Duke Medical Center Library & Archives Blog

NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) has 60+ databases, including PubMed, MeSH, Bookshelf and others you may be familiar with. In this blog post, we are looking at My NCBI a free, personalized account for YOU to use in conjunction with all of NCBI.

My NCBI allows you to save searches, save collections of citations, manage filters, and save site preferences for major NCBI databases. For anyone with NIH funding, it is best to log into My NCBI by clicking on NIH Login and using your eRA Commons credentials. For those without an eRA Commons account, we recommend logging in with your Duke…

Categories: Explore Tools

Tags: My NCBI, NIH Public Access Policy, NIH, pubmed

Here are a few tips to help improve your PubMed searching experience.

1. Single Citation Matcher
Use the Single Citation Matcher to find the correct citation with only a few pieces of information available. Best recommendation is to fill-in Journal title, year, and page number, but not the whole citation!

2. Use PubMed through the DUMC Library Website
Select either PUBMED (MEDLINE) under the Quicklinks or search PubMed at the top of the Web page. This ensures you will have access to full text provided by the…

Categories: Databases

Tags: pubmed

Do you manage your Duke Elements publications?

Have you received a message from Duke Elements notifying you the system has found new publications for you or that you have publications awaiting your approval?  Remember, your publications are only displayed in your Scholars@Duke profile if you have approved them in Elements. The Library can help make sure your publications are listed in your Scholars@Duke profile! 

Would you like to increase the reach of your publications?

While you are approving publications for display in your Scholars profile, you may also upload the full text of the publications for open access via the DukeSpace repository…

Categories: Resource Updates

Tags: Elements, Scholars@Duke, publications, repository, open access

Dr. Anlyan was many things to Duke for many years, but few probably know his strong role in the creation of the current Medical Center Library facility.  In addition to many other buildings constructed during his time as Chancellor and Vice President of Health Affairs, the Mudd building was an outcome of his planning and leadership. 

Serving as a member and chairman of the National Library of Medicine’s Board of Regents, Dr. Anlyan understood the potential and importance of libraries in an academic health center and as part of the developments in biomedical communications.  In 1970, he commissioned the architects to create a building with the concept of the library as the core of the communications center.  Construction began in 1973 on the triangular shaped facility…

African American History at Duke Medicine, a guide produced by Medical Center Archives, aims to introduce researchers to materials documenting the history of African American faculty, students, and staff at Duke Medicine. Included are oral histories, archival collections, photographs, audiovisual materials, and publications, selected key dates and key figures, and links to recommended digital resources.

Categories: Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: archives, black history month

This look back at DUMC history features Duke’s Licensed Practical Nursing (LPN) program. When it began in 1948, there were already several others in the state. Duke’s was unique, however, as it was the only one in North Carolina established exclusively for training African-American nurses.

The program, known as the Practical Nurse School at Hillside High School, was a collaborative effort between Duke University Hospital, the Durham City Schools, and the North Carolina Department of Vocational Education and was established to address the area’s shortage of professional nurses. The idea was that trained LPNs would be a means of improving bedside care, as they could take over the duties that might have been previously handled by a nurse’s…

Tags: archives, black history month

[Note: this post is about re-verifying your Duke affiliation for remote access to UpToDate and not the usual way to use UpToDate. Click here to access UpToDate.]

UpToDate has changed its remote access authentication policy requiring Duke users to log into UpToDate from the Duke network from every 30 days to every 90 days.   Hopefully this will help those working or studying away from Duke for short periods of time to easily retain access to this important resource.   

Have you gotten an email from UpToDate Support lately with the subject line "Your remote access to UpToDate has lapsed"? If you downloaded the UpToDate mobile app and haven't used it or…

Categories: Alerts, Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: UpToDate

Health Literacy Tool Shed
"Find the right health literacy measurement tool for your research."

The Health Literacy Tool Shed brings together more than 100 health literacy tools in one searchable database. These instruments and measures are described in published, peer-reviewed journals, and these references are linked within each record. Each record also provides key characteristics, psychometric properties, validation information, and an option to download the tool, if available. The Health Literacy Tool Shed is a collaboration among…

Categories: Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: health literacy

As strategic planning is underway, our staff will be reaching out to you and asking the BIG questions:

How can we further your work at Duke?
What challenges can we help you overcome?
What services are the most valuable to you and what is missing?
What additional expertise do we need on our staff?
What additional resources can we provide – technology, software, mobile apps, other?
How can our facility better serve the Duke community?

Below are some of the opportunities and roles we are considering, but I welcome your ideas and suggestions for our future strategic priorities!

• More fully participating in systematic reviews, searches, and beyond
• Serving as partners in research teams
• Providing free access to materials…

Randy’s Bio

• Working at Duke University Medical Center Library & Archives since:  2001 (employed at Duke since 1989)
• Education: Jordan High School Class of 1988
• Current position: Senior Library Assistant

Q & A

1.    Describe your current position & what you find most interesting about it.
What I like most about my job is being able to connect with the patron, mainly with a joke to loosen up their day.

2.    Describe yourself in three words. …

A systematic review attempts to collate all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a specific research question. The key characteristics of a systematic review are: a clearly defined question with inclusion and exclusion criteria; rigorous and systematic search of the literature; critical appraisal of included studies; data extraction and management; analysis and interpretation of results; and report for publication.

Not every research question fits well with the systematic review methodology. Other types of reviews might be better suited for research questions that are broader or that may not have much empirical evidence on the topic.

What does it take to do a systematic review?

• …

Tags: systematic reviews

Congratulations to Paul Modrich, PhD, Professor of Biochemistry, for winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry!

Read some of his groundbreaking research in DNA repair on his Scholars@Duke page or peruse this PubMed search of his publications.

More and more funding agencies have policies for sharing citations arising from their funding, AND more and more grants are focusing on team-science and collaborative projects. This has resulted in more authors writing articles that may not include the principal investigator.

You can track many biomedical publications by setting up searches in PubMed that run on a regular basis.

• Search for one grant number or several by using “OR” between the grant numbers 
• You can leave off the activity code…

Tags: grants

Natural Standard and Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database are now collectively known as Natural Medicines. The Library subscribes to this database to give Duke affiliated healthcare providers an authoritative resource on dietary supplements, natural medicines, and complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies.

Natural Medicines provides a wealth of information including:

• Clinically relevant, bottom-line-focused information and ratings via evidence-based natural ingredient monographs
• Over 90,000+ new commercial products, including product data and an evidence-…

Categories: Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: alternative medicine

Duke Medicine’s primary news publication from 1953 to 1986, the Intercom, is available online. It features information about campus construction and events, faculty and staff news, facts and figures, and articles about medical research and innovations at Duke.

The Archives collaborated with the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center on this project, who digitized the first 25 years of the publication, making more than 500 issues available online. They can be accessed via MEDSpace, the Duke Medicine digital repository,…

Categories: Resource Updates

Tags: archives