Library Collection

Annual collection review for 2011

Many libraries around the country expect budget shortfalls in 2011 due to the current economic times and increases in the cost of journals, databases and books. Some publishers and vendors understand that libraries are facing budget shortfalls and are keeping their price increases at a minimum or are maintaining the same price for the next subscription year. Overall, the UT Health Science Center libraries predict an annual cost increase of approximately 5% for electronic journals and databases (in prior years an 8-10% increase was typical) and 3-4% for books in the next year. Although these cost predictions represent averages, some publication costs will increase well beyond the average.

Each year, librarians review the library’s subscriptions to electronic journals and databases to determine if there are titles that can be canceled. This annual review allows the library to free some funds for new subscriptions and to manage its materials budget within the annual inflation rate for subscriptions. A list of possible titles for non-renewal in 2011 resulted from this annual review of journal subscriptions and other electronic resources. This list can be found at this url: http://www.library.uthscsa.edu/using/nonrenewals.cfm

Multiple criteria were used to generate this list: lower use than expected, high cost, duplicate content with another resource, or some combination of these. Cancellation of some of the library’s resources will be essential to ensure that our subscription costs remain within our budget.

The library’s main sources for funding information resources are the state-legislated Books, Serials, and Binding budget and the Student Resource Fee, paid by students as they register each semester or academic year. Although these combined sources will provide funding for most of the library’s collection of electronic and print resources, it will not be possible to continue all resources within the amount of funding available for fiscal year 2011. In addition, the non-renewal list may need to be expanded depending on whether the library will receive LERR funding for fiscal year 2011.

We invite your comments and suggestions about this review process. Please send them to John Weed, Head of Collection Resources, weedj@uthscsa.edu.

Rajia Tobia

Executive Director of Libraries

Tags: 2010-08
Posted in Library Budget, Library Collection, News from the Libraries | Comments Off

Changes affect Stat!Ref and NetLibrary users

Changes to Stat!Ref

Stat!Ref provides quick access to a number of full-text electronic medical reference books in the areas of diagnosis and treatment in specialties such as psychiatry, geriatrics, and surgery. Titles include Davis’s Drug Guide for Nurses, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Holland-Frei Cancer Medicine, and Quick Reference Guide to Pediatric Care, just to name a few. Two significant changes are scheduled for August 1, 2011.

A new version of Stat!Ref Online will be released. The interface offers more robust technology with more functionality such as:

Updated search functions
Enhanced access to tools needed to make research easier
Ability to quickly download tables, figures and images for presentations and lectures
Redesigned layout to locate resources and find information easier
Enhanced ease of access to bibliographic citations including Refworks and EndNote

Also beginning August 1, titles published by McGraw-Hill will no longer be available through Stat!Ref. Most of these titles are still available through AccessMedicine and AccessSurgery, or in print format. Several new titles that are comparable to the McGraw-Hill books will be added to the Stat!Ref collection.

Changes to NetLibrary e-books

The UT Health Science Center Libraries has access to a number of NetLibrary e-books as the result of purchases by the UT System and TexShare over the past several years. EBSCO purchased NetLibrary, and as a result these e-books are currently being transferred to the EBSCO platform. Here is some information regarding the transition that may be helpful to e-book users accessing materials through the library catalog:

Personal NetLibrary accounts that were created will cease to function after the transition is made. Users are encouraged to create new EBSCO accounts.
Only one person will be able to browse an e-book at a time. The e-books may be searched, viewed, and browsed online but they may not be checked out. When a user’s session ends, any e-books they were viewing will become available to others.
Due to licensing agreements, e-books we have access to will not be downloadable to a computer or portable reader.
Links from the catalog and e-books page should seamlessly redirect from NetLibrary to EBSCO. Please contact the library at AskALibrarian@uthscsa.edu if you experience any linking problems.

John Weed
Head of Collection Resources

Tags: 2011-08
Posted in Library Collection, News from the Libraries | Comments Off

John Hunter: “the father of scientific surgery”: Resources from the collection of the P.I. Nixon Library

Scottish anatomist and surgeon John Hunter is described as “the father of scientific surgery.”

Illustration of jaws and teeth from The natural history of the human teeth: explaining their structure, use, formation, growth, and diseases, by John Hunter, 1778.

The youngest of ten children, Hunter grew up on a farm on the outskirts of Glasgow and received only a basic education. After spending several years as a cabinetmaker, he joined his brother William, a prominent anatomist and obstetrician, in London. There, while preparing specimens for William’s anatomy lectures, John had dealings with the notorious ‘resurrection men’ who supplied medical schools with cadavers. John’s dissection skills were so impressive that he was taken on as William’s assistant, and in 1753, after studying medicine, he became a master anatomist.

During the Seven Years’ War John Hunter served as staff surgeon in the British Army, gathering experiences he would later compile into his famous treatise on gunshot wounds. Back in London, he returned to surgical practice and to his extensive collection of specimens, one of which was the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the legendary Irish pituitary giant. Hunter’s reputation grew, and he eventually became a Fellow of the Royal Society and surgeon-extraordinaire to George III.

John Hunter was one of science’s most brilliant innovators. He published breakthrough studies on venereal disease (inadvertently contracting syphilis in the course of his experiments). He also developed important new surgical techniques – among them, methods for repairing the Achilles tendon and for arterial ligature in cases of aneurysm.

The Natural History of Human Teeth, one of Hunter’s most important works, revolutionized the practice of dentistry and provided medical research with a new, scientific nomenclature for the teeth. Hunter based his book on detailed observations of the anatomy of the jaw and mouth. He described the tooth’s construction – bone, pulp and enamel – and examined the processes of tooth development in fetuses and children. Hunter’s many valuable contributions to the advancement of medicine make him one of the greatest names in science.

The P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library owns all three of the Hunter classics mentioned in this article:

The Natural History of the Human Teeth

Treatise on the Venereal Disease

Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-Shot Wounds

Visitors can stop by the Special Collections Reading Room– Briscoe Room 5.078— to view these medical historical treasures. Information about reading room hours can be found here.

Pennie Borchers
Special Collections Librarian

Tags: 2011-01
Posted in History of Medicine, Library Collection, News from the Libraries | Comments Off

Library resources: What’s new, and what’s been improved

GigaScience Open Access Journal and Big Data

GigaScience ( http://www.gigasciencejournal.com/), a new open access journal from BioMed Central, debuted in July. GigaScience is an integrated database and journal co-published in collaboration between BGI Shenzhen and BioMed Central to meet the needs of biological and biomedical research as it enters the era of “big-data.” BGI (formerly known as Beijing Genomics Institute) was founded in 1999 and has since become the largest genomic organization in the world.

To achieve its goals GigaScience has developed a novel publishing format that integrates manuscript publication with a database that will provide DOI (digital object identifier) assignment to every dataset. The journal supports the open-data movement by requiring that all supporting data and source code be available in a suitable public repository and/or under a public domain Creative Commons CC0 license in the BGI GigaScience database (GigaDB).

GigaScience is unique in that it combines standard online journal publishing with a connected database that can be used to store and share big data. The GigaDB will accept datasets up to 14 TB so authors can use GigaDB to fulfill requirements of the NIH Data Sharing Policy or the NSF Data Management Plan Requirements by depositing data in GigaDB.

GigaScience is linked to the library’s A-Z electronic journals list and to the library catalog.

PubMed Central is now PMC

PubMed Central (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/), a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature maintained by the National Library of Medicine, has shortened its name to PMC in order to avoid confusion with PubMed, the freely accessible online database of biomedical journal citations and abstracts. An easy way to remember the difference between PMC and PubMed – PMC has complete articles while PubMed only has citations, abstracts and links to complete articles. PMC also has a new look and feel, which has been updated to conform to NCBI’s new standards for page design. This redesign allows for a cleaner and more uniform presentation across PMC’s site as well as its article, issue and journal archive pages.

More information along with examples of the PMC page redesign is available in the July-August issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ja12/ja12_pmc_redesign.html.

New app serves as guide to NLM Mobile

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has released a new mobile app that is intended to serve as the authoritative guide to NLM mobile resources. This app will improve your ability to find and use NLM mobile apps and sites.

The app was created as an HTML 5 mobile Web site in support of the NLM’s ongoing efforts to make their information broadly available. Support for HTML 5 is available in Web browsers on many mobile devices. Information on all NLM mobile resources will be available through this app.

To explore the app, visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mobile-app/ on a mobile device such as an iPhone, iPad, Android smart phone, Blackberry, or Microsoft phone.

NLM Technical Bulletin, July-August 2012

Tags: September 2012
Posted in Library Collection, News from the Libraries, NLM | Comments Off

MD Consult: Two easy ways to earn CME credit

The online resource MD Consult, which is available to Health Science Center affiliated users through the database list on the library’s website, offers two easy activities to earn CME credit:

Free Internet Point of Care CME credit
Cyberounds®

The Point of Care CME option is provided by the Cleveland Clinic Center for Continuing Education. It focuses on structured, online learning. Physicians may earn 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™ for each search conducted through MD Consult. Certificates are available immediately, and each user has access to a transcript of credits earned through MD Consult.

Cyberounds^® are interactive grand rounds moderated by distinguished academics, exclusively for physicians, medical students, and other selected health professionals. Conferences are administered by the Cyberounds^® committee at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. New presentations are uploaded regularly. Members then have the opportunity to pose questions and comments directly to the moderators or guest authors. Previous conferences are archived and available for review. Free CME is granted for the first 5 conferences submitted through MD Consult. If you are interested in additional credit for interactive grand rounds, you can create a separate, fee-based account through Cyberounds.

Searchable access to full text books, journals, medical images, and the popular “Clinics” series that are part of MD Consult is available to all Health Science Center affiliated personnel and students. Some features, including the CME option do require setting up a personal account, but the set-up is easy, fast, and free.

To take advantage of the CME opportunities offered through MD Consult:

Link to MD Consult through the library’s website.
Click on Create Account in the upper right corner of the main MD Consult screen.
Create your personal account (this must be done from a computer within the institutional IP range but the account can be used from any location after it is created).
Click on the CME tab to read the instructions for earning CME.

Linda Levy, Assistant Library Director for Branch Libraries and Database Services

Tags: 2012-01
Posted in Information Resources, Library Collection, News from the Libraries | Comments Off

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Library Updates

Library Collection

Annual collection review for 2011

Beginning in January: Three methods to log in to library resources from off campus

Changes affect Stat!Ref and NetLibrary users

John Hunter: “the father of scientific surgery”: Resources from the collection of the P.I. Nixon Library

John Weed will serve on library storage facility task force

Libraries add Springer ebook collections in biomedical and life sciences, mathematics and statistics

Library classes for June and July

Library resources: What’s new, and what’s been improved

List of possible non-renewals for FY 2011

Journals

Journal Packages

BioMed Central

Cambridge University Press

Mary Ann Liebert

Nature Materials

Nature Review Journals

Databases

MD Consult: Two easy ways to earn CME credit