Top
  1. Home
    2.  / 
  2. Research & Teaching Support
    3.  / 
  3. Services for Faculty and Staff
    4.  / 
  4. HSL Services for Faculty

Health Sciences Library services for faculty

Course reserves

Faculty can place electronic or physical materials on reserve to ensure all students in the class have equal access to the assigned material. 

Workshops, tours and instruction

Health Sciences Library provides learning opportunities year round to help faculty, staff and students hone skills in information management. Our calendar of workshops and library events

  • Course-integrated instruction: Librarians can work with you to design library instruction specifically for your colleagues or students. Classes may be held as hands-on sessions in the library's state-of-the-art classroom or as demo in a room elsewhere on campus. Request a class and await our confirmation.
  • Tours: We'll show you around. Tours and orientations are available on request.
  • Walk-in workshops: We offer sessions in-person and online  that are open to all VCU faculty, staff, and students. Participants are encouraged to register, but drop-ins are also welcomed.

    Recent offerings  
    • PubMed: Learn to search MEDLINE via PubMed, including basic features and search techniques such as limits, display options and print formats.
    • Advanced PubMed: Learn how to get more out of PubMed by using subject headings and by setting up a MyNCBI account to save search strategies and send you regular updates. Explore some of the other databases that link to PubMed covering drugs, sequences, structures and more.
    • Introduction to searching CINAHL: The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, has full-text for more than 600 journals, plus evidence-based care sheets, legal cases, drug records and more than 200 books.  
    • Library orientation: Learn about the variety of resources and services available in one-hour sessions.
    • RefWorks: This useful tool allows you to easily create and manage your own research database. With a personalized account, you can quickly add citations to your database as you are searching the literature. RefWorks generates a bibliography to finalize your grant, thesis, dissertation or manuscript.

Library liaison program and research assistance

Our library liaison program assigns librarians to each school. They share information about library services, changes and innovations, collections and available resources to support the teaching, research and clinical needs of the MCV Campus. Find your liaison librarian. Questions about our research and reference services or need any help with your research needs, please contact your library liaison.

  • Reference services: Traditional reference services are supported during Health Sciences Library's peak service hours, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. During these hours, reference assistance is available by visiting or calling the Service Desk at (804) 828-0636. In-person service is supplemented by reference via email.
  • Consultations: Individual or small group consultations by appointment are available for in-depth questions, strategies, and instruction.
  • Grant proposals: Librarians help develop search strategies and help select materials to aid in preparing grant proposals. 
  • Systematic reviews: Librarians are available to help develop a review of a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and critically appraise relevant research. We can help collect and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review.
  • Research Data Management Program