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Due to the emergence of the WWW, as well as a vast increase in publishers' commitments to electronic formats, we are on the verge of witnessing a "giant leap" which will accelerate library acquisition of electronic products. Even scientific, technical, and medical publishers, who have long been the most conservative, are now converting their information for online distribution.
Our library recently acquired access to over 100 online full-text journals for which we have current subscriptions. Because of the unproven nature of electronic journals, as well as archival questions, the selected titles mirror titles in our collection with proven usage. (We attempted to acquire the most-used titles first; but not all of our most-used titles are immediately available online.)
Through a combination of databases and agreements with publishers, we are working on providing as much electronic access for our faculty and students as possible, seeking out more titles as they become available. We realize we cannot continue to duplicat indefinitely. Costs wil increase and consume any savings realized through our recent journal cancellation project. However, we hope to increase usage and encourage library patrons to familiarize themselves with the electronic format and its capabilities.
Measuring online usage of journals is a problem, since not all systems allow us to keep track of how many times a journal title is accessed. We must rely on feedback from our faculty and students to determine the ease with which they are able to access this electronic information. Please let us know of any problems when using the various applications!
(If you would like to know if any of your favorite journal titles are available online, check our web site at http://uscm.med.sc.edu/LIBRARY/JOURNAL.SHTML, or call Karen Warren at 733-3344.)
The remainder of the articles in this newsletter will outline additional developments regarding electronic access in the School of Medicine Library.
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You can go directly into the Core Collection by making that selection initially. Searches within the full-text are run across the entire text; MeSH maping is not available. Click on "Search" at the top of the screen for search options.
The list of the 15 journal titles appears below. We are pleased to announce that we will be adding access to additional 50 titles through OVID this spring. Watch for them.
On June 26, 1997, the National Library of Medicine announced that charges will be discontinued for searching the databases accessable through Internet Grateful Med and the new Internet search interface, PubMed. Free searching will only be available through these search systems and the Wold Wide Web. If you search MEDLINE using the MAC or PC versions of Grateful Med or by dialing directly into the NLM system, charges will still be incurred.
with both of these systems, you can search the entire MEDLINE database. In addition, PubMed will give you access to PreMEDLINE, a file that is updated daily with new citations that have not gone through the indexing stream. They may be searched using textwords and are moved from PreMEDLINE into MEDLINE when the indexing process is complete. If you are looking for very current articles, PreMEDLINE is probably your best choice.
PubMed has a nice feature which allows you to "find related articles" once you retrieve a useful citation. For approximately twenty-four electronic journals, it is possible to link from a citation to the full-text of the article. Some of these journals require that you have a subscription to the electronic version of the journal. (For example, the Library's subscription to the Journal of Biological Chemistry allows USC computer users to link from the citation to the full-text of the articles included in that title.) However, a number of them are free or are currently free on a trial basis.
The URL for PubMed is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed
Using Internet Grateful Med (IGM), you can search ten of the NLM files at no cost. This includes three AIDS databases and the Health Service, Technology, assessment and Research file (HealthSTAR). IGM provides a more user-friendly interface and allows the use of Loansome Doc for automated requesting of documents. IGM also provides automatic linkage to full-text of some documents.
The URL for Internet Grateful Med is: http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/
No registration, user ID, or password is required to use either system. A user ID is required to use the Loansome Doc feature.
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In an effort to provide more consumer health information to the Columbia community, the School of Medicine Library has recently purchased a subscription to a CD-ROM product called Health Reference Center (HRC). HRC provides full-text access to 110 popular medical and consumer periodicals and newsletters, 6 health reference books, and 500 consumer health pamphlets produced by national foundations. An additional 165 periodical titles are fully indexed, whild 1500 more general interest titles are selectively indexed. Information in HRS is designed for the non-medical professional, and is easy for the general health consumer to understand.
Some full-text periodical titles included in the product are: American Health, Business & Health, Cancer News, Consumer Reports on Health, FDA Consumer, Health, Issues in Law and Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, and World Health. The six reference books include Mosby's Medical, Nursing, and Allied Health Medical Dictionary as well as USP-DI Vol. II: Advice for the Patient. Pamphlet topics include cancer, diabetes, AIDS, nutrition, fitness, pregnancy, and dozens of others.
Health Reference Center is an easy-to-use "one-stop" resource for healtfh and wellness research. If you are interested in using the product, ask for the most recent Health Reference Center CD at the library's circulation desk.
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AUTOMATIC UPDATES:
With this new version, you will have the capability to save searches in an SDI format that will be
kept until deleted. Each time the database is updated, your search will automatically be executed
and the result sent to an e-mail address that you store at the time you set up the saved search.
This will allow you to receive the articles published on a particular subject, or by a particluar
author, etc., on a monthly basis. The important thing is to work out a good, comprehensive
search strategy that will pull up the items you want without retrieving large numbers of irrelevant
papers. The Reference staff will be happy to offer assistance if needed. To use this system,
follow these steps:
SORTING OUTPUT:
A sort capability has been added to the Citation Manager section as well as to the Auto-SDI mentioned above. In utilizing this, you can have citations sorted in most any way that is convenient to you. For instance, sorting alphabetically by "Source" (A-Z) will give you citations arranged alphabetically by the title of the journal. This is very useful when pulling from our collection since our journals are arranged alphabetically by title. You can also select a secondary sort. That would enable you to arrange them alphabetically by title and then, within each journal title, chronologically by publication year or alphabetically by author, etc. You might want to experiment with this to decide what is most effective for you. Sorting is a rather laborious process for the computer, and it is recommended that you not sort more than 100 documents.
DOCUMENT DELIVERY:
Whild in Citation Manager, you can now select a new option that will allow you to enter an Interlibrary Loan request automatically. Your request will be transmitted to Jeanne Fanning, who will provide you with a copy of the article. The first time this is done, you will need to enter personal information that will identify you as the requestor. However, if you use the system often, that information can be stored and there will be no need to re-enter it. This is about as painless as it gets!
If you have created a bookmark directly to the current page for quick access to OVID< you will need to change it. The URL for version 7.0 is: http://uscm.med.sc.edu/ovidweb/ovidweb.cgi.
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So be kind to your fellow library users and remember: Pack it in, Pack it out!
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All new books purchased by the School of Medicine Library are temoprarily shelved on the "New Book Shelf" located in the Reading/Index room. Thanks to the new book budget for this fiscal year, the New Book Shelf is beginning to look full again! A list of new book acquisitions is printed on a monthly basis and is located in a box on the circulation desk.
The SOM Library follows a detailed process in the selection of books to be added to the collection. Each library faculty member is responsible for the development of certain areas of the collection. Below is a list of the collection development librarians and the subject areas assigned to each:
Karen Warren (QS - QZ):
Human Anatomy (QS), Physiology (QT), Biochemistry (QU), Pharmacology (QV),
Microbiology & Immunology (QW), Parasitology (QX), Clinical Pathology (QY), Pathology
(QZ).
Sarah Gable (W - WB):
Health Professions (W), Public Health (WA), Practice of Medicine (WB).
Laura Kane (WC - WI):
Communicable Diseases (WC), Nutrition Disorders/Metabolic Disorders (WD), Musculoskeletal
System (WE), Respiratory System (WF), Cardiovascular System (WG), Hemic & Lymphatic
Systems (WH), Gastrointestinal System (WI).
Sandra Knowles (WJ - WO):
Urogenital System (WJ), Endocrine System (WK), Nervous System (WL), Psychiatry (WM),
Radiology (WN), Surgery (WO).
Tom Lange:
Gynecology (WP), Obstetrics (WQ), Dermatology (WR), Pediatrics (WS), Geriatrics (WT),
Otolaryngology (WV), Ophthalmology (WW), Hospitals & Health Facilities (WX), History of
Medicine (WZ).
Please feel free to contact any of the librarians named above at 733-3344 if you have a request or a question concerning the specific subject areas of the collection.
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"More books and journals" topped the faculty suggestions for improvements. Positive comments centered around the friendly, helpful staff and 24-hour access. Our OVID Medline system was rated favorably, while our printer capability was not rated as positively as other electronic resources.
Copies of the Survey Results are available. Call Karen Warren at 733-3355; we will be more than happy to provide one to you.
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This page updated on 2 December 1997.