Frances O’Callaghan, see this link.

Please also view the library’s guide about Arts & Humanities in Medicine.

The health sciences library has resumed adding selected materials to the LSU Health Shreveport collection on the Louisiana Digital Library. The most recent additions include a 10-minute video, “A Patient’s Guide to LSU Medical Center in Shreveport 1987-88,” and a 1-minute clip of Edgar Hull breaking ground for the medical school. The library is grateful to telecommunications for assistance digitizing both videos. The Louisiana Digital Library has more than 400,000 items from Louisiana libraries and cultural institutions. Collections from the health sciences center in Shreveport may be viewed at this link.

Four categories of clinical calculators have been added to ClinicalKey to aid clinicians in patient assessment and clinical decision-making:

Drug Calculators – general dosing and drug-specific dosing 
Clinical Criteria/Decision Trees Calculators – provide assessment and decision support for various conditions and drugs
Medical Calculators – assess or determine certain medical values
Unit Conversion Calculators – conversion calculators for units of weight, length, time, temperature,and SI conversion for chemistry values

These are available on the desktop and mobile browser versions of ClinicalKey, and can be accessed in the Tools menu.

Where to access on the homepage:

Where to access on a search results page:

Questions? Contact the library at shlibref@lsuhsc.edu or 318-675-5445.

Katrina Bell, Library Associate in Systems, was accepted to the Data Analytics Research Training (DART) Fellowship from The University of Texas at Arlington, funded in full by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. The DART Fellowship is a 6-week cohort training and development program, providing a guided pathway for information professionals to acquire data literacy skills using common methodologies applied toward public health efforts. Throughout the program, the cohort will work collaboratively with guiding researchers – professionals currently engaged in the work the participants are learning – in order to complete a major component of a research project to be published in an official presentation, article, blog, or another professional dissemination method. The guiding researchers will provide a project from which the participants can choose a component on which to work.

Sarah Jackson, MLIS, education librarian, was funded through a competitive process to attend the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Library Carpentry workshop, to be held March 2020 at the University of Maryland Health and Human Services Library in Baltimore. Library Carpentry is an international effort focused on building software and data skills within library and information-related communities.

If you search PubMed, you have noticed major changes to its look and feel. People with a MyNCBI account will not have to recreate searches or accounts. They will eventually map to the new interface. Highlights include:

• The results page now shows abstracts with your highlighted search terms
• A “Cite” button on the right side of an individual record, to produce a correct citation in 4 popular styles
• Being able to page through your results from the abstract screen, instead of having to return to the results list to click the next citation
• More responsive design for mobile devices – more than 50% of PubMed searches are done on a mobile device 

Both the new PubMed and the old PubMed will be available throughout early 2020. Eventually, only the new interface will be available.

Questions? Contact the library at shlibref@lsuhsc.edu or 318-675-5445. The librarian for your department or program is happy to talk to you about enhancing your PubMed searches.

Erin Ware, MLIS, joined the Library as reference librarian on January 2, 2020. Ms. Ware is a graduate of LSU School of Library & Information Science, and a certified school media librarian. She has also worked at Baton Rouge General Hospital and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Her responsibilities will include providing reference assistance, conducting database searches, and developing and teaching library classes.

Will Olmstadt, executive director of the health sciences library, was appointed to the Public Policy Advisory Council for the Special Libraries Association, for a 2-year term through 2022. This committee advises the association on policy issues that impact information professionals.