The document provides an overview of the Harvard Catalyst and Countway Medical Library, emphasizing their roles in supporting biomedical research and education. It describes the library as one of the largest medical libraries globally, with extensive resources, while outlining Harvard Catalyst's initiatives in improving clinical and translational research through various programs and tools. Additionally, it highlights collaborative efforts and technological advancements aimed at enhancing access to information and fostering research partnerships across Harvard and affiliated institutions.

1. Accessing Digital Information
Douglas MacFadden
April 30, 2014
Harvard Catalyst and The Countway Medical
Library and CBMI at Harvard Medical School
Deputy Director Informatics Program and
Chief Informatics Officer, Harvard Catalyst

2. Overview
Countway Library
• Established 1875
• One of the largest medical libraries in the world
• Serves Harvard Medical School and investigators at any of it’s
17 affiliated hospitals
Center for Biomedical Informatics
• Established 2005
• Links the library with biomedical informatics research
Harvard Catalyst
• Established in 2008
• Funded from the NIH as part of the Clinical Translational
Science Awards program
• Renewed funding in 2013

3. Themes Connecting the Work
Accessing Information
• Content Portals
• Content Curation
• Ontology Development
Sharing and Collaboration
• Resources
• People
• Data
Supporting Education
• Just in time workshops
• Video capture of live classes
• Online learning

4. Countway Library and the Center for
Biomedical Informatics
The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, one of the largest medical libraries in the world,
serves the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard School of
Dental Medicine, Boston Medical Library and the Massachusetts Medical Society. The
Countway Library holds more than 630,000 volumes, subscribes to 3,500 current journal
titles and houses over 10,000 non-current biomedical journal titles. The library also houses
one of the world's leading medical history collections, and provides access to many
electronic information resources.
The Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMI) at Harvard Medical School (HMS) conducts
informatics research with a strong emphasis on translational science informed by
innovative computational strategies.
Directors:
• Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD
Henderson Professor of Pediatrics and Health Sciences and Technology
Co-Director Center for Biomedical Informatics Harvard Medical School
Director of the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
• Alexa T. McCray, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Co-Director Center for Biomedical Informatics
Associate Director of the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
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5. Countway Portal
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6. Center for Biomedical Informatics

7. Center for History of Medicine: Collections

8. Medical Heritage Library
Center for History of Medicine collaboration with the Internet Archive, The Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and
Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale
University, The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University, National Library of Medicine, The New York Academy of
Medicine The Welch Medical Library, Library of the Institute of the History of Medicine, and the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions Wellcome Library

9. Community Connect to Research
Improving understanding of health research

10. Mobile Health Map
Fostering a mobile care delivery and research community in collaboration with Dr.
Nancy E. Oriol, Dr. Anthony Vavasis and the Mobile Health Clinics Network

11. Autism Ontology
Providing Tools for Semantically Rich Information Representation

12. Harvard University Library Collaborations
EAS/EASi: Electronic Archiving System
• EAS is the Electronic Archiving System, which along with EASi, its User
Interface (UI) for archivists, is a prototype system being developed in LTS for
archiving electronic content at Harvard. Initially, the system is being designed
to permit ingest, archival processing and transfer to the Digital Repository
Service (DRS) for long term preservation of email. In the future, the system
will accommodate additional born-digital formats.
Library Cloud: provides access (API) to Harvard Library data
• LibraryCloud is a metadaserver. It makes information about the content and
usage of Harvard Library items available for use by applications developed
by anyone.

13. LibLab Projects
Blink: Linked open data, expanded authority search capabilities, and
synonym expansion
• Convert existing MARC records to RDF in order to use Linked Open Data and
synonym enhancement through a query rewriting web-service to improve
access and discoverability to the Countway Digital Library, and to enhance
LibraryCloud and the DPLA platform.
ASHE: Automatic Subject Heading Extraction
• This project utilizes proven techniques in term and concept extraction for the
automatic recognition of subject headings in library written materials. Project
will improve the completeness of existing catalog records and provide an
opportunity to novel experimentation.

14. More Information about Countway and CBMI
• Countway Portal: https://www.countway.harvard.edu/
• CBMI: https://cbmi.med.harvard.edu/
• CHoM Collections: http://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/
• Strong Medicine: http://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/collections/show/94
• Community Connect to Research: http://www.connecttoresearch.org/
• Medical Heritage Library: http://www.medicalheritage.org/
• Mobile Health Map: http://www.mobilehealthmap.org/
• ASHE: https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/liblab/proj/automatic-subject-heading-extraction
• BLINK: https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/liblab/proj/blink-linked-open-data-expanded-authority-search-
capabilities-and-synonym-expansion
• EAS/EASi: http://hul.harvard.edu/ois/systems/eas/
• Autism Ontology: https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/ASDPTO
• Library Cloud: http://librarycloud.harvard.edu/

15. Harvard Catalyst
Founded in 2008, the Harvard Clinical and
Translational Science Center supports an
academic home that creates an integrated
research and training environment across
Harvard Medical School and its partner
institutions in order to improve human
health. It provides and/or creates access
to resources and services to support all
steps across the full spectrum of clinical
and translational research, and facilitates
the training and career development of the
translational research workforce.
Harvard Catalyst is one of 60 centers funded
by the NIH under NCATS, the National
Center for Advancing Translational
Sciences. In additional to NIH funding,
Harvard Catalyst is supported by 17
Harvard-affiliated hospitals and works in
partnership with all 11 Harvard schools. In
2013, Harvard Catalyst was awarded a
second five-year grant.
Principle Investigator
Lee Nadler, MD
Dean for Clinical and Translational Research, Harvard Medical School
Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Medicine, Dana Farber Cancer Institute

16. Resources for Investigators
Harvard Catalyst makes available the following
resources for Harvard-affiliated researchers:
• Consultations (biostatistics, bioinformatics, regulatory)
• Education (currently 13 courses)
• Pilot funding opportunities: provided grants to hundreds of
investigators to form inter-institutional teams as they collaborate
on interdisciplinary research projects in areas such as childhood
obesity, health disparities in cancer, novel utilization of SHRINE,
innovative methodologies in imaging, and Type 1 diabetes.
• Clinical research services at affiliated hospitals
• Informatics tools

17. Additional Harvard Catalyst Initiatives and
Programs
• Diversity: The Program for Faculty Development and Diversity has
impacted the culture at HMS through its mentorship programs, faculty
fellows (all of which have received promotions), visiting research
interns (boasting 23 alumni), and summer clinical and translational
research interns (43 alumni).
• Community: The Population Health Research Program has
facilitated partnerships with health departments and communities to
translate evidence into policy, track policy implementation, link data
systems, and evaluate policy changes.
• Health Disparities: The Health Disparities Research Program
convened a Harvard-wide symposium on this research area, while a
May 2012 conference focused on sleep disparities. Their co-
sponsored 2012-13 Gene-Environment Disparities Research
workshop series has featured renowned presenters working across
these disciplines.

18. Leading Efforts to Improve the Health of NFL Players
In February 2014, Harvard Catalyst began leading the
NFLPA/Harvard Accelerated Research Collaboration to Protect
and Improve the Health of Football Players. This multi-million
award from the National Football League Players Association
(NFLPA) is funding a 7-year initiative led by a highly diverse
and integrated team of Harvard investigators. The initiative
presents an opportunity to work with leading experts across
Harvard University and partnering institutions across the U.S.

19. Harvard Catalyst Informatics
Lower barriers to research
• SHRINE: discovery and analysis of patient clinical data
• Profiles: discovery of potential collaborators
• eagle-i: discovery of cores and developed resources
• REDCap: support and training for the Vanderbilt electronic data capture tool
Partner with other HC programs to build and support informatics tools that implement new
policy across institutions and improve efficiency:
• IRB Cede Review workflow
• CRC Protocol Review workflow
• CRC Scheduling workflow
• Education Course Compendium and Video Library
Provide just-in-time informatics training to all members of the research community
Access to all Harvard Catalyst resources, services and educational offerings via web portal

20. SHRINE: Shared Health Research Information Network
Software and policy to build
networks of patient data for
research. Developing support for
clinical trial recruitment.
Harvard network of 5 competing
hospitals
Open Source
• Annual Conference
• Carranet registry for rare
pediatric Conditions (60
hospitals)
• UC Rex research and
quality of care across the
UC system
• CCHMC led pediatric
registry
• HOMERUN quality of care
• National Demonstration
network of 8 sites
• PCORI
• NIH NCATS CTSA

21. Profiles
Broadly Implemented & Networked
VIVO Ontology and Plug-In Support
Linked Open Data

22. eagle-i
Search for Core Labs in eagle-i National network for
discovery of biomedical
resources
• Over 90,000
resources
• Over 500 cores
• 18 ontology
collaborations
• 27 sites & growing
Collaboration with
transaction facilitators
(e.g. Science Exchange,
AddGene, DSHB)

23. REDCap Support and Training
Produced by Vanderbilt
• REDCap is a secure, web-based application for building and
managing online surveys and databases
HMS is the second largest REDCap site

24. CRC Protocol Review and Scheduling
• Decrease time and effort for investigators through web based workflow
• Support more comprehensive research due to multi-institutional support
• Software is available for sharing as open source

25. Education Support
Comprehensive services for Education, including:
• Course Compendium searchable database with flexible metadata support
• Video capture, production (including copyright redaction process) and online
library

26. IRB Cede Review
• IRB Cede Review Form streamlines multi-site human studies by eliminating the
need for duplicative IRB reviews across the diverse, multi-institutional Harvard
community.
• Policy and software are available for sharing with other CTSA sites.

27. Informatics just-in-time training
27 different bioinformatics workshops offered repeatedly throughout the year
including:
• Genome resources
• Statistics
• Microarrays and Gene Expression including transcription factor analysis
• Pathway analysis
• MicroRNA’s analysis
• Protein engineering
• Sequencing analysis (mRNA-Seq and Exome Sequencing)
• Human Genome databases (Human Gene Mutation Database
• NIH’s tools including Gene Omnibus Database and UCSC Genome Browser)
• Programming topics like Bioperl and Perl for biological text mining

28. Harvard Catalyst Web Portal

29. Domain Specific Portals
Integrating domain
focused:
• Content
• Events
• People
• Resources
Sites:
• Immunology
• Center for Primary
Care

30. Open source: open.med

31. More Information about Harvard Catalyst
• Harvard Catalyst Portal: http://catalyst.harvard.edu/
• Open.med: https://open.med.harvard.edu/
• Immunology: https://immunology.hms.harvard.edu/
• Center for Primary Care: https://primarycare.hms.harvard.edu/

32. Questions?