Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Medical Podcasts

Medical podcasts have exploded on the scene. You can download weekly podcasts to your iPod from many journals that read the current issue's abstracts and/or interview authors. Journals include:
  • JAMA
  • NEJM
  • Lancet
  • Science
  • Nature
Many specialty areas also have podcasts that discuss recent news or discoveries in areas such as cardiology, neurology, cancer, gastroenterology, etc.

These are perfect to listen to during your daily commute! Check out the Library's Podcast page to see a comprehensive podcast listing and for instructions on how to download.

If you know of another health-related podcast that we should add, please email the information to us at hslinfo@hawaii.edu.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Cancer Journals Now Subscribed to Online

The Health Sciences Library now has a subscription to the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Journals online. This subscription includes:

Cancer Research

1999 to present

Clinical Cancer Research

1995 to present

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention

1991 to present

Molecular Cancer Therapeutics

2001 to present

Molecular Cancer Research

2002 to present

Cell Growth & Differentiation

1999-2001

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Med Applications for your PDA

Did you know that there are many free medical applications for your palm or pocket pc? Check out the Library's PDA Resources page to download medical calculators, drug information, clinical guidelines, and more!

The PDA Resources page is located under Subject Guides on the left hand side bar.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Do you think an AUTOALERT is a car alarm?

Actually, an AUTOALERT is an automated current awareness feature available in many databases such as PubMed or Web of Science that emails you when journal articles of particular interest to you are added to the database.

Say you’re researching the gene involved in autism. You go to PubMed Medline, execute a search strategy such as the following: autistic disorder/genetics OR (autism[tiab] AND genetic[tiab])* and click the “save search” button located next to the search box.

You will be taken to the My NCBI sign-in screen and asked to register. Tedious, yes, but you have to do it just once and ever after, or until you cancel it, relevant citations will come to your email inbox without your having to lift a finger. In this one specific area, you will be way more up to date than UpToDate!

Before you save your search, it’s a good idea to test the retrieval so that you receive a manageable number of citations. Judging from the number of articles published in the last year using the above autism search, you should receive an average of 7 or 8 citations every month. The purpose is not to overwhelm yourself with required reading, but to save time by identifying and perhaps reading only the most pertinent and important articles.

Watch this blog for tips on other AUTOALERT applications such as receiving tables of contents of your favorite journals and, more importantly, an automated tool to determine who’s citing your own work.

* Please call the Library Information Services Desk with questions at 692-0810.

Monday, July 17, 2006

PubMed Pearls...Looking for an elusive citation?

You may have never noticed the little link to Single Citation Matcher lurking on the left-side navigation column in PubMed, but it's well worth the effort to find it. You can use it to locate a specific journal article if you have an incomplete or perhaps incorrect citation. Librarians love SCM, and we think you will too. How to do it:
1. Find and click on Single Citation Matcher. Blue column, left-hand side...finding it is the hardest part of the whole process.
2. Fill in only 3 or 4 boxes. I recommend volume, issue, and beginning page number. TIP: Don't type in the journal title on the first try because there's room for error if you have an abbreviation and try to guess the full title.
3. If you come up with no retrieval on your first try, take out one piece of information and replace it with another. TIP: Be suspicious of all pieces of information and ready to replace each one if necessary.
4. If you come up with too much retrieval, narrow it down by adding another piece of the citation such as a unique word from the article title.

Most of the time you'll find your article using these techniques. If you don't, call us, 692-0810. Ve haf other vays...
-Joy Graham

Friday, April 28, 2006

Journal Citation Reports now Available!

Ever wanted to know the impact factor of a journal in which you've published or are thinking of publishing? Use JCR on the web to get the data! Just click the link. . . Journal Citation Reports® on the Web (JCR)