By: Eileen Wafford, Research Librarian

Libraries have moved beyond being places to simply check out books or devices and study for exams to institutions that address topics spanning the information lifecycle. Galter Health Sciences Library and Learning Center offers a range of specialized services that include:

• Classes and workshops
• Support for systematic and scoping reviews
• Metrics & Impact Core
• Publication support
• Clinical Informationist Service
• DataClinic

These services are possible due to the diversity of skills, knowledge, and experience of the staff at Galter. Many teams have partnered with Galter staff to add information resources and specialized services to advance patient care, research, and education at Feinberg School of Medicine. We highlight a few of these collaborations here.

Since 2016, Galter has partnered with faculty and staff at Feinberg and Northwestern Memorial Hospital to provide students in the Northwestern Medicine Scholars Program at Westinghouse College Prep with hands-on training on how to locate, access, and appraise sources of health information using basic and advanced searching techniques. Librarians have also contributed to the Evidence-Based Practice training for the undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students from Northeastern Illinois University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, City Colleges of Chicago, and other community colleges in the Chicagoland area who participate in the ChicagoCHEC Summer Research Fellows Program. These students leave the library sessions with a greater understanding of different sources of health information and studies to support their research projects.

Various teams have leveraged expertise at Galter by embedding library staff into grant applications. Galter joined the Outreach Services Department at St. Charles Public Library on a grant from the Network of the National Library of Medicine that allowed a Galter librarian to participate in senior health outreach programs and teach seniors to navigate and evaluate online sources of health information. Galter Library joined the Health for All – Real Talk: Clinical Trials project, led by Melissa A Simon, MD, MPH, to bring librarian and informatics expertise to a project that addresses health disparities through increasing research literacy and participation for underrepresented populations. A recent collaboration with Susanna McColley, MD and a team of collaborators from multiple CTSA hubs involves a Galter librarian working with the group to develop comprehensive searches. The literature generated by the searches will help support a Synergy paper on improving representation in medical research through structural changes.

Liaison librarians and members of Galter’s Metrics & Impact Core team offer an annual review of NIH biosketches. This review is meant to confirm appropriate form use, formatting, and possible creation of metrics statements that can be used to describe research outputs. The Metrics and Impact Core team can also generate two different reports to assist groups in their grant submission. The Funding Support Impact Statements report includes useful text to describe a group’s topical expertise, citation, impact, and possible comparison of performance with other academic institutions. This report can be paired with the Funding Support Bibliometric Networks report which includes two bibliometric networks: Co-Author Network to highlight collaborations with key members of the group; and a Term Co-occurrence Network to highlight topical expertise within the group. An overview statement is provided for each network.

The partnerships between library and research teams at Feinberg present a unique opportunity to share knowledge and resources to advance project goals. To learn more about collaborating with Galter librarians on a project, contact us for a consult.