The Duke University Medical Center Library & Archives provides biomedical information, innovative services, educational programs, archival preservation, knowledgeable staff, and collaborative spaces.
We license, curate, and provision access to information resources for Duke Health, including:
Selected library resources have been integrated into MaestroCare and were viewed over 525,698 times in fiscal year 2020.
Centralized buying saves money: the average cost per use for a library subscribed article is $0.87. Buying an article direct from the publisher averages $40 per article.
We teach evidence-based practice, literature searching, and information synthesis.
We have liaisons to all of Duke’s academic health professions programs, Graduate Medical Education, and Duke University Health System nursing. We also teach on demand classes and create online tutorials that are available 24/7.
In the 2019-2020 academic year, librarians:
We maintain administrative and historical records for Duke Health, including the records of 2 Nobel Laureates, World War II surgical teams, School of Medicine and School of Nursing departments, and student groups.
In fiscal year 2020, we:
The Duke University Archives and the Duke University Medical Center Archives have partnered to document this unique time in history and have captured news alerts, email updates, Duke COVID-19 websites, and online research symposiums. In addition, the Archives are collecting the personal stories of students, staff, faculty, and other people who live, work, or study at Duke.
We created a guide for COVID-19 information, including links to COVID-19 articles, focused searches, guidelines from multiple societies, etc. that has been viewed over 5,000 times.
In addition, librarians have co-authored 2 articles related to COVID-19 and have completed 87 searches in support of COVID-19 related research and clinical care.
Librarians conduct comprehensive literature searches for systematic reviews and IACUC protocols.
Systematic Reviews: Librarians led 494 consultations with Duke faculty, staff, and students who are conducting systematic reviews, representing 27% of our 1,783 research consultations. In 2019 and thus far in 2020 we have been involved in 215 evidence synthesis projects.
Animals in Research - Searching for Alternatives: The United States Animal Welfare Act (AWA) regulations require that Principal investigators consider alternatives to procedures that may cause more than momentary or slight pain or distress to animals. Medical librarians help construct comprehensive literature searches in order to seek methods of reduction, refinement, and replacement. We conducted 23 searches to support these protocols.
Our partnership with our medical librarians significantly improves the value and impact of the science we conduct. This is vital in a learning health care system where results of systematic reviews are used as foundational to informing evidence-based clinical care.
-Jennifer Gierisch, PhD and Karen Goldstein, MD, MSPH
Librarians partnered with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania to create “Vaccination in Modern America: Misinformation vs. Public Health Advocacy Web Archive." Part of the Ivy Plus web collection program, the Archive preserves webpages representing the current state of public discourse and contrasting approaches to authority on vaccination in the United States, with a focus on sites that are both pro- and anti-vaccination. The purpose of this collection is to capture potentially ephemeral information about vaccination that could be used by health service researchers, information scientists, sociologists, and others to combat misinformation and to understand the motivations, practices, and outcomes of health information.
Our Website has undergone a frontal facelift! Though it has a similar look and feel to the previous version, you will notice some distinct enhancements:
Our staff has expertise in information technology, administration, collection management, archives, user services, research and education with over 215 years of service to Duke.
In 2020, we co-authored 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and delivered 7 presentations at professional conferences.