Submitted by Penny Glassman

Welcome to the latest issue of the The NER’eastah, the Newsletter of the New England Regional Library.

The new blog format allows us to continue providing you with interesting articles about issues important to health sciences librarians in New England, and deliver announcements and late-breaking news items.

There is a link to the Newsletter blog on the NN/LM NER Website (http://nnlm.gov/ner). However, if you have not done so already, I strongly recommend that you use a feed-reader to subscribe to the NER’eastah Blog and other news feeds. A previous newsletter article included information on setting up RSS Feeds and news feed readers. Here is the link to RSS Feed Redux:
href=”http://nnlm.gov/ner/newsletter/24/techtimes24.html#policytime”

Not ready to jump into the “blogosphere”? There is also a PDF version of the Spring 2008 issue at: http://nnlm.gov/ner/newsletter/spring-2008-newsletter.pdf

Please feel free to send me comments about the blog. My email address is penny.glassman@umassmed.edu.

Submitted by Lauri Fennell

NLM Drug Information Portal

I have only begun to explore this one. The format is easy to follow. One section I looked at is in the News and Features section called Inside the Medicine Cabinet. This section highlights one particular drug, giving current uses, development history, chemical structures and much more.

http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov/drugportal/drugportal.jsp

Read more:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/jf08/jf08_sis_drug_portal.html

NLM Gateway has a new design

NLM Gateway will soon have a new sleek look, shown below.
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/gw/Cmd

All the same functions still exist with new enhancements to the page.
Read more: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/jf08/jf08_gateway_redesign.html

Submitted by Lauri Fennell

I am new to this role at the NN/LM NER, so I have been doing some catch up. The NLM Technical Bulletin is full of great information. It includes many interesting updates related to Pubmed. I thought maybe you have some catching up to do, too?

Here are some of the highlights:

Diacritics in PubMed® Displays and Searching
Since late April 2007 “…diacritical marks have been displayed in author names and affiliation (first author’s address) on the AbstractPlus, Abstract, and Citation displays…”

Read more:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd07/nd07_diacritics.html

PubMed® Subject Subset Strategies Updated for 2008
When using the limits feature you have the option of choosing topic subsets. These subsets are reviewed annually. The following subset strategy was recently revised:

Bioethics, Cancer, Complementary Medicine, and Systematic Reviews

A description of the strategy can be found from the Pubmed Subset Strategies page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pubmed_subsets.html

You can take advantage of these pre-formulated strategies from the limits page

PubMed Central®, the collection continues to grow…
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/jf08/jf08_pmc.html

Patient Drug Information Available from PubMed®
MedMaster drug information added to PubMed AbstractPlus display format.

Note: some of you may have been seeing this since October. The results were displaying randomly at first but are now expected to show up, if relevant, in all Pubmed searches.
Read more: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so07/so07_patient_drug_info.html

Now I’m keeping up

This was recently announced…

PubMed® Alerts: E-mail Notification of Major System Problems
Now you can be notified of major system problems with Pubmed by signing up for e-mail alerts. Read more http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ma08/ma08_pubmed_alerts.html

***There is so much more I didn’t include here***

To read the entire NLM Technical Bulletin:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/current_issue.html

Submitted by Lauri Fennell

PubMed is constantly updated with improvements and changes. Besides the Technical Bulletin there are many tutorials and training resources.

I recently watched the recorded version of the Chemicals and Drugs in Pubmed webcast—twice actually. You know how you catch more the second time around? It is definitely true in this case. Did any of you happen to catch it? This search clinic was originally presented on August 23, 2007 (before I was at NN/LM).

It was recorded so it can be viewed at any time. I highly recommend it.

Search Clinic: Chemicals and Drugs in Pubmed
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/chem.html

In addition to watching the recorded clinic, you can read the transcript and/or the questions and answers section.

Here are some of the highlights:

First I found it helpful to have the differences of a few of the subheadings used for chemicals and drugs explained, specifically toxicity, poisoning and adverse effects.

Toxicity: studies designed to determine ill effects of a substance (usually animal studies)

Poisoning: life threatening—whether by medication error, accidental or otherwise

Adverse effects: choosing this subheading will include both toxicity and poisoning—includes side effects and complications of accepted doses

Detailed definitions for these terms when used as subheadings can be found by searching for each term in the MeSH database.

Further explanation about substance names, pharmacological action and when to use the MeSH tag was also very helpful.

Substance names: chemicals and drugs are not always indexed with a MeSH heading. Instead they may be indexed under a substance name. If this is the case the substance will be mapped to the MeSH heading appropriate for that substance.

Here’s an example:
When searching in MeSH for zetia (recently in the news) you will get this record:

Ezetimibe is the substance name for Zetia. You find the drug brand names in the list for entry terms. This substance is mapped to Azetidines as a MeSH term. The pharmacological action assigned to it is anticholesteremic agents.

The Questions and Answers section was very helpful. Some questions were answered later with additional NLM staff input.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/qa.html

Some additional items that will become clearer after watching the webcast:

1. Check the details box to see if the chemical/substance name you used is mapped to a MeSH or Substance Name. If it is not, use the preview/index feature to search for the name to see if there are alternatives you can use
2. Using the [pa] versus the [mh] tag: using [pa] searches the full list of substances designated with that pharmacological action. Using [mh] searches for the action as a subject. You can combine it with the specific substance term you are interested in
3. Citations indexed prior to 1996 do not routinely have a pharmacological action tied to them. (from question 11 in Q & A)

Here are a couple additional links that can be helpful when searching for Chemicals and Drugs:

Pharmacological action terms
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/mesh/paterms.html

Searching chemicals and drugs
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/mesh/drugsearch.html

From the Technical Bulletin:
PubMed® and the Expansion of Pharmacological Action Terms
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd07/nd07_pa_update.html

Submitted by Javier Crespo

Related Reports…

From time to time we look out for articles for reports that intersect the medical librarians’ interests in health care, technology, and of course libraries and information services. The following are summaries of recent reports that have come across my desktop. Perhaps you may find them useful:

The Science of Spread: How Innovations in Care Become the Norm

This report was released in September 2007 by the California HealthCare Foundation (http://www.chcf.org/). The report is interested in how change within health care institutions are diffused throughout an organization and how they are adapted by other institutions. The report surveys the literature—both popular and health care-specific—of diffusion or spread of ideas, process, or practice changes.

The report mentions Institute for Healthcare Improvement own white paper. Disseminating Issues in Healthcare described a framework for diffusion that, while recognizing the need for collaborative team processes, places a primary responsibility for change on the organization’s key leadership.

Other theorists mentioned in the report are Paul Plsek and Sarah Fraser. One of Plsek’s concerns is the varying levels of changeability or where health care professionals for example, fall in the “readiness to change spectrum” (page 9). Sarah Fraser is concerned with innovators behave as (often impatient) messengers of spread while others within an organization may be weary of change.

The Science of Spread Report examines five case studies of spreading improvement in healthcare. I’ll mention two:

The report exemplifies the Veterans Health Administration as an example of change leadership in improving patient satisfaction while reducing costs. The VHA developed an advanced access system that allowed patients to make same-day appointments and reducing wait times. Another tool for spreading improvement within the VHA system was its electronic health record that has been widely deployed.

The report returns to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (http://www.ihi.org/ihi) and their 100,000 Lives Campaign (see the 5 Million Lives Campaign at http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/Campaign/). The campaign was a national initiative that utilized partnerships with major healthcare associations and locally based networks or nodes of hospitals. Nodes would be composed of regional collaborative teams and mentor hospitals that spread the message of specific and previously identified improvement goals in six areas of care.

The report concludes by summarizing the roles of leaders, champions, front-line caregivers in ensuring change spread and offering six lessons to facilitate change. See the report at: http://www.chcf.org/topics/chronicdisease/index.cfm?itemID=133461.

The Horizon Report 2008 Edition

The Horizon report series is a collaboration of The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The Horizon report is a research project spanning five years that identifies “likely to have a large impact on teaching,…within learning-focused organizations.” The technologies are organized into timeframes or horizons that represent when their wide adoption would take place.

Two technologies are identified as already widely adopted or being adopted within a year: grassroots video and collaboration webs. Recording events to the web is already widespread. Educational applications are abundant with specially branded YouTube channels from institutions like UC Berkeley and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. With collaboration webs building, storing, and sharing documents of all types are employed by groups of instructors and students. Content is developed by groups and distributed widely. Wikis, Google Docs, Zoho Office, and Slideshare are a few examples.

Two more technologies are likely to be widely adopted in the next two to three years: mobile broadband and data mashups. Mobile broadband allows for ultra-remote networking on small devices and is already prevalent . Education, research, and health care uses are already growing. In the healthcare setting think of the librarian providing on-the-spot searches to providers at home visits or incident triage centers with PubMed OnTap. Penny has written about mashups previously (http://nnlm.gov/ner/newsletter/27/techtimes27.html). Mashups are easily illustrated when you think about a diagnostic resource being able to dynamically create a PubMed search with relevant citations based on the resulting diagnosis.

In the next four to five years collective intelligence and social operating systems are likely to be widely adopted. The ability to cull knowledge from a large group of people through a resource like Wikipedia, Freebase, or the Human Brain Cloud can be considered examples of collective intelligence technology. Social operating systems place the emphasis on the relationships a user has with other individuals when using a utility like an email application. A deeper example might be an information resource’s ability to graphically call up profiles (pictures, mini-bios, bibliographies) from an individual on a web page, article, or other document without the user having to initiate another search.

In addition to providing overviews of these current and emerging technologies, the Horizon Project summarized the technologies’ relevance to teaching and learning, more specific examples with accompanying websites, and suggestions for further reading.

The Horizon Projects “2008 Horizon Report” is available at: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2008/

Submitted by Javier Crespo

NER is pleased to announce the following funded outreach projects:

Tufts University, Hirsh Medical Library: SPIRAL Enhancement Project

Tufts University will expand the work of its acclaimed SPIRAL resource. SPIRAL stands for Selected
Patient Information Resource in Asian Languages (http://spiral.tufts.edu/). The subcontract funding will allow the project to increase the language and content offerings on the SPIRAL Asian Languages in Health Information Website.

The goal of the SPIRAL project is to promote health literacy by collecting health information in multiple Asian languages for non-English speakers to search, and for health care providers to make available to their non-English speaking patients.
Project objectives are:

1. Addition of new topics: Consumer health resources created by Asian medical schools will be investigated, and when appropriate, integrated within SPIRAL’s collection of links.
2. Addition of new language – Japanese: Recruit Japanese translator(s) to join the pool of translators who were identified previously to work with the SPIRAL project.
3. Promote and publicize the SPIRAL site to the physicians, health care providers, libraries, and communities serving the targeted patient populations.
4. Redesign web site layout to improve aesthetics and appeal, user navigation, including provisions for Section 508 compliancy, and organization of featured materials.

River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition: River Valley Health Information Literacy Outreach Project

The goal of the River Valley Health Information Literacy Outreach Project is to increase awareness of reliable online health information and improve the health literacy of youth and young adults in rural Northern Oxford County, Maine. The River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition (RVHCC) will:

1. Assess community health information needs and services.
2. Increase the capacity of teachers and librarians to use reliable online health information resources to improve health literacy.
3. Pilot health information literacy lessons in local schools, community–based adult education programs, and public libraries.
4. Encourage consumer health information outreach by Healthy Communities Coalitions throughout the state of Maine.

RVHCC is a non-profit organization serving nine towns (Andover, Byron, Canton, Dixfield, Hanover, Mexico, Peru, Roxbury, and Rumford). We first wrote about Healthy Communities projects in a previous newsletter article (http://nnlm.gov/ner/newsletter/13/ad-perspective13.html) The project team will train 15 teachers and librarians to pilot three health information literacy lessons using the National Library of Medicine (NLM) online resources in schools, adult education programs, and libraries. During the pilot it is expected that the project will reach 200 youth and young adults and that 80% will report increased awareness of NLM resources and 60% will use online resources to find health information. RVHCC is collaborating with Rumford Hospital and Central Maine Medical Center.

The above two subcontracts join the following four current subcontracts that are well under way.

• Littleton Regional Hospital, Gale Medical Library: Northern New Hampshire Health Information Outreach.
• Massachusetts General Hospital, Treadwell Library: Health Information Project with CAPIC (Community Action Programs, Inter City, Inc.).
• University of Vermont, Dana Medical Library: Connecting Patients, Providers, and the Community with Quality Health Information.
• Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library: Information Needs of Connecticut School Nurses.

Submitted by Michelle Eberle

Stay up to date professionally without leaving your desk! The National Network of Libraries of Medicine/ New England Region brings you a new distance education series. This ongoing series will feature hot topics in health sciences librarianship and major updates to National Library of Medicine resources. Stay tuned for more to come! Announcements about future programs will be highlighted on the NN/LM-NER distance learning page and announced on the NAHSL-L listserv. (http://nnlm.gov/ner/training/distancelearning.html)

Recent Programs Included

“Health Literacy”
Guest speaker: Rima Rudd
Date: February 12, 2008
Time: 1-2 PM

Our first program held on February 12, 2008 featured guest speaker, Rima Rudd, Senior Lecturer on Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health with a lecture on health literacy. Dr. Rudd shared the importance of health literacy in the context of research findings, promising initiatives and roles for professional action. This was a unique opportunity for members to hear from one of the most prominent researchers in the field and to inquire with burning questions. Dr. Rudd wrote several reports that are helping to shape the agenda in health literacy research and practice. They include the health literacy chapter of the Health and Human Services book Communicating Health: Priorities and Strategies for Progress (2003) and the Educational Testing Services report, Literacy and Health in America (2004). She served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Health Literacy, on the National Research Council Committee on Measuring Adult Literacy, on the Joint Commission Advisory Committee on Health Literacy and Patient Safety.

“Library as Commons: Improving the Library Experience”
Guest speaker: Cheryl Bryan
Date: March 19, 2008
Time: 1- 2 PM

Libraries today are expected to create havens for those seeking a quiet place to work, study or read and places for shared exploration and work groups. They also provide access to new technologies, while providing traditional print and media sources all in the same floor plan. Cheryl Bryan, Consultant with the Southeast MA Regional Library System, explored the trend towards defined activity zones, allowing the space to be reconfigured to current demands and uses, reminiscent of the simplicity of the traditional Japanese house. How are libraries successfully doing this now? How can we modify traditional services and introduce new media and formats to our communities? The successes of public libraries with library as commons was shared to provoke thoughtful discussion of this important issue for medical libraries too.

“Marketing Showcase”
Guest speaker: You!
Date: April 9, 2008
Time: 1-3:30 PM

This unique opportunity provided members with a chance to share what worked best in promoting their library and to hear effective marketing strategies from other medical librarians throughout the region. Each participant had 10 minutes to share their project, program, resource, or approach and describe how it increased the visibility and status of the library within the organization and community. Five “best in show” projects will be chosen and highlighted by the NN/LM-NER in the next NER’eastah Newsletter. The Marketing Showcase was co-facilitated by Michelle Eberle and Mark Goldstein.

We look forward to continuing to bring you meaningful educational programming in this new format.

We want your feedback! To suggest a topic and/or speaker for an upcoming Connecting with the NER program, please contact Michelle Eberle at michelle.eberle@umassmed.edu.

I just wanted to thank everyone for sending in their suggestions for the next major redesign of DOCLINE, which will focus on the redesign of the Requests and Serial Holdings modules. The redesign project will take a year or more to complete. Even though the deadline has passed, please feel free to pass along any additional suggestions that may come your way. And thanks!

Help? Advice? Questions?

Contact Mark:
508-856-5964

mark.goldstein@umassmed.edu

Submitted by Mark Goldstein

• Expecting a reduction in staff, hours, services, or space?
• Organizing a move of the library within your institution?
• Leaving the library (for a new job, retirement, etc.), yet hoping the institution will hire a suitable replacement?
• Just got word that your institution (and library) will be going through a consolidation or merger?
• Are rumors circulating about the possible elimination of the library’s functions?
• Has your institution announced that it’s closing its doors?
• Arriving to your institution as the new librarian?

If you responded in the affirmative to any of these questions, contact Mark at 508-856-5964 or mark.goldstein@umassmed.edu for an advocacy consultation over what the NER can provide you in the way of a measured response.

Submitted by Mark Goldstein

… which may be reason enough to review the “update reasons” for not filling requests as a lender.

There are three types of reasons for a request to either route on to another library, or discontinue routing and retire: (1.) Routing Reasons are system generated during the routing process; (2.) Removal Reasons are system generated in Time-triggered actions; and (3.) Update Reasons are chosen by a potential lender as a reason for not filling a request.
Please review the list of update reasons, below.

List of Update Reasons

Note: Reasons followed by an asterisk (*) stop a request from further routing. The request is retired unfilled.

Of special note: we should focus on the update reason known as the LIC (license restriction) code. Lenders should use this code when the library’s journal subscription prohibits Interlibrary loan (ILL) under the conditions specific to this request. For example, subscription prohibits ILL from the online journal outside the lender’s country and the borrowing library is outside the lender’s country. Journal subscriptions which entirely prohibit ILL under the publishers’ license agreement should not be listed in DOCLINE Serial Holdings.