Identifying e-books authored by faculty: a method for scoping the digital collection and curating a list

Electronic books are a substantial component of many academic libraries. Many libraries aim to make their collections easily discoverable through curated lists. The authors’ library devised a methodology to identify and flag all e-books authored by our institution’s faculty using MARCEdit and Microsoft Access. We highlight some of the challenges in gathering a comprehensive list of titles, the process of formulating such a list, and the measures needed to actively curate e-books by faculty for both content already in the collection and newly published titles

Where Are We? Providing Information for the Clinical Enterprise (17th Health Sciences Lively Lunch)

If the past is prologue to the future, where are we today? Though they are diverse, most academic health sciences libraries have historically described and continue to outline their missions as being directed to serving the education, research, and clinical information needs of their user populations. Over the years, Charleston Conference Health Sciences Lively Lunches have covered many themes, and in 2012, the focus was on the point of care information tools landscape. The 2017 17th Health Sciences Lively Lunch focused on issues and challenges of providing clinicians and clinical affiliates with access not only to point of care tools, but in general, to varied types of online information resources, often in a changing or volatile marketplace. After a welcome by Wendy Bahnsen, a representative of Rittenhouse Book Distributors, Inc., the lunch host, and a traditional update by Ramune Kubilius (Northwestern University), moderator Jean Gudenas (Medical University of South Carolina) introduced this year’s hosted but no holds barred session. Panelists from health sciences libraries at three different institutions- Laura Schimming from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Jonathan Shank from Northwestern University, and Neal Nixon and Vida Vaughn from University of Louisville, outlined their experiences. They addressed demands, challenges, and best practices of issues that include but are not limited to: users’ information needs as well as academic and hospital administrators’ expectations; expanding clinical affiliate networks; budgets-projected, desired, and actual; publishers’ and consortia partners’ licensing models, guidelines, and restrictions. Ample time was left for Lively Lunch attendees to join the discussion with questions as well as shared insights and experience

Real-time EBM: From Bed Board to Keyboard and Back

Background: To practice Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), physicians must quickly retrieve evidence to inform medical decisions. Internal Medicine (IM) residents receive little formal education in electronic database searching, and have identified poor searching skills as a barrier to practicing EBM. Objective: To design and implement a database searching tutorial for IM residents on inpatient rotations and to evaluate its impact on residents’ skill and comfort searching MEDLINE and filtered EBM resources. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Residents randomized to the searching tutorial met for up to 6 1-hour small group sessions to search for answers to questions about current hospitalized patients. Participants: Second- and 3rd-year IM residents. Measurements: Residents in both groups completed an Objective Structured Searching Evaluation (OSSE), searching for primary evidence to answer 5 clinical questions. OSSE outcomes were the number of successful searches, search times, and techniques utilized. Participants also completed self-assessment surveys measuring frequency and comfort using EBM databases. Results: During the OSSE, residents who participated in the intervention utilized more searching techniques overall (p < .01) and used PubMed’s Clinical Queries more often (p < .001) than control residents. Searching “success” and time per completed search did not differ between groups. Compared with controls, intervention residents reported greater comfort using MEDLINE (p < .05) and the Cochrane Library (p < .05) on post-intervention surveys. The groups did not differ in comfort using ACP Journal Club, or in self-reported frequency of use of any databases. Conclusions: An inpatient EBM searching tutorial improved searching techniques of IM residents and resulted in increased comfort with MEDLINE and the Cochrane Library, but did not impact overall searching success

Identifying multiscale translational safety biomarkers using a network-based systems approach

Summary: Animal testing is the current standard for drug and chemicals safety assessment, but hazards translation to human is uncertain. Human in vitro models can address the species translation but might not replicate in vivo complexity. Herein, we propose a network-based method addressing these translational multiscale problems that derives in vivo liver injury biomarkers applicable to in vitro human early safety screening. We applied weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA) to a large rat liver transcriptomic dataset to obtain co-regulated gene clusters (modules). We identified modules statistically associated with liver pathologies, including a module enriched for ATF4-regulated genes as associated with the occurrence of hepatocellular single-cell necrosis, and as preserved in human liver in vitro models. Within the module, we identified TRIB3 and MTHFD2 as a novel candidate stress biomarkers, and developed and used BAC-eGFPHepG2 reporters in a compound screening, identifying compounds showing ATF4-dependent stress response and potential early safety signals