 http://southmed.usouthal.edu/library  Issue
#54 Winter 2002
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| •Faculty of the Biomedical Library represented the University
extremely well at the Triple Chapter Medical Library Association meeting
held in New Orleans Oct. 25-28, 2001. In addition to papers, posters and
awards (see SC/MLA story above), BML faculty were also
active in various committees, including serving as chairs, and other activities.
Tom Williams was elected as Chair of CONBLS, the Consortium of Biomedical
Libraries of the South. CONBLS is comprised of the directors of most academic
libraries in the southern states and meets each year at the Chapter meeting
and holds bi-annual planning/evaluation retreats. •The Biomedical Library held its annual Christmas Food Drive in December to benefit the Bay Area Food Bank. •The faculty and staff of the Biomedical Library adopted two children from the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree in December.
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| As part of an ongoing self-assessment program, the library
recently conducted a citation analysis of articles published by College
of Medicine faculty. A random 10% sample was checked
for ownership of the publishing journal as well as the items cited within
each article. Results showed that 95% of the articles were published in
journals owned by the University, while 85% of the cited items (books/journal
articles) were owned. This self-assessment program also included a recent satisfaction survey conducted over a five-week period. Comments received concerning the Biomedical were good overall, especially in regards to staff helpfulness and study environment. Some dissatisfaction was expressed regarding weekend hours and problems created by having the collection split between three locations. This upcoming spring the library will participate in a survey sponsored by the American Association of Health Science Libraries (AAHSL). This survey will provide feedback on our library, and help us set benchmarks for comparison between our institution and other medical school libraries throughout the country.
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| The library liaison program connects library
faculty to departmental faculty with the intent of enhancing communication,
establishing educational opportunities and improving the collection. Library
liaisons are available to assist their departments in any aspect of library
service. Your departmental liaison can organize educational sessions for
your department faculty or classes, we can help to create auto alerts (SDI’s)
on OVID or find Internet resources in your area or specialty. Additionally,
your liaison can answer any general questions you may have about library
resources or services. Below is a list of departments with their corresponding
library liaisons.
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| Are you curious about the use of personal digital assistant
(PDA) technology in the healthcare environment? The Biomedical Library will
host the Medical Library Association’s satellite teleconference, “Sync
or Swim: Managing the Flood of PDAs in Health Care,” on Wednesday,
February 6, 2002. The teleconference will focus upon helping librarians
promote PDA technology to healthcare professionals; highlight currently
available handheld devices, software and peripherals; provide a framework
for designing educational sessions about this technology, including “how-to”
information; and demonstrate innovative programs that illustrate the potential
of handheld technology for physicians and allied health professionals. The teleconference will take place at the University Library in Room #5 from 1:30 – 4:30. Wrap-around discussions are planned for before and after the main presentation. Participants will receive MLA CE contact hours. Anyone interested may attend, but since space is limited, please register with Judy Burnham (office: 460-6888, jburnham@jaguar1.usouthal.edu).
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Refereed journals are scholarly publications containing articles
reviewed (or refereed) by the author’s peers. The reviewers evaluate
the content and methodology of the author’s work as well as the results
of the research. Articles that have undergone the peer review process are
generally held to a higher standard than those appearing incan be used to
locate refereed/peer-reviewed journals:
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| Several new eBook titles have been added to the MDConsult
core collection while others were updated with newer editions (including
the 2000 Red Book, Conn’s Current Therapy 2001 and Kistner’s
Gynecology and Women’s Health). All of the MDConsult titles are available from home through the Biomedical Library’s proxy server. For instructions on accessing these titles from home, visit http://southmed.usouthal.edu/library/medgate1/index.html. Please note that registration for MDConsult must be completed using a campus hardwired computer. After creating an account, however, individuals may access MDConsult from off campus. With the addition of StatRef, PDR Electronic Library, and seven new titles from OVID, the list of Electronic Books grew considerably during the past few months. (See “The Biomedical Library’s Online Resources Collection Grows” in the Fall 2001 issue of Biofeedback http://southmed.usouthal.edu/library/bf/bf53/biof53.htm - resources). Because of this growth, a clickable alphabet was added to allow for easier navigation of the list. Electronic books page: http://southmed.usouthal.edu/library/ebooks.htm
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| Beginning January 1, 2002, the Biomedical Library began charging
$.10 per page for printing. Additionally, color laser printing is available
for $.50 per page at both the campus site and the Children’s and Women
Biomedical Library site. Ask for help at reference on campus and at the
circulation desk at Children’s and Women is for color printing. There are several ways that you can avoid excess printing charges and paper waste. For example, Microsoft Word has an option making it possible to print multiple pages of text onto a single sheet. To do this click on ‘Print’, click on the bottom right pull down menu ‘Pages Per Sheet’ and choose the number of pages you would like on a single printed page. Two pages, and sometimes 4 pages, are usually legible unless the font is very small. Other programs, such as PowerPoint, also have similar options. Need some other hints on cutting down on printing costs? How many times have you clicked ‘Print’ on Netscape and printed out more pages than you needed? To avoid this, try going to ‘File’ and choose ‘Print Preview’. From these screens, you can choose the exact page(s) that you want to print. If you only want a certain amount of text printed, highlight it, go to ‘Edit’ and choose ‘Copy’. Open a word processor, such as Word, and go to ‘Edit’ and choose ‘Paste’. Now you will only print the section(s) that you want, not pages of text you don’t need. Is it cheaper to print at home but your connection is too slow to do searching? Email results of searches to yourself from many of our databases. Email articles to yourself from OVID and many other databases. Open your email and copy and paste text that you want to print later. For more information on how to cut down printing costs and waste please be sure to ask library staff for more assistance. We’ll be happy to try to help you!
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| Recent events have understandably elicited interest
in the disease anthrax. As a result the Biomedical Library has “collected”
a few resources on this topic for the USA community. On the Internet: The CDC has developed an anthrax resources web page at: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/Agent/Anthrax/Anthrax This page includes fact sheets on the disease, information for the clinic and the laboratory, as well as several archived web casts on the disease. Additionally, the library has a video copy of two of these web casts, “Anthrax: What Every Clinician Should Know, Part I” and “Anthrax: What Every Clinician Should Know, Part II.” Other titles will be added as they are received. Copies of these videos are located at all three Biomedical Library sites. Other reliable resources on anthrax and other bioterrorism topics were collected by Biomedical Librarian Jie Li and can be found at http://southmed.usouthal.edu/library/bioter.htm
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| “Access
to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations.
Of all the institutions that puport to do this, free libraries stand virtually
alone in accomplishing this mission.” -Toni Morrison
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| The Biomedical Library has received several grants from the
National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM). $1,500 was awarded to
exhibit at the annual Rural Health Conference in Tuscaloosa, AL (April 25-26,
2002) and another $1,125 for the Alabama Association of Public Health meeting
to be held in Mobile April 24-26. The funding was granted to demonstrate
NN/LM and Biomedical Library resources. The University of South Alabama Biomedical Library has also received $4733 in funding to host a cybercafe at the annual meeting of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, June 6-9, 2002. The cybercafe will include personal computers and a demonstration area. The exhibit will showcase the electronic resources of the National Library of Medicine (such as scheduled PubMed classes), give participants access to electronic medical resources from for-profit vendors, show participants how to determine the quality of web sites and explore new technologies for clinical medicine (such as PDAs), distribute information on the do’s and don’ts of clinic web site development, and allow participants to check e-mail.
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| What happens to all those interlibrary loan requests? The
very first step, after confirming that we don’t own the item at USA,
is the verification process. It is the borrowing library’s responsibility
to ensure that the citations are correct. This saves time for the library
staff at the lending library when filling the request, and eventually saves
time for the patron placing the request. Correct citations also keep our
library in good standing with our library colleagues around the country,
which can only help us with those rush requests on Friday afternoons. Verification is one reason why the unique identifier is so helpful to our library staff. The unique identifier is used to quickly verify the citation, and the MEDLINE or PubMed ID can also be used in the ordering process. Providing us with the unique identifier saves us a lot of time, and we appreciate you making the effort to include it on your requests. Reference and bibliographic tools are also used in the verification process. These tools are particularly helpful for incomplete requests, “obscure” items (such as proceedings and theses), requests for items published prior to 1966, book chapters and abbreviated journal titles, to mention just a few. In the interest of time, it is important that interlibrary loan staff be well versed in these tools. At other times we must draw on the expertise of the reference staff. If all else fails, the request is returned to the patron for more information. If no further information is available, we send the request out “as is” and hope for the best. Sometimes we take the road less traveled. We have, at times, contacted publishers, authors and organizations directly all over the world in order to obtain a particularly elusive item. Frequently these efforts have proven successful. The Internet continues to be great a tool for global communication as well as a reference tool. To place requests, our department uses two global systems, DOCLINE and OCLC. DOCLINE is primarily used in Medicine, and is the one we use most frequently. OCLC is predominantly, though not exclusively, used for books and non-medical journals. Statistics from the National Library of Medicine indicate that from April to September 2001, about 98% of our requests placed on DOCLINE were filled. Requests not filled on DOCLINE are then placed on OCLC. DOCLINE routes requests through a series of “cells” of library codes, which form a routing table. Our routing table is revised from time to time, to include a variety of libraries, which will help us fill the “regular” requests as well as those that are more difficult to find. We are pleased with the 98% fill rate and hope you are too.
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SOUTHmed Members Can Access Online Resources Most SOUTHmed members can now access some of our electronic resources. While license agreements prevent access to some resources by some members, we always try to negotiate access for our SOUTHmed members. Letters are being sent to SOUTHmed members noting which resources can be used and giving details for access.
In addition to this electronic access, SOUTHmed benefits include training,
online literature searches, article delivery and check-out privileges.
SOUTHmed was developed to provide easy access to medical information
for health care professionals who do not have ready access to a medical
library, for hospitals without a medical library and for hospitals with
libraries in need of additional resources. If you have any questions,
or need further information on SOUTHmed, contact Judy Burnham, (251)
460-6888 or jburnham@jaguar1.usouthal.edu
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BIOFEEDBACK,
New Series, Issue #54, Winter 2002 |
