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How to Use OvidSP’s Basic SearchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
It’s been almost 5 months since our University has been using the OvidSP interface exclusively. I’d have to say that reaction has been mixed. I find myself waffling over whether I love or hate the basic search more often than I care to admit. I tend to hate it when I’m helping someone on the reference desk, and I see that they’re getting 0 hits because they’re using the Basic Search the same way they use the Advanced Ovid Search. Or even worse, they’re doing parts of the same search in both the Basic Search and the Advanced Ovid Search. This brings up a larger question about whether it’s appropriate to have...
Source: Librarians' Rx - April 29, 2008 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Thane Chambers Tags: Searching Teaching and Learning Technology Source Type: organizations

Learning to SearchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Both Dagmara and I are new librarians. We have been really lucky to be involved in systematic review searching this year. This has been an overwhelming and scary (at times) but (in the end) rewarding learning process. At first we were freaked out because we really were not sure of the process involved in systematic review searching, or if there even was a process. I was under the impression that you had to retrieve every single piece of information ever written (in any format) on your topic. I wasn’t aware that the search itself needs to be systematic and needs to fulfill criteria related to the research questions being ...
Source: Librarians' Rx - February 15, 2008 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Thane Chambers Tags: Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

Virtual health library projectEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
I normally try not to post about stuff that comes out on Canmed-lib, but I thought this was sufficiently important that it warranted an additional post. The National Network of Libraries for Health/Réseau national des bibliothèques pour la santé task force has the go ahead from Canada Health Infoway for the Phase 0 stage of a Virtual Health Library (VHL) project. Once it is established, the library will eventually “ensure that health care providers across the country have easy and equitable access to the best information for patient care.” See the announcement that went out over the Canmed-lib listserv for more information.
Source: Librarians' Rx - August 1, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

Medicine and Magic in Harry PotterEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The History of Medicine division of the National Library of Medicine has a new exhibit about medicine and magic in Harry Potter, displaying old treasures in the library’s collection that are mentioned in the series of books. I won’t be going to Maryland before the end of November, but if I were going I’d check it out! For more information: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/harry_potter_exhibit07.html
Source: Librarians' Rx - July 31, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

New issue of Cochrane LibraryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Cochrane Library database is being upgraded to Issue 3, 2007 today. New content will include close to 9700 new records downloaded from MEDLINE, specialised registers, and handsearch results. Click here for more information about changes in content.
Source: Librarians' Rx - July 18, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Resources Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

Turning the PagesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
An interactive program, Turning the Pages offers viewers the chance to leaf through rare books from the National Library of Medicine collection. Click here to read information about the recent launch.
Source: Librarians' Rx - July 18, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

JCREmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The latest, 2006 impact factors are now available via the Journal Citation Reports database.
Source: Librarians' Rx - June 20, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

TRIP enhancementsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The latest upgrade to TRIP has gone live! Added features include brief snippets of articles in the results list (often a sentence from the conclusion), a supposedly enhanced advanced search function, the ability to comment on the quality and applicability of articles, and RSS feeds for searches. For a more complete description, check out the TRIP blog.
Source: Librarians' Rx - June 7, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Resources Searching Source Type: organizations

Suggestions Please!Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
OK. So there are a ton of medical, library, and medical library blogs out there, and I’m sure you, the readers of this one, read several others as well. My question to you, is what types of posts would you like to see on Librarians’ Rx? What information or updates are you most interested in learning about? Please leave me a comment with your suggestions, and hopefully I can gear the future of the site so that it meets your (and the rest of its user base’s) needs. Thanks in advance for your input!
Source: Librarians' Rx - June 1, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Information needs Source Type: organizations

PartnershipEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Speaking of Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, the latest issue of the journal is now available online. Included among the articles is one by Pearl Jacobson entitled “Empowering the physician-patient relationship: The effect of the Internet” which discusses the librarian’s role in mediating the exchange of information between physicians and patients. Patients increasingly turn to the Internet for health information, but are often hesitant to discuss the information they find with their practitioner. Librarians can assist the patients in understanding th...
Source: Librarians' Rx - May 30, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Professional Reading Source Type: organizations

CLA ConferenceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
I just returned from this year’s Canadian Library Association Conference in St. John’s Newfoundland. It is a beautiful city where everyone is incredibly friendly. I highly recommend taking a trip down the eastern coast as the scenery is absolutely breathtaking! One of the most interesting sessions for me was the one on Open Access journals presented by Heather Morrison, Candice Dahl, and Jennifer Richard. They provided a background on OA issues, talked about the establishment of an OA journal using Partnership as the example, and talked about the current state of Canadian OA policies. They promised to provide o...
Source: Librarians' Rx - May 30, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Conferences Open Access Source Type: organizations

JEAHILEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Just wanted to let you know that the latest issue of the Journal of the European Association of Health Information in Libraries is now available online. The theme for the issue is Clinical Information Services. I’m looking forward to reading the piece the piece called “EBM Guidelines Link Cochrane-Information into Clinical Practice” by Leena Lodenius, Ilkka Kunnamo, and Peter Nyberg.
Source: Librarians' Rx - May 9, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Professional Reading Source Type: organizations

Early CMAJ issues onlineEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Early issues of CMAJ are being digitized and made available by PubMed Central. The digitization project, which in the end will provide a complete archive of the 299 journals that currently provide open access to their content via PubMed Central, is expected to last a few more months. For more information, see Patrick Ellis’s news item in CMAJ last month.
Source: Librarians' Rx - May 7, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: In the news Open Access Source Type: organizations

New Titles in ScopusEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Based on user suggestions and following review by a selection team, 800 new titles have been approved for addition to the Scopus database (Scopus info available here). Many of the titles are focused on the social sciences, but the list does include some biomedical journals as well. For a complete list of titles (22611 lines worth), click here and select ‘List of titles’ from the Quick links. The list can be sorted to display only the health sciences titles (under Column I, Classification Top Level), and then further subdivided if you so choose. For more information about the new additions, please see the announcement.
Source: Librarians' Rx - May 3, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Searching Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

McMaster’s Second LifeEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
McMaster University Libraries will be offering research services over Second Life for a few hours a week throughout the next three months. I will be interested to hear what kind of uptake there is on the part of the students during this pilot project. For more information, see the McMaster news article about the program.
Source: Librarians' Rx - May 1, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: In the news Service Source Type: organizations

Open MedicineEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
, the new open access medical journal I’ve posted about before here, had its official launch today. The first issue is now available for all to see, with articles on a range of topics under such categories as research, review, and clinical practice. Check it out at: http://www.openmedicine.ca/
Source: Librarians' Rx - April 18, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Open Access Source Type: organizations

Medical Humanities ConferenceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Dalhousie University, in association with Stanford and the University of Alberta, will be hosting Humanities Days: Celebrating the Human Face of Medicine, an international conference on the humanities in medicine to be held in Halifax May 17-20, 2007. Topics will relate to narrative medicine, music, visual arts, history, and spirituality. The format will be unlike traditional conferences. The website states that it will be “an interactive and collaborative experience presented in a variety of unique formats- symposia and panel discussions, art exhibits, film, audience polling, drama and music, and more.” That...
Source: Librarians' Rx - April 6, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Conferences Medical Humanities Source Type: organizations

John Willinsky PresentationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
On March 20, 2007, the University of Alberta Libraries hosted an Open Access Forum featuring guest speaker John Willinsky of UBC. The podcast of that presentation is now available online at http://www.library.ualberta.ca/audio/openaccess.mp3. Click here for more information about OA at the U of A.
Source: Librarians' Rx - April 5, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Open Access Source Type: organizations

Scholarly ExchangeEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Dr. John Hoey, former editor-in-chief of CMAJ and editor of the new open access journal Open Medicine, has joined the governing board of Scholarly Exchange, Inc. Scholarly Exchange combines the Open Journals Systems software (which I’ve posted about previously) with complete hosting and support, offering scholars all the tools they will need to develop academic ejournals at no cost. Another boost to the promotion and support of open access journals!
Source: Librarians' Rx - March 30, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Resources Open Access Source Type: organizations

Cochrane Library to be available to all CanadiansEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
“Cochrane Library to be available to all Canadians” says Brad Mackay in the latest issue (Vol. 176, Issue 7) of CMAJ. Free, nationwide access to the database is a priority of the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre (which has a new website, btw). It is hoped that a national license will be in place within the year. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!
Source: Librarians' Rx - March 26, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Resources Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

Scholarly Publishing ConferenceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Registration is now open for the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference, to be held July 11-13, 2007 at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. John Willinsky, founder of the Public Knowledge Project, creator of the Open Journal Systems software, author of The Access Principle, and guest speaker at the U of A’s recent Open Access Forum, will be giving the keynote address. I must say, he is a very enthusiastic and entertaining presenter. Registration is limited to 200, so if you’re interested you’d better sign up soon!
Source: Librarians' Rx - March 26, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Conferences Open Access Source Type: organizations

Correction to previous postEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Please pardon the error I made in the previous post. Thanks to Pam for her comment. EBLIP was actually cofounded by Denise K. and Su Cleyle from Memorial University (my apologies Su). Pam Ryan has, however, been involved from the beginning as production editor .
Source: Librarians' Rx - March 21, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: EBL Source Type: organizations

Congrats to Denise!Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Denise Koufogiannakis, creator of this very blog, has been named one of Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers for 2007. She is receiving international recognition for her commitment to the promotion and practice of evidence-based librarianship. She and colleague Pam Ryan cofounded the open access journal EBLIP that is featured in my last post. To read more about Denise, please visit http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6423397.html.
Source: Librarians' Rx - March 20, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: EBL Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

EBLIPEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The latest issue (Vol 2, Issue 1) of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice has just been published. As usual, it includes a wide range of interesting articles, some of which are specific to health sciences environments. For those with an interest in medical humanities, be sure to check out Peter Brophy’s commentary, “Narrative-Based Practice”.
Source: Librarians' Rx - March 20, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: EBL Professional Reading Source Type: organizations

Annual History of Medicine DayEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Tomorrow, March 17, is not only St. Patrick’s Day, it’s also the second Annual History of Medicine Day at the University of Alberta. Students are given the opportunity to present the findings of their research projects. In honour of the day, why don’t you check out the Wellcome library’s photographic library of medical history or the NLM’s digital collections on the history of medicine.
Source: Librarians' Rx - March 16, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Medical Humanities Source Type: organizations

CHLA Conference 2007Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Registration is now open for the 2007 CHLA Conference. This year’s theme is Capitalizing on Health Partnerships, and the preliminary program shows an interesting assortment of speakers and topics. For more information, or to register, please visit the conference website at http://www.chla-absc.ca/2007/.
Source: Librarians' Rx - February 27, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Conferences Source Type: organizations

Open Access ColloquiumEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
BioMed Central held a colloquium called “Open Access: How Can We Achieve Quality and Quantity” in London on February 8, 2007. Podcasts and slideshows of the presentations are available for your viewing at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/oacolloquium/.
Source: Librarians' Rx - February 23, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Open Access Source Type: organizations

U of A Open Access ForumEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Open Access has been a hot topic of late, and the University of Alberta Libraries are doing their part to increase awareness about this issue. An OA Forum, open to all, has been planned for March 20, 2007. Guest speaker John Willinsky, author of The Access Principle, will be speaking about changes to scholarly communication and open source software for journal publishing. It should be a fantastic event! Click here for more information about OA at the U of A.
Source: Librarians' Rx - February 13, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Open Access Source Type: organizations

Campbell Collaboration ColloquiumEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Along a similar vein, the 7th Annual International Campbell Collaboration Colloquium will be held May 14-16, 2007 in London, England. The overall theme for this conference is ‘Quality, Credibility, and Utility: The Relevance of Systematic Reviews’.
Source: Librarians' Rx - February 6, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Conferences Source Type: organizations

5th Canadian Cochrane SymposiumEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The 5th Canadian Cochrane Symposium is being held next week, Feb. 12-13, 2007 in Ottawa. This year’s theme is ‘Knowlege for Health’ and the provision of information to support health practice.
Source: Librarians' Rx - February 6, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: EBM Conferences Source Type: organizations

JCHLA Fall 2006 issueEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Fall 2006 (Vol. 27, No. 4) issue of the Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (which includes a feature by me!) is now available online. A great big thank you and congratulations to Sandra, Gillian, and Teresa for putting it all together.
Source: Librarians' Rx - January 24, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Professional Reading Source Type: organizations

RelemedEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
There is now yet another new search engine for Medline/PubMed. The Relemed homepage states that it may be used to “Search millions of biomedical articles for the most relevant answers”. A recent article in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making titled “Relemed: sentence-level search engine with relevance score for the MEDLINE database of biomedical articles” describes its search function and provides a couple of examples of searches. Relemed supposedly retrieves higher specificity by searching for multiple terms only when they are in adjacent sentences, not simply when both are present in t...
Source: Librarians' Rx - January 23, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Resources Searching Source Type: organizations

McMaster and EBMEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The BMJ has developed a list of the 15 most important medical developments since 1840. McMaster University’s development of EBM is on that list. See this Hamilton Spectator article for more information. (Thanks to Becky at Clinical Evidence, Searching Tidbits, and Other Minutiae for bringing this to my attention). By the way, the McMaster How to Teach Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Workshop is currently accepting registrations. Register soon before it fills up!
Source: Librarians' Rx - January 16, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: EBM Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

UK PubMed CentralEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
launched today. See Peter Suber’s Open Access News blog post for an excerpt from the press release and some additional commentary.
Source: Librarians' Rx - January 8, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Open Access Source Type: organizations

Just-in-Time Librarian updateEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In August I wrote a post about the Just-in-Time librarian service at the University of Ottawa. During the trial period, physicians were able to submit requests for information and expect responses in about fiftenn minutes. Last month, some preliminary results were written up in the Medical Post. The article is titled Library service gets info to MDs in minutes. The service apparently saves family doctors a fair bit of time, enabling them to see more patients thereby lessening some of the pressure caused by family doctor shortages.
Source: Librarians' Rx - January 4, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Information needs Service Source Type: organizations

Web 2.0 articleEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and is enjoying the New Year so far! In case you missed reading it over the holidays, check out medical librarian Dean Giustini’s editorial in the December 23, 2006 issue of BMJ, “How Web 2.0 is changing medicine”.
Source: Librarians' Rx - January 2, 2007 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Technology Professional Reading Source Type: organizations

PLoS ONEEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
’s official Beta version launch occurred yesterday. The website states that the journal “features reports of primary research from all disciplines within science and medicine. By not excluding papers on the basis of subject area, PLoS ONE facilitates the discovery of the connections between papers whether within or between disciplines.” The unique thing about PLoS ONE is the forum for discussion it generates related to each published article. Each reader is invited to add annotations to the text, or to start or join a discussion about the article itself. For more information about the journal, please see ...
Source: Librarians' Rx - December 21, 2006 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Events and Announcements Professional Reading Open Access Source Type: organizations

CMAJ - Holiday editionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Just a reminder to check out the holiday issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the humourous articles it always contains. The holiday reviews can be viewed in the Dec. 5, 2006 issue at http://www.cmaj.ca/content/vol175/issue12/.
Source: Librarians' Rx - December 20, 2006 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Professional Reading Source Type: organizations

SearchMedica UpdateEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
As Henry Elkington so graciously pointed out in his comment the other day (thanks!), the French version of the search engine is now accessible at http://www.searchmedica.fr. You can search either for French documents alone, or for both French and English websites. Similar to the English versions, the results are also grouped according to such categories as current events, original studies, and patient information.
Source: Librarians' Rx - December 20, 2006 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: Searching Events and Announcements Source Type: organizations

PEP PlenariesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
For those who were unable to attend the University of Alberta’s Putting Evidence into Practice workshop last month, the slides from several of the plenary sessions (including that of John Hoey, former editor-in-chief of CMAJ) are now available online at the PEP website.
Source: Librarians' Rx - December 14, 2006 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: tchatter Tags: EBM Conferences Source Type: organizations