Duke Medical Center Library & Archives Blog

Seeking quick and reliable answers to your clinical questions? Look no further than the Library’s Clinical Tools page! Here you will find a handy list of links to point-of-care resources, decision-support tools, core eBooks, guidelines, and patient education information.

Some of these include:

• DynaMed, which provides evidence-based clinical information concerning diseases, drugs, and other therapies that is highly useful when making decisions about patient care.
• …

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: DynaMed, UpToDate, visualdx

Each year, Duke Medical Center Library & Archives evaluates its electronic subscriptions using a data-driven process to ensure good stewardship of our collection funds. While actively reviewing our resources, we strive to provide those that serve the needs of Duke Health and Duke University and sometimes that requires canceling underused resources.

Effective May 31,2023, Duke University users no longer have access to AccessAnesthesiology. We made this decision after carefully examining its usage data over several years. Users will still have access to selective titles previously available in AccessAnesthesiology through our subscription to McGraw-Hill.

If you need a resource that is not available at Duke, you may…

Categories: Alerts, Databases

From a YouTube tutorial showing how ChatGPT can "write a systematic review [in] under 1 hour" to reports of the program's fabrication of fake citations, recent media coverage of ChatGPT demonstrates a wide range of both promise and peril for its use in library research and writing tasks. We understand the interest in automating and streamlining these tasks: it is time consuming and difficult to find relevant articles, synthesize knowledge, and put it all into writing. So when can ChatGPT help and when might it lead you astray?

First, some background:
ChatGPT, a chatbot from the company OpenAI, is one example of generative artificial intelligence (AI) based on large language models (LLMs). Google's Bard program is similar. These generative text…

Tags: research, writing

The Library has just rolled out a new guide highlighting some of our most commonly used databases. No matter whether you are answering clinical questions, seeking drug information, conducting research, or looking into your research impact, the guide will provide useful tips on selecting the correct database and getting started with the search. There is also some general information on how to get started with your search, the types of literature reviews, full text retrieval, and how to get more help from a Librarian. 

Check it out and let us know what you think!  Happy Searching!

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: searching

Announcement from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP):

The OSTP is hosting a series of virtual public listening sessions to explore perspectives from the early career researcher community on the challenges and opportunities for advancing open science in the United States. Hosted as part of a Year of Open Science, these listening sessions aim to elevate the needs, priorities, and experiences of this community in shaping a future of open and equitable research.
 
OSTP is seeking input from undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows from a diverse…

In 2020, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched the NIH Preprint Pilot to test the feasibility of making NIH-funded preprints discoverable in PubMed Central (PMC) and by extension, PubMed. Preprints are complete, public drafts of articles that have not yet been peer reviewed. Phase 1 sought to answer the NLM's question: do preprints in PMC accelerate the discoverability and maximize the impact of NIH-supported research? This first phase of the pilot focused on archiving preprints reporting SARS-CoV-2 virus/COVID-19 research and resulted in more than 3,500 preprints being added to the NLM database, accelerating access to NIH-supported research results by an average…

Categories: Alerts

Tags: preprint, scholarly communication, NIH

During this month-long celebration, we focus on the theme, “Nurses Make a Difference: Anytime, Anywhere – Always.” Let us honor the unwavering commitment of nurses to their patients, and the value they provide to the unified health care team in accomplishing their medical readiness mission. 

Tags: nursing

Graduation is an important and exciting time of change for many students. Sadly, one of these changes may involve losing access to many Duke resources such as library subscriptions to journals and databases.

Before You Lose Access

• Go through your saved citations and PDFs and decide which ones you want to keep. If there are any articles that you would like to get PDFs for, do this before you leave while you still have access to free full text.
• Evaluate your citation manager needs before you leave. If you are using Endnote, double-check that you have the most current version on a personal device. This access will last you for a couple years, but you will have to repurchase it at…

Categories: Databases

Tags: citation management, reference management, open access

It has been several months since NIH’s new Data Management and Sharing Policy went into effect. As a brief reminder, the new policy requires that investigators who are applying to NIH for funding submit a Data Management & Sharing (DMS) plan if their grant will produce scientific data. The DMS plan will describe the type and format of data that will be collected or produced and how it will be shared and preserved.

Researchers at Duke have an opportunity to participate in a pilot for NIH DMS Plan templates and…

Categories: Alerts

Tags: NIH, data management plans, for researchers, data management

At the beginning of every new year, there are often changes in journals which may include additions, platform changes and cancellations. Though there are no cancellations this year, below are some changes for 2023.

Additions
The following titles are being added to our subscriptions because they meet our criteria for inclusion based on cost, usage, journal quality, and relevance.

• Childhood Obesity
• Clinical and Experimental Dermatology
• Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology

New Platforms
The following journal titles will now be available on different platforms. Often this occurs when the professional society that publishes the…

Categories: Resource Outages

Tags: e-journals, journals

The Medical Center Library & Archives is pleased to announce that we now have a subscription to VisualDx, a clinical point-of-care tool, educational resource, and decision support system designed to enhance diagnostic accuracy, aid therapeutic decisions, and improve patient safety. After being on trial for almost a year, we appreciate your feedback in helping us to make this decision.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this resource, it is:

• Renowned for its depth of diverse clinical images – 14,000+ images of variations in skin color
• A valuable diagnostic clinical tool that helps you build a differential diagnosis
• Useful for…

Categories: Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: visualdx

Zotero is a freely available reference management and writing tool that makes capturing citations easy. It has a browser plugin that works in Chrome, Firefox or Safari, and with one click you can add a journal article, Web page, video, or many other resource types to your library.

One of Zotero's strengths is that it is uncomplicated to us, making collaborative projects, especially with people at other institutions, relatively simple via Google Docs. 

You will never have to worry about losing your library of citations because everything is backed up to the cloud. Syncing to the Web version of Zotero allows you to access your library from any computer with Internet access. If you run out of Zotero's free storage, additional storage can…

Categories: Explore Tools

Tags: zotero

Microsoft Edge

The fastest way to clear your cache is to use the following keyboard shortcut: CTRL + F5 or follow these steps:

1. Check “Browsing History,” “Cookies and Saved Website Data,” “Cached Data & Files,” and “Tabs I’ve set aside or recently closed”
2. Click the Clear button

Chrome

The fastest way to clear your cache is to use the following keyboard shortcut: CTRL + SHIFT + R  on Windows or Linux or CMD + SHIFT + R on a Mac or follow these steps:

1. Check “Browsing History,” “Cookies and Other Site Data,” and “Cached images and files.”
2. Click the Clear Data button

Firefox

The fastest way to clear your cache is to use…

Categories: Resource Outages

Tags: ZScaler

If you’re looking for individual attitudes and opinions on health topics, we’ve got a tool for that! The Health Poll Database, produced by the Roper Center, provides a searchable interface of thousands of health-related polls conducted in the United States in the last 80 years! Downloadable datasets are also available in many file formats (including Stata, ASCII, and SPSS). Cross-tabs and frequency distribution charts are included in results with easy access to graphics for presentations. Health topics include insurance, health care, social determinants and many more.

Categories: Databases

Now that the new NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy is in effect, researchers are taking a closer look at their options for where to deposit their data once the research project is complete. Indeed, the new policy requires researchers to prospectively plan for where they will share their data when they apply for NIH funding. If you work with human participant data and need a controlled access repository, Vivli may be a good option!

Vivli is a global clinical research data-sharing platform that focuses on sharing anonymized individual participant-level data. The platform includes a controlled access data repository, search engine, and secure research environment…

Categories: Explore Tools

Tags: data repository, data sharing, human participants