The Health Sciences Libraries are providing a fall webinar series on searching the health literature. We hope you can join us on Teams for these sessions. They will also be recorded. You can visit the links below at the start of each session to join. 

Thursday, September 7, 2023, 12 –1 pm 

Searching the Health Literature 101: Recording 

This session will provide an introduction to searching the health literature with tips, tricks, and best practices to make your searches more successful.  

Rachel Helbing, Head of Health Sciences Libraries, will cover searching basics like choosing appropriate databases, using PICO to generate a list of keywords, constructing a strategy with Boolean operators, and more. Skills learned in this session will be applicable for searching a variety of biomedical and social sciences databases.  

Thursday, October 5, 2023, 12 – 1 pm 

PubMed 101: Recording 

This session will provide an introduction to searching PubMed, the world’s premiere biomedical database which comprises more than 36 million citations.  

Rachel Helbing, Head of Health Sciences Libraries, will cover PubMed basics like constructing a search, using MeSH and search filters, sorting and sharing results, and accessing full text. Skills learned in this session will help you get the most out of your PubMed searches. 

Thursday, November 9, 2023, 12 – 1pm 

Embase 101: Recording 

This session will provide an introduction to searching Embase, a major biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 8,200 journals, including 3,000 journals unique to Embase and journals from 95 countries. 

Rachel Helbing, Head of Health Sciences Libraries, will cover Embase basics like constructing a search, using Emtree and search filters, sorting and sharing results, and accessing full text. Skills learned in this session will help you get the most out of your Embase searches. 

The library’s access to BoardVitals will be ending Thursday, August 31st. The group through which we receive BoardVitals is switching to a different board review service, StatPearls, https://www.statpearls.com/. We will have access to select packages on StatPearls starting September 1st. 

Packages to be included are: 

• Nursing School Package 
• Pharmacy Package 
• Family Medicine 
• USMLE Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 
• Physician Assistant Package 
• EMS-EMT Basic 
• Radiology Technology 

More information about StatPearls is forthcoming. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause. If you have any questions, please contact collections@uh.edu  

The Health Sciences Library will be closed December 21 due to a water outage.
 
We will be working remotely from 8am until 5pm. If you need assistance please send an email to rrhelbin@central.uh.edu.

We will resume our intersession hours December 22.

The third and final session in the Health Sciences Library’s fall webinar series is coming up tomorrow. Please join us for this lunch & learn session to be held on Zoom.

Copyright 101
With Dave Fagundes, Baker Botts LLP Professor of Law and Research Dean at the University of Houston Law Center
Wed 11/17, 12 – 1 pm
Recording

This session will cover the basics of the federal Copyright Act and major judicial interpretations, including what works are protected, what acts are infringing, when unauthorized use may be permitted, and what common misunderstandings about copyright law to avoid.

This session will be recorded and archived in the UH Institutional Repository.

Please contact Rachel Helbing at rrhelbin@central.uh.edu with any questions.

The second session in our fall webinar series is coming up this Wednesday. Please join us for this lunch & learn session to be held on Zoom.

• EndNote 101
  With Stefanie Lapka
  Wed 10/20, 12 – 1 pm
  Recording

After this session, you will be able to use EndNote Online to create an account, utilize plug-ins, add and organize references, and cite while you write.

This session will be recorded and archived in the UH Institutional Repository.

Please contact Rachel Helbing at rrhelbin@central.uh.edu with any questions.

The first session in our fall webinar series is coming up this Wednesday. Please join us for this lunch & learn session to be held on Zoom.

• Systematic Reviews 101
  With Rachel Helbing
  Wed 9/22, 12 – 1 pm
  Recording

After this session, you will be able to identify and understand the steps in a systematic review, from formulating a research question to synthesizing results.

This session will be recorded and archived in the UH Institutional Repository.

Please contact Rachel Helbing at rrhelbin@central.uh.edu with any questions.

We hope you can join us for our fall webinar series. Please save the dates for the three lunch & learn sessions to be held on Zoom on Wednesdays in September, October, and November.

• Systematic Reviews 101
  With Rachel Helbing
  Wed 9/22, 12 – 1 pm
  Recording
• EndNote 101
  With Stefanie Lapka
  Wed 10/20, 12 – 1 pm
  Recording
• Copyright 101
  With Dave Fagundes
  Wed 11/17, 12 – 1 pm
  Recording

More details are forthcoming. Sessions will be recorded and archived in the UH Institutional Repository.

Please contact Rachel Helbing at rrhelbin@central.uh.edu with any questions.

The Health Sciences Library plans to re-open with limited hours and capacity on Monday, August 17.

Our hours will be the following:

• Monday – Friday — 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
• Saturday — Closed
• Sunday — 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Thank you for

• wearing a mask
• practicing social distancing
• practicing proper hand hygiene
• not bringing food or drink into the library

Closed until further notice

• group study rooms
• conference room
• quiet study room
• reading room

Much of the furniture in the open study areas, along with half of our computers, have been removed to encourage social distancing.

Optometry students, please enter the Compulink room through the door across from Cougar Grounds.

Most services, such as consultations and instruction sessions, will continue to be provided remotely.

Please check this space, https://libraries.uh.edu, our social media @uhoustonhslib, or contact rrhelbin@central.uh.edu for updates on our hours and policies.

The Covid-19 pandemic has mobilized researchers around the world, particularly those engaged in health sciences and adjacent fields. The output of new preliminary research, trials, Covid-related data and code, as well as tools for visualizing and analyzing these materials, can be overwhelming. The following list of online venues that are hosting and curating Covid-related research and data is not intended to be comprehensive, but is a starting point for those who are engaged in this work, those who have an interest in initiating Covid-related research, or those who may be planning to use these materials in the classroom. With a broad variety of new and interdisciplinary research emerging by the hour, UH Libraries can help you identify, collect, organize research data, as well as archive and share the research data you generate, at the start of a project and at any phase along the way.

Federal repositories for COVID-19 data

Open-Access Data and Computational Resources to Address COVID-19 

From the NIH, Office of Data Science Strategy. “Covid-19 open-access data and computational resources are being provided by federal agencies, including NIH, public consortia, and private entities. These resources are freely available to researchers, and this page will be updated as more information becomes available.” 

Covid-19 Secondary data and statistics

CDC collection of selected secondary data and statistics sources to help researchers find data on Covid-19 (2019 Novel Coronavirus). Materials listed in these guides are selected to provide awareness of quality public health literature and resources.

Coronavirus (Covid-19) Consumer Complaint Data

The FTC publishes updated coronavirus-related complaint data each weekday based on fraud, do not call, identity theft, and other reports consumers submit to the Consumer Sentinel Network via Complaint Assistant. The aggregated data begins January 1, 2020 and runs to the current date.

Covid-19 Demographic and Economic Resources

The Covid-19 Hub presents selected Census Bureau demographic and economic data to help guide decision making during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data are presented in interactive maps and downloadable resources that users can directly incorporate into their research and data products.

General Data Repositories for Covid-19 data

Dimensions Covid-19 publications, data sets, clinical trials

Dimensions, the sister company to the open data repository Figshare, is a scholarly database that includes awarded grants, patents, and clinical trials alongside publication and Altmetric attention data. Updated daily, this spreadsheet provides access to content from Dimensions.ai that includes a global body of publications, datasets, clinical trials, and grants.

Github Topic for Covid-19 

Github is an open community for software and code development, collaboration, and sharing. Commonly, subjects with heavy interest and focus are compiled as a Topic. This Github topic provides a compilation of public repositories that contain code focused around research and awareness of the virus.

Zenodo Coronavirus Disease Research Community – COVID-19

Zenodo is an open access, open source, international “catch-all” repository that was founded by CERN and the OpenAire Project in 2013. Zenodo allows users to create communities of research and sharing within the platform. This community collects research outputs relevant to the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) or the SARS-CoV-2. Scientists are encouraged to upload their outcome in this collection to facilitate sharing and discovery of information. 

Harvard Dataverse – COVID-19 Data Collection

Harvard Dataverse is a free data repository open to all researchers from any discipline both inside and outside of the Harvard community. This is a general collection of Covid-19 data deposited in the Harvard Dataverse. Researchers who deposit their related data into Harvard Dataverse will have the content linked to this collection, to increase discoverability of their data.

Research Repositories for Covid-19 Literature

LitCovid

LitCovid is a curated hub for tracking up-to-date and peer-reviewed scientific literature from PubMed about the 2019 novel Coronavirus, providing a central access point to relevant articles.

CORD-19

Covid-19 Open Research Dataset allows you to search scholarly articles, including over 13,000 with full text, about Covid-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses for use by the global research community.

Covid-19 SARS-CoV-2 preliminary research posted to medRxiv and bioRxiv

An up-to-the-minute collection of Covid-19 SARS-CoV-2 preliminary findings posted to medRxiv and bioRxiv, the two primary preprint servers for biologists, clinicians, and other health science researchers. Note that both medRxiv and bioRxiv receive many new papers on coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 daily, all of which undergo a screening process, but these are preliminary reports and have not been peer reviewed.

Tools for Covid-19 Visualization

Coronavirus world map and US map

Coronavirus world map and US map from John Hopkins University. The interactive world map gives you confirmed cases by country, region, and global death and recoveries. The US map breaks down to the county level and is updated daily.

Coronavirus infographic datapack

Coronavirus infographic datapack from information is beautiful contains a variety of visualizations related to Covid-19, such as infection trajectories, rising and falling of cases and deaths, connections with existing conditions.

CDC graphics

CDC provides graphics associated with Covid-19, including mortality and rates of hospitalization.

Coronavirus tracker by Tableau

Coronavirus tracker provided by Tableau visualizes Johns Hopkins University data to help you stay on top of key Covid-19 metrics, including totals, the spread of Covid-19, and outbreaks around the world. This dashboard will be updated daily.

IHME Covid-19 projections

Covid-19 projections created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. It projects daily infections and testing, daily and total death, and hospital resource use in the world and the US. It also breaks down to states to further investigate the trends for specific areas.

These resources are just the tip of the iceberg of what is available. We can also help you navigate beyond the landscape of Covid-19 research. For additional information feel free to consult our research guides for Finding Data and Data Archiving or schedule a consultation.