School of Medicine Library

University of South Carolina


Communications

Winter, 1995 Issue


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JOURNAL DILEMMA

Academic health science relies on scientific/medical journals as its primary mode of communication. Unfortunately, as most everyone is aware, journal prices and especially prices of these technical journals have risen dramatically in the past decade. The impact on our library has been significant, almost doubling the cost of our journals over the last six years, even though we are subscribing to fewer journals. The number of titles that we do carry is currently low compared to other academic health science insititutions, and our subscription list is one of the yardsticks used to measure the adequacy of our library services.

Journals accounted for about one-eighth of the library budget in 1985, as compared to one-third for 1996. Because of this year's and past year's journal price increases, book purchases have been currently suspended until additional funds are added to the library budget.

Thirteen journals with low usage/high cost per use have been cancelled. More cancellations will be necessary without additional funding. Journals have been targeted for cancellation in the past because of low usage as determined in an ongoing library usage study. Out of necessity we must now cancel journals that have substantiated use, but show a high cost per use ($100 or more). Further cancellations will have to include journals that show $50 - $75 cost per use.

Additionally, newly added titles are not immune to cancellation. Of 35 replacement titles added to the collection in 1994, 11 have had very low usage. Two of these newly added titles have been included in the thirteen slated for 1996 cancellation. Below is the list of 35 titles that were added two years ago and reported in the January 1994 edition of this newsletter. The 13 asterisked titles show low use. These titles were added after a survey of the faculty was made to identify new useful subscriptions for the library journal collection when a large number of low use items were cancelled. Please check this list to identify titles that you would be interested in. If you do take them off the shelf to examine them, be sure to NOT RESHELVE AFTER ANY USE so that usage can continue to be monitored by our staff.

1994 New Subscriptions
*Low Use per Cost, 1994-95

1996 Subscription Cancellations

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STEADY INCREASE IN HOME PAGE USAGE

A program called "Webstats" is now being utilized by the School of Medicine Library to keep track of each access made to our Home Page. Statistics gathered by this program since July of 1995 (when the page was in early development and testing) clearly illustrate a steady increase in the use of our Home Page by both local and outside users. The program maintains a list of the top ten users per week, and users have downloaded information from our page from Emory University, New York University, University of Maryland, and many others.

The average number of accesses made to our Home Page during the three-month period of August to October was 1096 per week. Total accesses during that period numbered 14,242.

If you wish to have a departmental homepage linked to the School of Medicine homepage, Lisa Antley-Hearn will provide guidelines for homepage creation and the fundamentals of using the HTML coding required to create a page. We will load departmental pages onto our server if your department does not have its own, and will be happy to provide links to School of Medicine homepages loaded onto other servers. For additional information, contact Sarah Gable or Lisa Antley-Hearn at 733- 3344.

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INTERNET SITES

At the link to "Other Biomedical Internet Sites" we're adding new sites to the "Electronic Biomedical Publications" category on a fairly regular basis. Here is an introduction to some of these that you may find useful.

Of particular interest is a site Laura Larsson has set up at the University of Washington. She is listing "Instructions for Authors" for a rather impressive list of journals. In some cases she obtained permission from the journal and keyed the information in. She is also linking to sites that have instructions for authors available. As the list grows, this site will be extremely useful.

A number of journal publishers have established a web presence for their journals. You will usually not find the full text of the journal, but in some cases a few articles will be available in their entirety. Most of the journal homepages provide a "Table of Contents" for recent issues and summaries or abstracts of articles.

This is true for the AMA's Archives journals and for JAMA. There is no full text, but there are tables of contents and summaries. You are also provided a search capability and can access features such as the web edition of the American Medical News, press releases and physician recruitment advertising. There is a directory of state and local medical societies.

Nature, Science, and BMJ are treated in a similar fashion. Science will allow you to request a faxed copy of an article for a $7.00 charge. You can do this electronically if you are brave enough to put your credit card number on the web. Alternatively, you can print the form and mail your request. Science provides classifieds for jobs and new product information, information for authors, a network for young scientists, and a special section with additional data called "Beyond the Printed Page." Nature provides you access to their news network, job ads, and a listing of events and announcements.

Of the three, BMJ seems to offer the most full-text articles and, in his welcome remarks, the editor promises more for the future. BMJ also gives information for authors and announcements of forthcoming conferences.

The Journal of Biological Chemistry does provide full-text, although it qualifies this as an "online version." Tables, graphs, and color plates are included. You can browse an issue by subject or author or search by various parameters. As you read an article there are hotlinks to the cited references. If the citation appears in MEDLINE you can click on the MEDLINE link and be connected to the record, complete with abstract and MeSH descriptors. Tables, graphs, and color plates are included.

Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) is a full-text, peer-reviewed journal published by the National Center for Infectious Diseases of the CDC. Its goal is to promote the recognition of new and re-emerging infectious diseases and to improve the understanding of factors involved in disease emergence, prevention, and elimination.

These are just a few highlights from this category. Why not peruse this list and see if there is something there of interest to you? If you want to end with a little humor, click on HOT AIR, the site for the Annals of Improbable Research.

If you know of other useful biomedical sites, either for the "Electronic Biomedical Publications" section or any other part of the "Biomedical Internet Sites" list, contact Sarah Gable (SARAH@DCSMSERVER.MED.SC.EDU) or Lisa Antley-Hearn (WITCH@DCSMSERVER.MED.SC.EDU) by e-mail or phone at 733- 3344.

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Portable Multimedia Cart

A portable multimedia PC setup on a cart is now available for use in presentations in classrooms at the Garners Ferry campus. A pentium processor with 16 MB of RAM, a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, and a network interface, it can be used to access the Internet and resources on our Local Area Network in our two main lecture halls and several other smaller teaching spaces. It can also be used as a stand-alone PC for running a variety of graphical presentation software. When coupled with our LCD interface and our new high-intensity overhead projector, it allows projection of computer-based slide presentations, interactive internet sessions, canned multimedia presentations, etc. Mike Hayes at 733-1514 will coordinate the setup of this system in any teaching space and will be happy to assist any faculty in the development of presentations using this new tool.

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*** REMINDER ***

To those who use the Library after hours: Help us keep your library materials safe. Keep the doors locked and do not unlock and open the automatic doors at the front of the building. Thank you!

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SOM Library Holdings on USCAN

The School of Medicine Library has been working for some time now to make our holdings available on USCAN, the University of South Carolina Access Network. USCAN users may now access "USC-MED," our library's holdings, by selecting "SC Medical Libraries" from the USCAN Welcome Screen. Since we are still in the process of cleaning up this database, it is advisable to check our local catalog for more detailed information such as call numbers and journal holdings.

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School of Medicine Homepage

Have you seen the School of Medicine homepage on the WWW? If not, the URL is http://www.med.sc.edu. Check it out! We hope that the information available on the site (directory, calendar, etc) as well as the information accessible from the hotlinks will be useful to you. We are trying to create an electronic tool to quickly connect you to sites you find useful. Please let us know if there are links you would like to see added.

Here are the instructions to follow if you would like for the School of Medicine homepage to come up on your screen automatically when you log into Netscape:

  1. Go to Netscape.
  2. Click on Options.
  3. Under Options, click on Preferences.
  4. Click on the down arrow to open the "drop down" menu under "Set Preferences On."
  5. Click on Styles.
  6. Type the URL for our homepage in the box labeled "Window Styles."
  7. For starting point, click on the box for Home Page Location.
  8. Click OK on the bottom of the screen.

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Library Training Classes

OVID MEDLINE
P-MAIL for Windows Training
If you are interested in attending a class, call Sarah Gable (733-3344) or Lisa Antley-Hearn (733-3174) to reserve a place in the classes. All classes are held in the classroom in the Computer Resources Center, lower level of the Medical Library Building (building 101).

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NEWSLETTER CO-EDITORS

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Report any problems to Lisa Antley-Hearn, witch@dcsmserver.med.sc.edu

This page updated on 6 December 1995.
This page copyright 1997, The Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina.
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