Recently Meaghan Heselden, Metadata and Scholarly Publishing Librarian at the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, George Washington University, presented about their repository. Meaghan runs the Health Science Research Commons with three goals: raising the visibility of the institution’s medical research, providing a publication venue for students and postdoctoral researchers, and creating a space for important campus administrative documents. These goals are worthwhile in and of themselves, but they also directly support campus initiatives like making GW-driven research openly available and serving a worldwide community.
To support the goal of raising the visibility of the institution’s research, Meaghan tracks research alerts and updates the Health Science Research Commons with new records nearly every day. She has also included Altmetrics badges on many articles, providing easy and open impact information that illustrates the value of GW’s research work. Though the second initiative, providing publication venues for students and postdocs, is still new, HSRC hosts a few student-run journals and Meaghan actively seeks student research, like the Research Days event. The third initiative, containing and organizing administrative documents, has proven especially valuable to the campus. These items, such as issue briefs, congressional testimonies, and transcripts, are unique to the medical school and not available anywhere else; having a home in HSRC means these materials are available for the first time ever.
Anne Linton, Director of George Washington University’s Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, worked closely with Meaghan to create her presentation about the Health Science Research Commons at our recent Medical Library Association panel. If you missed us at MLA you can watch Meaghan’s webinar here.
