Because of staffing limitations imposed during Phase I, the Library will continue to operate Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., through June 1. Depending on guidance from the administration for Phase II, the Library may expand to more typical hours.

The seating in the Library has been calculated to meet the 25% capacity requirement from the governor, and enforce social distance. Library staff will be tracking capacity.

Guidance about testing in the computer labs is forthcoming. There are only 18 seats available in the computer labs because of reduced capacity.

To help the campus during Phase I:

• Reference librarians will be available in person starting Monday, May 18. Please make an appointment for best service. You can find the librarian for your department or program at this link.
• Library faculty are happy to provide virtual orientations or presentations.
• Library Writing Consulting and Interlibrary Loan continue to be available. Borrowing materials from other libraries may still be restricted since not all states are re-opening.
• All the Library’s electronic resources remain available through the VPN.
• We have temporarily stopped charging for printing and copying in the Library.

One additional note:

• The Library has gathered many of the resources publishers made free at http://guides.lsuhsc.edu/free. As more states re-open, publishers may discontinue this free access with no notice. Many trials and free resources expire on May 31.

Starting May 1, with permission from the administration, the library is opening Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., for third year medical students only. This is to provide space for social distancing for these students. Please observe the following restrictions from administration:

• Very few library staff will be on-site, and the library is not staffed to provide in-person services to other students, faculty and staff at this time.
• In-depth library technology support will not be available in person.
• Library staff will be wearing masks. 
• Third year students must follow all protocols from medical school administration.
• Study rooms will not be checked out because many are not large enough to maintain the six-foot distance requirement. 

Other library staff continue to work at home per governor orders, and respond to emails at shlibref@lsuhsc.edu. Library staff appreciate your patience and help as they work to help third year medical students complete their curriculum requirements.

The First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 2020 has been added to the library’s electronic collection.  The 2018 and 2019 editions are available, also.

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.