McGoogan News

We are pleased to invite you to join us for a 30-minute guided meditation session every Thursday at 2 pm in Room 7067 of the Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library. This session, organized by Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and Campus Wellness, offers you a valuable opportunity to take a break from your busy day and immerse yourself in a calming and rejuvenating experience.

In collaboration with CAPS and Campus Wellness, these guided meditation sessions aim to promote mental well-being, stress reduction, and mindfulness. We understand the importance of self-care and recognize the need for individuals to find moments of tranquility amidst their daily routines.

During each session, our dedicated volunteers, who are trained meditation facilitators, will guide you through various techniques designed to reduce stress, promote relaxation, and increase mindfulness. Whether you are new to meditation or have been practicing for some time, this session is open to everyone, and no prior experience is necessary. The techniques shared are secular in nature, focusing solely on the practice of meditation without any religious influence.

Our primary goal is to create a welcoming and inclusive environment where individuals from all backgrounds can come together to explore the benefits of meditation. We aim to foster a sense of community and support, allowing participants to connect with themselves and others on a deeper level.

Please note that while these guided meditation sessions provide valuable tools for relaxation and self-care, they are not clinical in nature and should not be considered a substitute for therapy or psychiatric attention. If you require therapeutic or psychiatric support, we strongly encourage you to seek appropriate professional help and reach out to UNMC CAPS resources found here (for UNMC students) or to UNMC’s Employee Assistance program here (for UNMC staff and faculty).

We hope that you will join us on this journey of self-discovery and well-being. Together, let us embrace the transformative power of meditation and create moments of calm amidst the demands of our daily lives.

Our next instructional offering comes from our experts in Special Collections and Archives.

Preserving Family Treasures – Digitizing Your Memories
June 16, 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. CT

Interested in digitizing those boxes of family photographs but don’t know where to start? In this session, you will learn about best practices for digitizing your family treasures, from documents and photographs to negatives and slides.

You’ve been working on a research article or review article for months, perhaps years, and it’s time to get it ready for journal submission.  You need to decide which journal would be a good home for your article.  You could send the library (askus@unmc.edu, 402-559-6221) a bit of information about your article and ask us to make a list of potential target journals for you or you can search yourself by using the tools we would use! 

JANE (Journal Author Name Estimator)

If you have your abstract or a couple sentences that describe your article’s topic, you can use JANE.  Simply paste your text into JANE’s search box and hit the “Find Journals” button.  A list of journals that have published articles on similar topics will appear.  Tags indicating MEDLINE-indexing, PMC (PubMed Central) inclusion, and “High quality open access” status will appear along journal titles.  Finally, an “Article Influence” score will be shown across from each title.  This factor is a measure of how often an article in the journal is cited during the 5 years after its publication.  

EMBASE

EMBASE is a standard literature database with “search result analysis” superpowers.  Begin by searching EMBASE for articles on your general topic area.  After the results appear, you may want to open EMBASE’s  “Publication Type” and/or “Study Type” analyses (in the column to the left of the search results).  You can select the publication and/or study type of the article you are writing and click the “Apply” button at the top of the column.  This step is especially helpful if you’ve written a review article or a case report as many journals do not publish these article types.  After the search results appear, click on the “Journal Titles” section of the left-hand column.  You will see a list of journals that have published the articles retrieved by the search.  The journals will be listed in order of the number of search results that have appeared in the journal (most to least).  An export link under the list makes it possible to export the entire list.  After you have a list of journals of interest, you can use Journal Citation Reports to look up each journal’s Impact Factor (a measure of the number of citations a journal’s articles have received). 

In the month of June, the McGoogan Health Sciences Library is offering a four-part Research Impact Challenge for faculty, staff, and students. This challenge consists of weekly emails over 4 weeks with instructional information and activities that one can complete at their own pace. The topics include: 

• Professional profiles (ORCID and Google Scholar) 
• Increasing your reach through Open Access and Digital Commons 
• Tracking your citations and shares 
• Measuring scholarly work through the h-index 

Registration is required and will continue through June 2. The first email will be sent on June 5. At the end of the four-part challenge, an evaluation will be sent along with the opportunity to enter a drawing for a Sodexo gift card (a winner from UNMC campuses outside of Omaha will receive a comparable gift card). Contact Heather Brown hlbrown@unmc.edu with any questions.  

By Erin Torell 

A new exhibit is open on Level 8 of the Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library. “Finding a Voice: Poetry, Prose, and Stories of Neurodiversity from the Wolfensberger Collection” showcases three books from the Wolf P. Wolfensberger, PhD, collection held in the library’s Robert S. Wigton Department of Special Collections and Archives:  

• Gretchen Josephson, born in Denver, Colorado (1954-2017) used poetry to interact with the world around her and to deal with events, people, and issues in her life. She did not let Down syndrome or society’s expectations about those with Down syndrome stop her from sharing her voice through poetry in her book Bus Girl: Poems by Gretchen Josephson (1997). 
• Poet Robert (Bob) Williams devoted his life to political activism to improve the lives of individuals with disabilities. Born with cerebral palsy, Williams held several positions in state and federal government and in the private sector. In A Struggling Voice: The Selected Poems of Robert Williams (1989), gave Williams an opportunity to advocate, through poetry, for those with disabilities to express their observations of the world. 

• Know Me As I Am: An Anthology of Prose, Poetry and Art by People With Learning Difficulties, edited by Dorothy Atkinson and Fiona Williams (1990), contains many autobiographical interviews, narratives handwritten and typed, poetry, and artwork from individuals with a variety of disabilities. The works cover issues of the self, memories, relationships, transitions, creativity and imagination, daily life, experiences of oppression, struggles, and self-determination.  

Dr. Wolfensberger (1934-2011) concentrated his life on psychiatry and community advocacy for individuals with mental and physical disabilities. From 1964-1971, he worked at the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute (NPI) at UNMC. He dedicated his work to the principle of normalization, which advocates for the integration of persons with disabilities into the larger societal community. Wolfensberger also developed community-based support programs. The McGoogan Library’s Robert S. Wigton Department of Special Collections and Archives holds his collection of books, research, teaching materials, and artifacts.  https://www.unmc.edu/library/special-collections/archives.html 

Access the exhibit in the elevator lobby on Level 8 of the McGoogan Health Sciences Library through September 18, 2023.