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Himmelfarb Headlines: Director's Desk

Himmelfarb Headlines

Director's Desk

Director's Desk, Laura Abate

We are at the mid-point of summer and both remembering graduation fondly, and looking ahead to the excitement of the fall and the start of a new academic year.  

Our student profiles this month include Sierra Acker, a student in the MPH/PA dual-degree program, and Natalia Anzaldúa, who is in the first class of graduates from the doctoral program in Occupational Health and who will be the student speaker at Commencement next month. Our new PA class began classes close after graduation, followed by our new residents and fellows, and we look forward to welcoming new and returning students in August. 

If you’re already looking toward the start of classes - whenever that occurs, remember that the library is here to support you. To schedule an orientation or instructional session by Himmelfarb’s library team, please contact Tom Harrod (tph@gwu.edu).  If you’d like Himmelfarb to add titles that are used in your course or program, please submit a Purchase Request Form or Request Reserves Material - both forms allow you to submit requests for online and/or print materials. 

While our academic programs have fixed start and stop times, research continues year-round.  Himmelfarb has a few new resources for researchers, including our Data Preservation Efforts and Data Sources research guide. This guide is the result of a collaboration between Himmelfarb Library, Libraries and Academic Innovation, GW Information Technology, and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research. The guide helps users locate archived datasets, as well as forms for submitting datasets for archiving and nominating datasets that you think need preservation. 

Himmelfarb Library also provides a robust research guide to help you set up your ORCiD account and profile. An ORCiD profile is helpful for tracking your research, whether you are early in your career or already have a significant number of publications.  And, if you need a quick update on why ORCiDs are so useful, or to convey that to your students or trainees, Himmelfarb Library’s Rebecca Kyser recently created a useful comic with that information: ORCiD and You. 

And, the updated NIH Public Access Policy went into effect on July 1, 2025.  This policy now requires that peer-reviewed articles that result from NIH-funded research must be deposited in PubMed Central and made publicly available upon initial publication in a journal.  The current version of the policy eliminates a one-year embargo period before PubMed Central submission is required.  In anticipation of this change, Himmelfarb’s NIH Public Access Policy research guide has been updated, and we’re ready to take your questions at nihaccess@gwu.edu!

Finally, regardless of whether you’re working this summer or taking some time off, I wish you a happy summer!

Laura Abate