A recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease (officially known as COVID-19) that began in Wuhan, China, in late December has now infected more than 70,000 people and killed more than 2,000, primarily in China. The World Health Organization is actively monitoring the situation and is urging experts from across the globe to accelerate research on the virus so as to control its spread. To that end, several publishers and funding agencies signed a statement in late January promising to make relevant data, findings, and publications quickly and freely available for the duration of the outbreak.
One of the signatories on this document is Springer Nature, publisher of the prestigious Nature and BMC suites of journals. Anyone can access research related to coronaviruses and the public health response to previous outbreaks through the Springer Nature website. Available materials include journal articles, expert commentary, and even some books. The University Libraries already provides access to many Springer Nature publications. Students, faculty, and staff can browse the Libraries’ collection of journals or search for a specific journal of interest to them via the Libraries’ website.
While new information about COVID-19 is rapidly being created and disseminated, researchers, health care workers, and other interested individuals can find studies of previous coronavirus outbreaks, such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), in the PubMed database by using the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms “Coronavirus Infections,” “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus,” or “SARS Virus” in their searches.
The University Libraries embrace intellectual inquiry and innovation, nurture the production of new knowledge, and foster excellence in learning, teaching and research. During each academic year, the Libraries welcomes more than 1.2 million visitors across its network of three branch libraries: the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center, the DeLaMare Science and Engineering Library and the Savitt Medical Library. Visitors checked-out more than 90,000 items and completed more than 2 million database searches.