Becker on the Road
This unique speaker series offers free, customized presentations for your next department meeting, in-service, class assignment, or retreat. On the Road programs can be brought to a convenient location of your choice or hosted here at the library. The following presentations are available on request or staff can develop a program specifically tailored for your group.
Priority is given to classes for WUSM, BJC and SLCH groups. Other classes are arranged subject to availability of library staff.
- Author Rights
Do you have a manuscript that you are preparing for publication? Are you aware that you can retain rights to your work? Authors are encouraged to retain the rights they need in order to reuse and disseminate their work in connection with academic and professional activities. This session will cover author rights and strategies for retaining rights to your work.
- Becker Resources for Patients & Families
Learn about the resources from Becker Library and the National Library of Medicine to help you research health questions for yourself or your family.
- Bioinformatics 101: Tools & Tricks
Do you feel like you’re overwhelmed with the number of biomedical software programs and databases you encounter daily? Do you have a difficult time knowing how to pick a database and how best to navigate the resource? Join us for a discussion of bioinformatics databases and software tools. We’ll introduce Entrez and discuss MyNCBI, a central place to customize NCBI Web services. Finally, we’ll introduce you to few new tools and tricks which will help make your life easier!
- EndNote and Citation Management Software
- Evidence-based Practice Resources
Evidence-based practice is increasingly important for students, clinicians, faculty, health care payers, and accrediting agencies. Librarians can offer an overview of evidence-based health care, and specifically the resources Becker Library provides to search for the best evidence.
- Genomics Resources for Clinicians
We’ll discuss genomic resources which are helpful for the clinician as well as the consumer. We’ll begin with an introduction to basic science resources such as Entrez Gene and investigate their integration with other widely used resources. We’ll also discuss the Genetics Home Reference, GeneTests and GeneReviews as well as Genes and Disease, a collection of articles at NCBI that discuss the genetic foundation of many diseases. Finally, we will take a look at clinical, consumer health, and advocacy and policy resources provided by Genetic Alliance and examine their integration with NCBI and other similar organizations and groups.
- Introduction to NCBI Resources
Join us for an introduction to Entrez, the integrated search and retrieval system for the major sequence, structure, taxonomy, genome, expression, and chemical databases at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). We’ll present efficient searching techniques for navigating these biological databases and we’ll also discuss MyNCBI, a central place to customize NCBI Web services.
- More than a Safety Net: Public Health Resources
Public health is a diverse, multidisciplinary endeavor. Learn about the library’s subscribed and free resources to research questions in epidemiology, environmental health, biostatistics, health administration and health policy.
- NIH Public Access Policy
Are you preparing a manuscript generated by NIH-funded research? If so, then you are required to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy. This session will provide an overview of the NIH Public Access Policy including the steps involved in complying with the policy and how to demonstrate compliance.
- PubMed - It’s Not Google
While PubMed’s query box looks like Google’s interface, these are portals into very different worlds. The Web is a huge and amorphous mass of documents connected by links. Google analyzes the links to impose order on the Web. The Medline database is highly organized, and a thorough understanding of its core component, MeSH, a controlled vocabulary, is essential to optimal searching. The National Library of Medicine's PubMed search engine provides access to over 19 million biomedical citations and offers links to many online publications and related articles. Learn how PubMed makes use of Medline’s organization in translating your search questions.
- Scholarly Publishing in the Digital Age - New Options, New Issues
Open access, public access mandates, institutional repositories - the Internet has had an enormous impact on how scientific information is now created, stored, and shared with others. This presentation is a brief introduction to the changes taking place in scholarly publishing and what authors need to know.
- Searching the Biomedical Literature
We discuss how to improve the effectiveness of your medical literature searches by focusing on six key strategic points:
1. Specifying the search topic
2. Preparing an initial search strategy
3. Selecting a database (Ovid/Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, etc.)
4. Executing the search
5. Evaluating the references
6. If warranted, reassessing your research strategy
- Web 2.0 Resources for Health and Research
Loosely defined as "Web 2.0," these tools and applications aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, sharing and communication between users. They also can help you organize and manage the information and resources you need more quickly and efficiently. Learn how easy it is to tap into the power of Web 2.0 applications.
- Which Statistical Tool Should I Use?
For many new researchers, picking the right tool to conduct a statistical analysis can be a daunting task. Tools such as SAS, SPSS, STATA, and Matlab are all very powerful but which is the right one for me? Our bioinformaticist reviews the features of the major packages available through the Becker Library and where help is available here on campus.
- Who is Citing Your Work?
Are you interested in tracking your research by finding out who is citing your work? Knowing how your research is being used in the scientific literature can also be of value for consideration of tenure, promotion dossiers, progress reports, quantifying the return on research funding or for justification for future requests for funding. This session will demonstrate tools that authors can use to track how their research is being cited.
In addition to the above list, the staff of our Archives and Rare Books Division offer presentations on historical topics of interest to the Washington University community including:
- A History of Washington University School of Medicine
This presentation details the creation of Washington University’s medical school in the 1890s, its reorganization in 1910, affiliation with area hospitals, construction of the new medical campus, and development into a modern school of medicine.
- Historical Research Methods
For those who want to focus their investigation of print and internet sources for historical research, this presentation offers guidance on how to narrow a query effectively and how to find the best resources available to direct an effective search for material.
- Institutional History Walking Tours
This tour of the WU Medical Center reveals more than the campus architecture by exploring the history of the Washington University School of Medicine.
- Illustrating the Body: The School of Medicine's Rare Anatomy Books
Presents the history of imagery in medical texts from ancient times to today, in order to discuss advances in anatomical knowledge, and how that knowledge has been affected by changes in printing technology.
For more information or to schedule a presentation, contact Bob Engeszer at engeszer@wustl.edu or 314-362-4735.
