Librarian Assistance

For help with research projects, patrons may schedule a consultation with one of our Research & Instruction Librarians.

We provide many support services; not limited to:

Literature Searching

We can work with you to build and perform expert searches in popular literature databases such as MEDLINE (via Ovid or PubMed), Web of Science, Scopus, and CINAHL.

Citation Management and Verification

We can help pinpoint articles that may have incorrect citation information and show you how to use popular citation-management tools to organize and share your references.

Topic Alerts

We can help you set up automated email alerts or RSS feeds for updates to various databases including Ovid, PubMed and Web of Science.  Alerts may be topical or retrieve tables of contents of your favorite journals.

Archives

We can research questions related to the history of the School of Medicine.

We can help you with best practices for naming, organizing, storing, depositing your research data, and creating a Data Management Plan. For a consultation, please contact one of the liaison librarians  for data management or review the data management team webpage.

We provide instruction in a variety of venues on the Health Sciences Campus. Please contact us to schedule an orientation or instruction session.

Curriculum Support

Liaison librarians are available to work with course directors to design web-based guides, presentations, and exercises that develop students' research skills. We can also place items on reserve or find and recommend course-related materials. See Faculty Support for more information.

Orientations

We are happy to provide a brief overview of the library and its services to new students, staff, and faculty on campus. We can give tours of the library or come speak during your scheduled orientation sessions. Please contact your liaison librarian to schedule a session.

Training Sessions

We can create customized sessions tailored to specific topics you suggest for your class, lab, or program. Sessions could cover:

• Searching for evidence
• Searching PubMed and other databases
• Overview of electronic and print resources on a topic
• Introduction to citation-management programs (like Endnote)
• Introduction to systematic reviews.

Open Workshops

We provide workshops in the fall and spring semesters covering a variety of topics of interest on the Health Sciences Campus. Previous topics have included:

• impact factors
• searching for systematic reviews
• introduction to Ovid
• resources  for health statistics.

View our schedule and course descriptions.

Research and Instruction librarians are familiar with copyright law and Tufts’ license agreements.  We can identify helpful resources and tools for your presentations and publications.

Grants

Visit our Find Funding guide to identify funding sources for your research and resources the library has available to help you succeed in gaining funding. If you have an NIH Grant and are concerned about compliance, please see our NIH Public Access Policy guide to learn how to submit and manage your funded publications.

Publishing

We also have a guide on Citing Information with examples of common citation styles and descriptions of various citation-management programs.

Scholarly Communications

Visit Tufts’ Scholarly Communications website to learn more about issues in copyright, fair use and open access.  Research & Instruction librarians are members of this institution-wide group.

Organization & Preservation

Tufts Digital Library  in its e-scholarship section provides space for archiving your publications. We can help you keep track of your papers and advise you how to amend copyright agreements so that you retain some rights to your published works.

Research & Instruction librarians are trained in searching for systematic reviews and have experience performing complex, time-consuming searches.  Experienced in formulating search syntax, we can suggest MeSH and help you select which of our many databases would be best for a particular topic.   Please complete the literature review intake form to initiate a conversation with your liaison librarian to discuss your needs.

We provide three tiers of service for systematic reviews:

Basic

We can meet with you several times to:

• identify databases and resources to search for your topic
• suggest MeSH terms for Ovid Medline or PubMed searches
• assists with creating a flexible, comprehensive search suited to your needs
• review your search history for missing terms and structural challenges.

Comprehensive

At your invitation, we may become a review author who:

• selects appropriate databases
• selects MeSH and keyword terms
• designs a search strategy in collaboration with your team
• performs and saves searches
• transfers citations into reference-management software
• writes/edits the methodology section relating to search process.

Updates and Revisions

We also can help with updating search strategies to:

• review the published search
• suggest modifications
• rewrite or amend search methods for publication