Everyone a Winner at the
Golden Open House 

Thanks to everyone for stopping by the Library & Learning Resource Center "Go for the Gold" Open House. We welcomed quite a few regulars, but also got to meet some new folk. The Olympic-themed event on July 18 was great fun for all, including special surprise visitor, Dr. Denton A. Cooley.  Check out the photo album on Flickr.

We awarded lots of medals during the "Who Wants to be a Gold Medalist" trivia game, and several smaller prizes during the "Olympic Ring Toss" which turned out to be very challenging. For the "Count the Hearts" game, the grand prize—a signed copy of Dr. Cooley's book, 100,000 Hearts—went to the person whose guess was closest to the number of candy hearts in the jar. There were 377 candy hearts in the jar, so the winning guess was 375, from Giselle Montes in Biostatistics & Epidemiology. She took home the book. Congratulations, Giselle! Laurens Wollersheim, cardiovascular surgery student, took home the jar of candy for his guess of 352. Just under that with a guess of 350, was Gloria Ramos, also from Biostatistics & Epidemiology, who took home the Starbucks gift card. (I think that puts that department at the top of the medal podium!)

Don't wait until next year to stop by or call the library! We are here weekdays from 7:30-5:00 and are always ready to help you "up your game." — Sonya 

"Host for a Day" Produces new
Healthy Lunch Guide 

Our "Who Wants to be a Gold Medalist" game was a big hit at our open house and I got to be Regis, err, the host. About 12 contestants won gold medals for getting 5 questions right. The one question which generated the most discussion among contestants using the "Ask the Audience" lifeline was this one: "At 37 miles long, the longest, continuously-named street in Houston is…?" with the possible answers of a) Memorial, b) Main, c) Westheimer, or d) Little York. Do you know the correct answer? Come on by the library to learn this bit of Houston history.

While you're here, take a look at version 2.0 of my little guide to (mostly) healthy good eats, Gregg's Favorite Healthy Lunches. Since we gave out many of the original Guide to Good Eats at last year's open house, I decided an update was in order. I visited more of the restaurants and cafés located within walking distance of THI, searching out heart-healthy items available at low, or reasonable, cost. If you'd like a copy, stop by the circulation desk or email me at gdoty@texasheart.org. And if you have any suggestions for next year's edition, just let me know. — Gregg 

p.s. Check out the Nutrition topic in THI's Heart Information Center.

My Favorite Enhancements to PubMed and
Introducing PMC 

In order to distinguish it from PubMed, PubMed Central, the free archive of full-text, peer-reviewed, biomedical literature, now goes by PMC. It has a cleaner look and some new features, including links to author information, article notes, and copyright and license information. My favorite enhancement is the new author link feature. You can click on an author's name when viewing an article in PMC and it will take you to a PubMed search results page for that author. How convenient!  

One of the recent notable changes in PubMed is the addition of discovery tools to the search results page, including "Results by year" in the page's right column.   This feature displays the number of citations for each year. You can click on an individual bar to see the results for a single year. I like to compare the number of articles published each year to see how popular a topic is. Now I can do this without even changing my search!  

As always, if you need help searching or want a more detailed explanation of PubMed or PMC features, come by the library and talk to one of the librarians. We can all learn from each other. — Rebecca 

Patron Spotlight

Laurens Wollersheim, a medical student from The Netherlands, won second prize in our "Count the Hearts" game at our open house on July 18. The sweet prize was the jar of candy hearts.

Laurens is at THI for two months, taking an elective rotation at his school, the University of Amsterdam, in a program coordinated by Dr. Michael Duncan, cardiovascular surgeon. He chose THI because he gets to engage directly in patient care in addition to observing surgeries, and because of THI's cutting-edge work in specialized cardiac surgeries such as heart transplants and mechanical assist devices. He's a library regular and likes watching DVDs of surgeries and reading biographies of famous cardiologists like Dr. Cooley. He really wanted to win first prize in the game, an autographed copy of Dr. Cooley's memoir.

He's enjoyed his visit to Houston but when asked about his primary impression of our fair city, he said "concrete and cars." Well, we love Houston but we can't argue with that. He returns to Amsterdam in September and will graduate in November. Congratulations, Laurens!

p.s. Read about all the different Postdoctoral Programs at THI.