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Women's Leadership Resource Library

March 31, 2021 - 2:31pm by Melissa Funaro

In support of women leaders at the Yale School of Medicine, Prasanna Ananth, MD, MPH, a member of the School of Medicine Committee on the Status of Women (SWIM), has been collaborating with Melissa Funaro, Clinical Research & Education Librarian from the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, on the Women’s Leadership Resource Library. The electronic library is designed to help women in medicine elevate their leadership skills, through curated content on teamwork, mentoring, negotiation, time management, and more. We hope you find this useful in your growth as a leader and innovator in medicine.   Please check out the Women’s Leadership Resource Library: https://guides.library.yale.edu/SWIM-resource-library

Taking Note of Medical Education: exploring 16th to early 19th century medical education

March 19, 2021 - 10:07am by Melissa Grafe

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library is pleased to announce that volumes from our manuscript collection, focused on medical education, are now available online! The effort to digitize these volumes and make them freely available worldwide was generously funded by the Arcadia Fund. The Historical Library holds a collection of volumes handwritten between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries documenting medical education in multiple ways. Student notes of medical lectures show transmission of knowledge by notable medical men such as William Hunter (1718-1783), physician and man-midwife to Queen Charlotte and William Cullen (1710-1790), one of the leading medical faculty members at the University of Edinburgh. Notebooks describing patient cases, diaries documenting travels to different medical schools or popular medical literature at that time, or even student projects such as a herbarium that described uses of plants, represent different manners of medical learning. For women like Eliza Heath, recipe (or commonplace) books contained medical “cures” from all kinds of written and oral sources in order to battle a wide variety of household ailments. Some of the earliest Medical Institution of Yale College (now Yale School of Medicine) student notebooks, containing the lectures from the founders and early faculty of our medical school, are freely available online as well. Dr. Nathan Smith, the first Chair of Surgery, lectured on the theory and practice of “physic” and surgery, captured in Richard Warner’s notes in 1818-1819, and in this anonymously written notebook for 1819-1820. Please explore these volumes on the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library site on Internet Archive, as part of the Medical Heritage Library. By early April, nearly 70 volumes will be available for online viewing and download. You can also find other Arcadia-funded digitized texts, including incunables, medieval and Renaissance medical and scientific manuscripts, Yale Medical School theses and early Arabic and Persian books and manuscripts, in this collection. Also, dive into another collection complementing our medical education materials, For the Health of the New Nation: Philadelphia as the Center of American Medical Education, 1746-1868, which provides free online access to 140,000 pages of lecture tickets, course schedules, theses, dissertations, student notes, faculty lectures notes, commencement addresses, opening addresses, and matriculation records.  

Medical Library awarded 2021 Research Advancement in Health Sciences Librarianship Award

March 12, 2021 - 11:13am by Dana Haugh

The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library has been selected as the recipient of the 2021 Research Advancement in Health Sciences Librarianship Award from the Medical Library Association. This award recognizes organizations “whose exemplary actions have served to advance health information research and evidence-based practice in health sciences libraries… and have created and sustained a culture of research that… has contributed significantly to clinical, educational, research, or administrative outcomes in their institutions.” Located in the heart of the Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital medical campus (and on web browsers worldwide), the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library is vital in supporting the research, clinical, and educational missions of its community.  “This tremendous achievement recognizes the outstanding work of the medical library staff. The need for their expert, timely research support has never been greater. The medical library is a center of excellence for both the Yale medical community and Yale University Library.” – Barbara Rockenbach, Stephen F. Gates ‘68 University Librarian, Yale University Library Throughout its history, the medical library has kept pace with tremendous change in the biomedical and health sciences fields, working strategically to influence research and scholarship advancement at the Yale Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health, and the Yale New Haven Hospital. The medical library established one of the earliest library liaison programs in the country, pairing a librarian with every department to provide specialized support. In addition, the “personal librarian” program for health sciences students was an innovation of the medical library’s and established medical librarians as thesis topic consultants, research collaborators, and scholarly communication advisors. Yale’s medical librarians are national leaders and advocates for librarians' role on systematic review research teams and, more recently, as peer reviewers. Yale was the first US library to license Covidence to support enterprise-wide systematic reviews and medical librarians have developed tools to expedite the work of research teams such as the Yale MeSH Analyzer, which has been adopted globally and previously won Yale's Linda Lorimer Award for Distinguished Service.  “Our staff are seen as vital research partners and contributors to the success of the clinical, research, and educational missions of the Medical Center. The impact that the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library has upon the work of the entire Yale New Haven Medical Center is profound.”  – John Gallagher, Director, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library A history of innovative hiring in bioinformatics, data, clinical support, plus a flexible endowed fellowship has pushed the medical library deeper into novel research areas. Unique historical materials allow partnerships with clinicians and faculty to teach and discover through collections, and support for open access and scholarly communication opens daily conversations about research dissemination. Overall, 37 staff members support the research needs of a clinical and educational enterprise of 20,000 employees. Medical librarians partner with research teams to work on evidence-based research and clinical practice changes, bioinformatics analyses, data projects, historical retrospectives, and consult on all aspects of the scholarly communication lifecycle. “Yale’s medical library is undoubtedly one of the best in the world. I am so honored to be affiliated with its leadership and so grateful on behalf of all our trainees and faculty for the amazing resource you have created and nurtured for the health sciences.” – Jessica Illuzzi, MD, MS, FACOG, Deputy Dean for Education and Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Yale School of Medicine Medical librarians publish research and program assessment papers in the health sciences literature and in the library science literature, present at regional and national conferences, and produce posters about research and innovative services. In the last 10 years alone, publications by medical library staff have exceeded 160 articles, chapters, and monographs, and the volume has tripled every three years. It is also notable that medical library staff, particularly paraprofessional staff, provide technical support services to further research projects at both the university and the hospital. The medical library is a leader in research about library/IT collaboration, liaison librarianship, systematic reviews, collection development, history of medicine, bioinformatics, data support, peer review, resource sharing, innovative roles for staff, and scholarly communication. As such, at Yale’s medical campus, librarians are seen as partners in research across the academic and clinical missions and have made innovative contributions to scholarship, as recognized by this prestigious award. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Research Medical Library both received this year’s award.

NIH Living Textbook of Pragmatic Clinical Trials: New Content on Research Data

March 8, 2021 - 10:32am by Sawyer Newman

  The Living Textbook of Pragmatic Clinical Trials is a collection of knowledge from the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory. This free web-accessed resource reflects a collection of special considerations and best practices in the design, conduct, and reporting of pragmatic clinical trials and is organized to follow the linear progression of these stages. Within this resource, special attention is nowgiven to the utilization and redistribution of research data by having dedicated sections on:  Assessing fitness for use of real-world data sources (i.e., determining the applicability, quality and provenance of a dataset)  Acquiring real-world data Data sharing and embedded research As of January 2021, the Living Textbook added information on using claims and CMS files. See the announcement and a list of added topics here. Other data types covered include, electronic health records (EHRs), administrative claims, patient-reported outcomes (PROs), patient-generated health data (PGHD), medical product/device registries, condition-specific or disease registries, and environmental factors / social determinants of health.  Learn more about these topics, and additional topics covered by the NIH Collaboratory Living Textbook of Pragmatic Clinical Trials by utilizing this textbook here.  

SPARC’s Federal Data Sharing Policy Resource Update Released

March 1, 2021 - 4:08pm by Sawyer Newman

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has launched an update to its Federal Data Sharing Policy Resource. This update distills the latest changes in the US federal agencies’ data sharing policy requirements to make them more easily and quickly understandable.  SPARC works to enable open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge. This update supports open data by providing clear and compiled information on data sharing policies put in place by federal level funding organizations. From the SPARC news release, “This integrated policy resource can be used by researchers, librarians, policy makers, and other stakeholders to explore and compare agency plans for sharing articles and data. This analysis provides a tool for tracking practical information that can be used by active or prospective grant awardees to understand when, how, and where they need to make their research results accessible.”  For each federal agency included in the list, SPAC details policy goals, how data are to be publicly shared, metadata and documentation to be included with the data, data citation and attribution standards, data management plan recommendations, compliance measures, and more.  To interact with and learn from this resource, go here: https://sparcopen.org/our-work/sparc-federal-article-data-sharing-policy-resource/# Learn more about support at the Cushing/Whitney Medical library for: Scholarly Communication: https://library.medicine.yale.edu/scholarly-communication Research Data: https://library.medicine.yale.edu/research-data

Library to Cover All Publishing Fees for PLOS Journals

February 24, 2021 - 2:58pm by Lindsay Barnett

Yale University Library has entered into 2 unique membership agreements with PLOS, an open access publisher of high quality journals in science and medicine. These 3-year commitments will waive article processing charges (APCs) for Yale-affiliated authors publishing in PLOS journals! This includes all existing PLOS titles: PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS One, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Genetics, and PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, as well as any new PLOS publications launched during the contract term.   Last year Yale authors published more than 100 articles in PLOS journals, with APCs of up to $3,000 per article. Effective Jan. 1, 2021, these author-paid APCs will be eliminated and replaced with annual fees paid by the library. The authors will maintain copyright ownership of their research.  Read more Questions? Contact Lindsay Barnett: lindsay.barnett@yale.edu

New online exhibition: “Materiality, Fragility, and Loss in the Medical Archive”

February 3, 2021 - 10:56am by Melissa Grafe

The Historical Library is pleased to announce a new online exhibition showing items you might never find in our physical exhibits!  https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/materialfragility/page/home “Materiality, Fragility, and Loss in the Medical Archive” was curated by Anabelle Gambert-Jouan, a doctoral candidate in the Department of the History of Art, who was supported by a Graduate Professional Experience Fellowship from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She reflects on the exhibition in this blog post. Overcoming the Fragility of Objects with a Digital Exhibition by Anabelle Gambert-Jouan The idea for the exhibition “Materiality, Fragility, and Loss in the Medical Archive” emerged in a moment of widespread closure of museums and collections. What could be done to showcase the Medical Historical Library’s holdings when access to the display cases beneath the Cushing rotunda was restricted? Instead of a limitation, the switch to an entirely online exhibition became an opportunity to highlight photographs, books, and other medical artifacts that are either rarely seen by the public due to their fragile state or cannot be appreciated fully in traditional display cases because they have mechanistic components or hidden parts requiring tactile engagement. As curatorial fellow at the Medical Historical Library, I had the opportunity to explore the collection in-person, including the recently acquired Stanley B. Burns M.D. Historic Medical Photography Collection, to select the works that best expressed the exhibition’s themes. I wanted to illustrate, through the digital medium, that a daguerreotype needed to be held in a certain way for the image to become visible for an instant. I wanted to convey the strange sensation of peeling back the layers of the paper organs depicted in G. J. Witkowski’s Anatomie iconoclastique. To do this, I used photographs and videos created especially by the staff of the Medical Historical Library. The exhibition examines these fascinating historical objects, with an emphasis on the senses of sight and touch. The exhibition also catches the “behind-the-scenes” moments of the collection. Recent and ongoing work by conservators and scientists is highlighted in the final section of the exhibition, to explain how specialists are seeing through the damage and the material decay to learn more about objects. 

Job Posting: Research and Education Librarian for Bioinformatics

January 15, 2021 - 4:29pm by Judy Spak

Research and Education Librarian for Bioinformatics Are you a recent science graduate interested in librarianship? Join our Bioinformatics Support team! Required Qualifications: Master’s degree from an ALA‐accredited library school OR a post‐graduate degree in a biomedical science related discipline may be required or substituted for a master’s degree in library science. Demonstrated knowledge of the basic principles, theories, practices, techniques, and terminology of a biomedical-related discipline and an understanding of the standard methods, procedures, and techniques of research and analysis in that field. Excellent analytical, customer service, and interpersonal skills. Excellent oral and written communication skills. Ability to work both independently and collegially in a demanding and rapidly changing environment. Preferred Qualifications: Experience with analysis of omics data using a programing language Experience working in an academic health sciences library Ability to perform independent analyses and report findings to biomedical researchers Publication(s) in relevant peer-reviewed journals Schedule: Full-time (37.5 hours/week); standard work week (M-F, 8:30 – 5:00) Start date: February 1, 2021 Rank: Librarian I APPLY HERE Yale University offers an exciting opportunity for achievement and growth in New Haven, Connecticut. Conveniently located between Boston and New York, New Haven is the creative capital of Connecticut with cultural resources that include major art museums, theaters and music. New Haven is also a biotech and research hub and the location of one of the largest hospitals in the United States. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library serves the Yale Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, and the Yale-New Haven Hospital as well as Yale College and the Yale Graduate School. The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library is a dynamic and busy place; library staff work together as a team to provide responsive and effective information support to the Medical Center's missions of research, education, and patient care. In addition, digitized collections, clinical synthesis tools, evidence-based practice resources, and a suite of bioinformatics tools bring information to our community at the library, on campus and remotely. For additional information, see: https://library.medicine.yale.edu/. Position Description/Focus The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library Bioinformatics Support Program is considered among the most comprehensive medical library bioinformatics programs in the US. It provides support throughout the Next-Generation Sequencing data (genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics) lifecycle from raw data (e.g. FASTQ files) to the functional analysis of differentially-regulated molecules. It also supports the functional analysis of proteomics, post-translational modifications, and metabolomics datasets.  The Program not only provides access to the state-of-the-art bioinformatics software (e.g. Partek Flow, Qlucore Omics Explorer, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis, MetaCore, Transfac) but also provides training and consultations on how to use these tools. Training sessions on how to use open source software (e.g. Cytoscape) and command line/ scripting (e.g. R, Python) for the analysis and visualization of biomedical datasets are also regularly offered. The  Research and Education Librarian for Bioinformatics is a member of the Academic Research and Education team and reports to the Head of Academic Research and Education. As a member of the library’s established Bioinformatics Support Program, the Research and Education Librarian for Bioinformatics serves as a liaison between the library and basic and clinical research departments, laboratories, and individual researchers and is pivotal to maintaining and growing excellent bioinformatics support services. The librarian will interact with faculty, staff, researchers, and students in the Yale Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health as well as researchers, graduate students and post-docs in an array of academic and clinical programs across the Medical Center and Yale's West Campus. The librarian will also interact and collaborate with other University centers and units including the Yale Center for Genomic Analysis and Yale Center for Research Computing. The library also supports Yale New Haven Hospital, and the Research and Education Librarian for Bioinformatics will interact with clinicians, staff, and researchers from the hospital. The librarian will also collaborate with colleagues from throughout the Yale University Library system. Position Responsibilities This position will contribute to the success of the Bioinformatics Support Program by responding to the increased need and demand for bioinformatics support across the medical campus. Specifically: Provides reference and in-depth research, information and bioinformatics  consultation services to biomedical researchers through one-on-one and group consultations (in person or online) on a wide variety of bioinformatics topics throughout the research life cycle. Teaches Yale biomedical researchers, students, and staff to use a range of free and commercial (licensed by the library) bioinformatics databases and software for retrieving, downloading, analyzing, and visualizing a wide variety of molecular data including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics.  Creates and develops instruction modules and coordinates presentations from outside vendors and guest speakers for the benefit of the Yale biomedical community. Communicates regularly with researchers to develop a deep understanding of their current research interests, projects, and bioinformatics and data needs. Offers services to help researchers identify and meet requirements of grants (proposals and reporting), publications (research and publisher requirements), and any applicable public access policies associated with federally funded research. Creates and maintains online guides and other research support tools. Collaborates with the Data Librarian for Health Sciences to develop and teach instruction sessions on command-line coding. Collaborates with fellow medical librarians and librarians across campus, bioinformaticians, statisticians, and other departments that support e-science. Works closely with the Collection Development and Scholarly Communication Librarian and other library staff to select, evaluate and promote bioinformatics and data resources in all formats (print, databases, datasets, images, etc.) related to biomedical research and science. Participates in assessing the efficacy/relevance of the Bioinformatics Support program by collecting, analyzing, and reporting statistics which document the service levels and trends in service provision. Helps the library gain insights into new potential uses and users of the bioinformatics resources, and information-seeking behaviors of scientists. Demonstrates professional development and service through publication and/or active membership in professional organizations. May be required to assist in disaster recovery efforts. May perform other duties as assigned.   Background Check Requirements All external candidates for employment will be subject to pre-employment background screening for this position, which may include motor vehicle and credit checks based on the position description and job requirements. Internal candidates may be subject to a motor vehicle or credit check for this position based on the position description and job requirements. All offers are contingent on successful completion of the required background check. Yale University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Yale values diversity in its faculty, staff, and students and strongly encourages applications from women and members of underrepresented minority groups.

Remote Services & Support

January 8, 2021 - 9:10am by Dana Haugh

Visit this page for updates on library hours and closings. Here are some important tools and resources for using the medical library. Virtual Support from Your Librarian  Contact your specialty's librarian or personal librarian (for students) for support or to schedule a consultation by phone or Zoom.  For general questions, contact AskYaleMedicalLibrary@yale.edu. Remote Access Remote access to our vast electronic resources is available to the Yale and YNHH community regardless of your location. For instructions on how to connect remotely, visit: https://library.medicine.yale.edu/services/library-technology/remote Online Classes, Tutorials and Guides The library offers dozens of free instruction sessions and workshops online via Zoom.   Check out our research tutorials, which cover everything from how to manage citations to systematic searches to finding articles in PubMed.    Research Guides are subject- and department-specific collections of tools, databases, and resources aggregated by our medical librarians.   Our Clinical/YNHH Resources page list of tools for point-of-care, drug information, evidence-based practice, and more.   Our Educational Software page lists of biomedical education resources.
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