During the 2023-2024 academic year Becker Library continued to make significant contributions in support of the medical school’s faculty, staff and students. Highlights of activities in our areas of expertise include:
Biomedical Information
- Co-signed with University Libraries a transformative license agreement with Elsevier for ScienceDirect that offers waivers and discounts on article processing charges for hybrid and open access journals.
- Acquired 243 print texts, 27 new journals, and 2 databases (SportsDiscus and Overton)
Data and Research Computing
- Provided individualized support to more than 100 researchers and research teams writing data management and sharing plans and sharing data in repositories.
- Introductory research computing workshops to reduce barriers to using R, Python and campus high-performance computing resources saw more than 1,000 attendees across 20 workshops.
Health and Science Communication
- This year marked Becker Library’s sixth hosting SciComm Seminars. The Center for Health & Science Communication featured three #SciComm Seminar presentations in FY24, drawing a combined attendance of 117.
- In November of 2023, the Center for Health & Science Communication launched the SciComm Journal Club, an interactive gathering of Washington University community members from different fields, professional avenues, and career stages — all with a shared interest in science communication.
- The center offered a two-hour storytelling workshop to the medical campus community in November 2023. This two-hour interactive workshop, facilitated by St. Louis-based Campfire, offered a primer for attendees to uncover and share personal narratives. This workshop was provided in support of the second annual, In Our Words, storytelling event.
History of Medicine
- The Center for the History of Medicine at Becker Library organized a spring break trip for Phase I medical students to Leiden and Amsterdam, focusing on the Dutch Golden Age’s medical legacy. An expanded history of medicine program which will include a trip abroad was approved as a formal Phase III elective for medical students in 2024-25.
- Created three exhibits showcasing Becker Library’s collections of rare books, including a joint exhibition with Olin Library that focused on the different aspects of alchemy, from its role in art and literature to its connection with chemistry. The exhibit featured many items from Becker’s Paracelsus collection as well as other texts related to distillation, metallurgy, and other alchemy adjacent subjects.
Institutional Knowledge
- Becker Library continued to lead further development, adoption and support of Research Profiles at Washington University School of Medicine in FY24. Research Profiles had more than 325,000 unique visitors performing close to 300,000 searches on the platform during FY24, with usage coming from locations across the country and around the world. During those visits, users viewed close to 1.1 million pages.
Medical Center Archives
- The extensive Jerome R. Cox Jr. collection at Becker Archives spans 114 archival boxes of material that detail Dr. Cox’s 50-year career at Washington University, where he served as the director of the Biomedical Computer Laboratory and chair of the Department of Computer Science. His collection is now fully accessible to researchers.
- Fiscal year 2024 was an extraordinary year for donations of significant archival collections to the Becker Archives. These donations included, Mary Bartlett Bunge Papers, Rutherford B. H. Gradwohl Papers, Brian Sullivan Oral History, Marcus E. Raichle Papers and E. James Anthony Papers.
Scholarly Communications and Research Impact
- Author analytics and evaluation support continued to be an active area of focus during FY24 due to the high level of interest in this area. Guidance and reports were provided for individuals and groups with requests coming from across the School of Medicine. Becker Library’s subject guide Quantifying the Impact of My Publications with curated information and guidance on these topics had more than 10,000 views over the course of FY24.
- Open October 2023, Becker Library’s and University Libraries’ joint effort to promote open science, open education, and open access, included a panel presentation given by leaders at the NIH, NSF and NASA on the future of public access policies and sharing of research findings.
- Another highlight of the programming was a presentation given by Tim Holy, PhD, from the Department of Neuroscience at the School of Medicine, on tools that supercharge open-source scientific software.
Searching & Synthesis
- Assisted with 94 systematic reviews, 43 scoping reviews, 2 narrative reviews and 2 rapid reviews.
- Four tutorials were created that provide answers to the most frequently asked questions about conducting evidence synthesis.
These achievements and Becker Library’s outstanding reputation are made possible by the library’s dedicated and knowledgeable information professionals. Their commitment to service wins accolades from across the university and the country. Please read more about their accomplishments in the full annual report.
Annual report highlights and a link to the full report can also be found here.