HSLIC News Blog

“An information portal to issues affecting the health and well-being of American Indians.”

Did you know that New Mexico has the highest percentage of American Indian population of the lower 48 United States? Eleven percent of our population is American Indian. Adjacent states Arizona and Oklahoma have as many or more tribes, but percentage-wise New Mexico tops them. Alaska has the highest percentage—15% of its population is Native. Now that you can answer those questions, you are ready to move on.

Finding reliable health and medical information about American Indians is a challenge. The National Library of Medicine’s American Indian Health website is a resource with links to many other sources of information on the topic of American Indian health and medical issues. They have also done some work for us. There are pre-defined (already done and updated regularly) searches in PubMed (for researchers and clinicians) and in MedlinePlus (for the rest of us) on American Indian health, traditional medicine and environmental health. There are links to research and medical information specific to the American Indian population. The site also provides direct links to American Indian/Alaska Native population information on the US Census web page to help us find demographic information for this population.

In a nutshell the NLM’s American Indian Health web portal provides:
For public health workers, clinicians, and researchers the site offers:

• Population health statistics
• Research studies
• Links to up-to-date scientific journal articles from MEDLINE/PubMed

For consumers the site offers information about diseases that affect the American Indian population:

• Articles on prevention and treatment methods from MedlinePlus and other reputable resources.
• Tribal health initiatives
• Environmental health concerns

Major Site Sections

• Tribal Information—an extensive list of tribal Web sites
• Health Topics—valuable bibliographical indexes and reliable information on traditional healing
• US Government Web Sites—authoritative Federal resources on American Indian health topics
• Publications—recent research conducted in areas of mental and physical health of American Indians
• Health Care Access—essential resources available to American Indians

http://americanindianhealth.nlm.nih.gov

For further information contact Patricia Bradley, Native Services Librarian, pbradley@salud.unm.edu

No, this post isn’t about a new Chinese menu item; it is about the ups and downs of managing the library collection and its budget. Like perusing any menu, you find things you look forward to savoring, things you would rather have stay in the kitchen, and specials that tempt you away from the standard menu for better or worse. The menu for the approaching fiscal year is proving to have all of the above.

Let’s start by discussing the items to be savored. As many of you know, this year HSLIC will receive money from a new student library and technology fee. While this may seem like an unwelcome fly in the won ton soup for students, it is actually a boon for the library and ultimately for the students as well. The fee will greatly increase our purchasing abilities, especially in the area of print and electronic books. We also look forward to adding more technology that makes it easier and faster for student access to the resources they need. The fee is allowing us to really answer President Schmidly’s strategic question, “How does this benefit the students?” The answer for HSLIC is “all of our purchases with this money will help the students!” You will start seeing the results soon after the fiscal year starts in July.

On to things that should stay in the kitchen. This year we learned that our Nature subscription will jump from $32,000 to over $54,000 - an almost 60% increase in 1 year. We purchase Nature through our membership in the South Central Academic Medical Library (SCAMeL) consortium. This year Nature felt our deal needed updating to better reflect costs at other libraries. We, and the libraries in Arkanas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, are shifting monies to cover this unexpected surprise from the kitchens at Nature. Rest assured, it will stay on the menu, it will just take greater prominence on the bill. We all know those premium organics cost more!

Finally, we have reached the “special,’ off-the-regular-menu section. We have a policy of trialing new products - ’specials,’ if you will - for two years, assessing their usage and keeping or dropping them based on use. This year, we will drop Faculty of Medicince 1000 from BioMed Central. The usage has been low, especially when compared to Faculty of 1000 Biology, which we will keep. We sincerely hoped that this literature awareness tool would take off here at the HSC. In the end, it was not adopted and we felt the money could be put toward other menu specials like our recent purchase of Nursing Reference Center.

I hope this brief tour of the upcoming seasonal menu has been more sweet than sour. As always, please contact me, your chef du jour, about any of these topics or any other items. ¡Buen provecho!

Holly Phillips, MILS, MS, AHIP
Coordinator, Resource Access & Delivery

Did you know that the National Library of Medicine as one of the National Institutes of Health provides a range of free online resources to help the general public become more active in their own health care?

One of these resources for patients, families, and friends, MedlinePlus® provides 750 health topics on conditions, diseases, and wellness in plain language. Using quality guidelines for evaluating health information, links to web sites containing full-text publications are carefully selected from NIH Institutes, Federal Government agencies, and other health-related organizations. New links are added daily and each health topic is reviewed at least every six months to ensure currency. Any given topic may include information written in text as well as tutorials, videos, and health tools.

Although MedlinePlus started with its English language version, a yellow button on the right of the screen, labeled espanol, takes you to a mirror site in Spanish. While not as complete as the English version, it continues to grow as information becomes available. Just recently, a section was added to MedlinePlus highlighting health information in over 40 languages! This can be found at the bottom of the resources on the left side of the home page. You can either browse the list of health information topics in a specific language or you can browse a list of health topics that lists documents and resources in available languages for each topic.

In addition to the very popular section on health topics, MedlinePlus also includes information on drugs, herbs, and supplements, a medical encyclopedia and dictionary, current health news, directories for finding hospitals and healthcare professionals, and links to additional resources from the National Institutes of Health.

The National Institutes of Health and Friends of the National Library of Medicine also produce NIH MedlinePlus Magazine highlighting health topics of interest to the general public such as diabetes, asthma, eating disorders, end of life care, and child vaccinations. Articles in this magazine may be read online at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine.html where you can also subscribe to a free print copy.

For more information about the range of online resources available for the general public, visit the National Library of Medicine’s page for the public at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/portals/public.html .

Barbara Nail-Chiwetalu, PhD, MLS
Distance Services Coordiantor

Fig.1 Screen Shot from AnatomyTV 

You probably know the library has books and journals, both print and online; however, are you aware that HSLIC offers a variety of image related products through the HSLIC web site and on the computers in the library?

 The library licenses these products because images found on the internet may be protected by copyright, thus precluding you from downloading and/or using them. HSLIC’s subscriptions to the resources listed here allow use of the images for educational (non-commercial) purposes. If you are a student researching learning issues, a provider involved with patient education, or someone preparing for a lecture or conference presentation, remember HSLIC has content available for your use. To fully access licensed HSLIC materials, go through the library website at: http://hsc.unm.edu/library/databases.shtml .

The library’s video and images resources include ImagesMD, AnatomyTV,  Netter Presenter, Cardiosource and NEJM Clinical Videos.

Fig. 2 Screen Shot from ImagesMD (click to view)

If you are looking for images, consider searching the ImagesMD database (Fig. 2). With more than 70,000 high-quality medical images, this database may be searched using keywords, by specialty (e.g. cardiology, pediatrics), by collection (e.g. fractures, sarcomas, vitreoretinal diseases), or by image type (e.g. graph, illustration, or photograph). Features include the ability to create your own slide library, add personal notes to your images, email images to colleagues, and download images for use in PowerPoint(R) or password-protected online classes, such as in WebCT.

AnatomyTV (screenshot shown in Fig. 1) is a package of interactive 3D modules of the human body with related text accompanying each display. Within each module the user can zoom, rotate, and choose the level of image detail.  Control buttons allow the user to strip away anatomical layers moving from superficial to deep.  Specialized modules for sports injury and surgery are offered, as is an Interactive Funcational Anatomy module.

Netter Presenter includes images from the Netter Atlas of Human Anatomy, 3rd ed., and allows images to be customized, exported or printed. Note: This resource is available only on library computers found on the main floor of the library.

Cardiosource, produced by the American College of Cardiology, is a comprehensive web site for cardiovascular imformation and education. Included on this site are over 4,000 clinical images, audio heart sounds, and video clips from the Cardiosource video network.             

The New England Journal of Medicine offers a variety of peer-reviewed educational videos on clinical procedures. During a recent PBL tutorial, one student used this resource to demonstrate the technique for performing paracentesis. The NEJM videos run approximately 5 to 8 minutes in length, displayed as streaming video or in a downloadable file compatible with handheld digital devices.

Sarah Knox Morley, MLS
Clinical Services Librarian

The NIH Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research (”the Policy”) became mandatory on April 7, 2008. The law states:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

The Policy requires that investigators who publish on NIH-funded research must now submit a final copy of accepted manuscript to PubMedCentral, the NIH’s repository of full text journal articles. (Note: PubMed Central® is not PubMed®. PubMed is the NIH’s repository of citations of journal articles from the world’s biomedical literature. Although it may contain links to full text articles, these are not stored in PubMed itself).

What does this mean for the average UNM investigator who publishes on NIH-funded research? With the new law, authors are now required to maintain non-exclusive copyright to their articles when they are published. This is necessary so that the author has the right to deposit a copy of the article in PubMed Central–essentially “publishing” in another venue. Retaining some copyright ownership is probably the most difficult part of the process authors will encounter when trying to comply with the Policy. Traditionally, journal publishers have required the author to sign a copyright agreement, often stipulating that the author sign over “exclusive” copyright to the publisher. Because of this exclusivity, the author gave away all of their rights to his/her own work.

As another result of this exclusivity, the results of much NIH-funded research have become difficult to access for the average citizen, unless they or an institution with which they are affiliated subscribes to the journal of interest. This practice has effectively kept the majority of the world’s biomedical research from the majority of practicing physicians and the public at large. It is easy for us faculty at UNM to forget that most folks are not affiliated with a major academic institution and don’t have access to the journal subscriptions paid for by our libraries. In fact, the Policy was put into law primarily because various citizen taxpayer groups lobbied Congress to make publicly-funded research results accessible by the public.

At the same time, the rate of price increases for journal subscriptions has been significantly greater than the rate of budget increases for health sciences libraries. The growing gap between journal costs and libraries’ ability to pay for subscriptions has created a “crisis in scholarly communication” in that most libraries around the country cannot continue to afford the same number of journal subscriptions from year to year. The following graph illustrates the recent historical cost of biomedical journals (Inflation Rate) compared to the size of the UNM Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center budget for journals (Periodicals Budget):

Clearly if this trend continues, the number of library journal subscriptions available to faculty will be dramatically reduced. By participating in the Policy, an investigator can take heart in the fact that the results of his or her research will be more accessible to the entire global population than if published in the “traditional” manner. This benefits the investigator as more people will have access to their published work. Arguably, the rate of scientific discovery will be increased as more people have faster access to more of the world’s biomedical research results.

The UNM Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) is committed to helping all UNM investigators who publish on NIH-funded research to comply successfully with the Policy. Accordingly, HSLIC has created an interactive web site to help authors navigate the Policy compliance process. Individual, one-on-one consultation with a medical librarian can also be arranged if authors have specific questions. See the following link for a great deal of help and information on the Policy: HSLIC Scholarly Communication Initiative.

Philip J. Kroth, MD, MS
Director Health Sciences Informatics Program Development

By now, most of us have heard of MySpace and Facebook. Social networks help people find others who share similar interests, with the intent to form friendships around those commonalities. Social networking isn’t just for teenagers anymore. Enter one of the first social network services to offer professional collaboration opportunities in biomedicine and research - BioMedExperts

The information behind this search engine was harvested from the 6 million articles and their metadata from the most recent ten years of PubMed. Locating authors and subjects (or yourself!) is easy. The subject or keyword search reveals the most prolific authors in a given subject area. Searching by location offers a choice of 146 countries and the authors who are based there.

Authors represented in BioMedExperts are able to create an account and update the profile that was built for them by the underlying software. Even if you aren’t published in the last ten years in Pubmed, you can create an account and manually add authors whose work are of interest to you.

The image below shows the profile for HSLIC’s own Jonathan Eldredge. Not only can I click on the Publications tab for the citations, but I can also see Jon’s co-authors, which could lead me to more colleagues with similar interests.

One of the more visually appealing aspects of the site is the ability to look at a graphic representation of an author’s connection with other authors and co-authors, as shown in the image below.

According to a press release on the company’s website, “Over $20B a year in (NIH) federal grant funding will now be analyzed by the BioMedExperts platform. The agreement also enables all the NIH Institutes to utilize the company’s software for categorization, search, expertise identification, discovery and analysis of text-based content. Content examples include publications, grants, patents and other scientific works and information.” NIH is already using BioMedExperts to locate expert reviewers.

I was unable to find a way to combine concepts to create a more focused retrieval. Maybe that is something that will be added in time as the product evolves. I think that would add greatly to the functionality.

At this time, BioMedExperts is completely free to use. You can see it for yourself at: http://www.biomedexperts.com/

Christee King, MLS, AHIP
Collection Management & Special Projects Librarian

Just a reminder that Journal Citation Reports for 2006 is available to HSC user via the Web of Knowledge resource. Both the Science and Social Sciences editions for 2006 are available.

Journal citation reports are used to find data on the “impact” of a certain journal. The impact factor measures how often the “average article” within a particular journal has been cited in the past two years. The higher the journal’s impact factor, the more influential the journal is supposed to be within its field.

However, sometimes journal impact factor information is used to assess the quality of a journal and its contents or to determine the influence of a researcher and their work. It is these uses of the metric which have caused controversy and debate, as many feel journal impact factors have too large an influence on hiring, tenure, publishing, and funding decisions–something they were not designed or meant to do.

A recent addition to the ongoing debate is an editorial which appeared several months ago in the Journal of Cell Biology, which questioned the data used to determine impact factors. The editorial “Show me the Data” by Rossner, Van Epps and Hill, appeared in December 2007 (vol. 179, issue 6, pages 1091-1092) (available online here to UNM faculty, students, and staff).

Thomson Scientific, who produces the impact factor material, has posted a reply to the December editorial. See “Thomson Scientific Corrects Inaccuracies in Editorial” at http://scientific.thomson.com/citationimpactforum/8427045/

A follow up editorial, “Irreproducible Results: a response to Thomson Scientific” has since appeared in the January 28 issue of Journal of Cell Biology (vol. 180, issue 2, pages 254-255) (available online here to UNM faculty, students, and staff).

It doesn’t look like the debate is going away anytime soon. What do you think? Be among those to have the conversation here at the HSC by posting a comment below.

Charity Karcher, MLIS, AHIP
Pharmacy Services Librarian

Citation management programs allow you to create a database of citations you use in your research, much like an electronic filing cabinet.  You can add references manually, or search online databases such as PubMed and download those references into your filing cabinet/database.  When you write a manuscript, you use the citation management software to insert citations, and automatically create a bibliography in the style of your choice, such as APA or for a specific journal, like JAMA.           

There are three citation management programs supported at the HSC, RefWorks, EndNote, and EndNoteWeb. 

Do you use one of the programs listed above? If so, have you found it useful in your work? Have you had any issues or successes with using the program that you would like to share with others? If so, please share your thoughts by using the “Leave a Reply” box below.

If you haven’t used any of these programs, here’s some information to help you decide which program is right for you.  All programs allow manual inputting of records, exporting of data from databases, searching of databases from within the program, and creation of bibliographies either based on a Word document or stand alone reading lists. 

RefWorks

• Available via the Internet
• Easiest of the programs to learn to use
• Handles full journal names and abbreviations well
• Freely available to HSC faculty, staff and students through a subscrtiption paid for by the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center
• Must register from a campus computer, using your GroupWise account

EndNote

• You load software onto your computer
• Software can be purchased from ITS for $116 using a departmental PR or from the bookstore for $185.95 for personal yse
• Need to purchase software upgrades, which can come out frequently
• Hardest of the programs to use
• Allows linking of full text PDFs
• List of full journal titles and abbreviations needs to be imported
• Capable of embedding images or graphs with captions into text

EndNoteWeb

• Available via the Internet
• Freely available to faculty, staff and students through a subscription paid for by the University Libraries
• Newest of the programs, fairly easy to use
• Doesn’t handle journal titles well; use either full or abbreviated, not both
• Can share databases with other EndNoteWeb users
• Must register from a campus computer

Ingrid Hendrix, MILS, AHIP
Nursing Services Librarian

During the past two years the HSLIC Learning Design Center has been experimenting with a learning management system (LMS) known as Moodle.*  Moodle is an open-source software system, hosted by the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center for HSC use.

Most HSC faculty provide instructional content to their students with a learning management system called Web CT Vista^R  which is for curricular use only. Learning Central is another LMS used for non-curricular staff training. Under some  circumstances web-based education needs to be provided to individuals who are not affiliated with the HSC and thus unable to access either Web CT Vista or the Learning Central system. Moodle is the vehicle for delivering those educational experiences.

Because Moodle is not a commercial product, it lacks any vendor training or technical support. No formal organization supports this open-source software, only a loose-knit confederation of institutions that host Moodle on their servers. Users at the HSC are able to find support through the UNM Moodle Designers Group, which meets in the HSLIC at noon on the second Monday of odd-numbered months except July. This informal discussion group, comprised of 10-15 designers from across UNM, allows participants to showcase their Moodle courses and to learn more about Moodle from one another. This group has been meeting since 2006. This year the group will hear presentations on resolving common technical problems in Moodle, small group interactive activities, designing quizzes, and using the journal feature for higher order learning.

Faculty members with the need to provide instructional content to unaffiliated learners might want to more about Moodle. Interested faculty members are encouraged to contact Jon Eldredge, PhD, at jeldredge@salud.unm.edu or 272-0654 to learn more about Moodle or to become involved in this informal group. 

Note to all HSC Faculty:
We in HSLIC are wondering whether you knew that Moodle was available for your use? And now that you know, is it something that you think you might use? Please let us know using the “Leave a Reply” box below. 

*The term Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object Oriented Developmental Learning Environment. 

Jon Eldredge, PhD
Library Knowledge Consultant

Two important population specific reports are now available on HSLIC’s Native Health Database, http://hsc.unm.edu/library/nhd/ .

 2005 Navajo Public Health System Assessment

 The 86 page report has ten sections addressing the ten essential public health services and further divided into sub-sections addressing:  planning and implementation, technical assistance and support, evaluation and quality improvement and resources.  Also covered are community strengths assessment, community health status, forces of change assessment and public health system assessment.  This report was distributed by the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, Window Rock, AZ.

 2005 Navajo Forces of Changes Assessment

This 21 page document outlines the forces impacting Navajo communities and the public health system.  The forces identified were family values, diminishing resources, health behaviors, community initiatives, infrastructure, economic development, technology and emergency preparedness.  This report was distributed by the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, Window Rock, AZ.

Those interested can locate these documents on the Native Health Database by putting the title of the document into the title search box. You can request a pdf of the full documents through the NHD also. Or click here for easy access to the request:
Public Health System Assessment
Forces of Change

 These reports are an example of the new type of document we are proposing to include in the Native Health Database. These documents will include reports, conference proceedings, data sets, and other gray literature. We’re interested in your feedback. Will this type of material enhance the Native Health Database? Do you use the database? If so, what does it help you to do? What would you like to have improved? Please let us know by posting a comment to this blog.

P.S. An additional tip for Pub Med searchers interested in population issues is that “cultural competency” is now a Medical Subject Heading choice.

Patricia V. Bradley, MLS
Native Services Librarian