You may have noticed a few changes to PubMed. Instead of the separate page for limits, PubMed now shows limiting filters on the left side of your results page. Clicking on the filter activates that particular limit to your search.
The default list of filters includes options for text availability, publication dates, and language. You can select other filters, such as ages for study participants or article type, by clicking on “choose additional filters” at the top left.
This video provides more information on the new filters sidebar in PubMed:
Need help searching PubMed? The library offers individual and group training classes on PubMed and other library resources. You can submit your request for training online through EBL’s Digital Library.
Lexicomp Online provides drug information and clinical support tools. You can browse or search for specific drugs to learn about labeled and unlabeled uses, pregnancy and lactation issues, warnings and adverse reactions, adult, pediatric, and geriatric dosing, and other details, and to hear pronunciation of the drug name.
Lexicomp includes an Interaction Checker, which lets you enter a list of drugs and view a resulting list of potential interactions.
The Drug ID tool allows you to input an imprint, dosage form (pill, capsule, etc.), color and shape to help identify medications.
The Calculations section provides online calculators for a wide variety of needs, like BMI, anion gap, infusion rates, other dosing issues, and metric conversions. Another section provides information on IV compatibility, including solution make-up and stability.
Toxicology addressed in detail in Lexicomp, with details on antidotes, decontaminants, toxic effects, and presentation, along with ingredients and toxic effects of household products.
Patient education handouts for adult and pediatric patients are also provided.
For a few weeks, we also have a trial of the AHFS drug information through Lexicomp. Please try it out if you have a chance, and contact us if you have feedback about whether adding this additional item to our Lexicomp subscription is valuable to your work.
The Lexicomp site provides a number of online training videos and a PDF user guide to help you learn how to use the various tools and features of the new site.
Here’s what LexiComp has to say about the changes:
Many people have reported problems saving PDFs of articles from ScienceDirect, due to a compatibility problem with Adobe Reader X.
If your “Save” option is disabled for ScienceDirect PDFs, try this as a workaround: right-click on the PDF icon and choose Save Target As (Internet Explorer) or Save Link As (Firefox and Chrome), then save the file.
In Explorer:
In Firefox or Chrome:
ScienceDirect has also posted tips for saving PDFs, including suggestions for configuring how you open PDFs.
Starting February 20th, 2012, there will be several changes made to the storage retrieval schedule for users requiring older print items, including pre-1975 journals. Storage items will be retrieved and made available on Monday, Wednesday and Friday instead of daily.
The new schedule will be as follows:
Requests placed before 10 am on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday will be available after 1 pm the same day.
For requests placed any time on Tuesday or Thursday or after 10 am on Monday Wednesday, or Friday:
Request Placed On:
Item Will Be Available:
Monday after 10 am
after 1 pm on Wednesday
Tuesday
after 1 pm on Wednesday
Wednesday after 10 am
after 1 pm on Friday
Thursday
after 1 pm on Friday
Friday after 10 am
after 1 pm on Monday
The new schedule will be posted to the Storage/Annex Retrieval web page when it takes effect on Monday February 20, 2012, including details about special handling of urgent requests.
The library has purchased online access to the older years of many journals. For example, we have online access to JAMA starting in 1883, New England Journal of Medicine starting in 1812, and Nature starting in 1869. Please search the Digital Library to determine whether we provide online access to the year you need.
The CDC recently released the 2012 immunization schedules for adults and children. The February 3rd and 10th editions of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report provide summaries of important changes to the adult and child and adolescent schedules, respectively. Additional information about immunization schedules for both health care providers and consumers is available through the CDC website.
UpToDate, which the EBL subscribes to for VUMC users, has added two new features. The new general surgery section includes content on surgical principles, anesthesia and analgesia, and many types of surgeries including bariatric, colorectal, breast, trauma, head and neck, minimally invasive, and other surgical topics.
An image search has also been added – choose graphics as your search option on the main page and search for keywords. The results include CTs, medical illustrations, ultrasounds, charts, photographs, X-rays and other images, with links to the relevant UtD topic pages. Images can be exported to PowerPoint for use in slides.
The Eskind Biomedical Library will observe the following special hours around the University’s Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays:
Date
Hours
Limited Services
Thursday, 12/22/11
8am to 6pm
8am to noon
Friday 12/23/11
8am to 5pm
8am to 11am, 3pm to 5pm
Saturday, 12/24/11 (Christmas Eve)
Closed
Closed
Sunday, 12/25/11 (Christmas day)
Closed
Closed
Monday, 12/26/11
8am to 5pm
8am to 11am, 3pm to 5pm
Tuesday, 12/27/11
7am to midnight
7am to 8am, 6pm to midnight
Wednesday, 12/28/11
7am to midnight
7am to 8am, 6pm to midnight
Thursday, 12/29/11
7am to midnight
7am to 8am, 6pm to midnight
Friday, 12/30/11
8am to 5pm
8am to 11am, 3pm to 5pm
Saturday, 12/31/11 (New Year’s Eve)
8am to 5pm
8am to 11am, 3pm to 5pm
Sunday, 1/1/12 (New Year’s Day)
Closed
Closed
A valid Vanderbilt or Meharry ID is required for entrance during Limited Service Hours.
The library will resume normal hours on Tuesday, January 2, 2012.
Online resources such as journals and textbooks will be available through the Digital Library. Online tutorials are available for many resources, and requests for further help can be made through our online forms. When the library is closed, checked out items you are returning can be left in the book drop outside the library.
Last week, several of our team members presented “A Window into Knowledge Management and the Eskind Biomedical Library” at the Informatics Center Town Hall event. The presentations are now online (VUnet ID/password required), and provides a great introduction to the advanced work being done by EBL/KM.
Topics and presenters included:
Dr. Nunzia Giuse, MD, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Knowledge Management and Director: our overall vision and approach to defining priorities, the history of our evidence-based services, and the staff training and ongoing commitment to learning required to transition to providing higher level services which began with our landmark patient-specific filtered evidence provision to clinicians in response to complex information needs.
Taneya Koonce: our support of evidence-based care through information retrieval, synthesis, filtering and appraisal of biomedical literature for complex clinical questions, including use of a StarPanel message basket, support of order set development, delivery of reliable consumer health information to patients through My Health at Vanderbilt, and ongoing projects in health literacy and learning style preferences to connect patients with appropriate information interventions.
Becky Jerome: our work as integrated team members in the AHRQ-funded Evidence-Based Practice Center at Vanderbilt, developing systematic reviews on topics such as therapies for children with autism
Mary Beth Bauer: personalized medicine and KM contributions to Diagnostic Management Teams, which review complex laboratory data alongside a patient’s clinical picture to develop patient-specific approaches to care, and work with My Cancer Genome to provide current evidence on genetic effects on cancer therapy
Adeola Davis: health literacy components of the My Cancer Genome work, and application of our expertise in health literacy to the PREDICT team and My Health at Vanderbilt
Annette Williams: our dispatcher tool and processes for managing ever-more-complex workflows and coordinating multiple evidence-based services
If you’re interested in learning more about our activities that go far beyond just books and the library building, check out this video.
If you use My NCBI to save searches or lists of citations in PubMed or other NCBI databases, be aware that they will not be available on Monday, December 19 starting at 7am Central time for approximately 5 hours. NCBI will be doing site maintenance during that time. If you might need to access the results of a saved search or a saved list of citations on Monday, you should go ahead and grab those today or over the weekend.
Interested in understanding flu activity throughout the country? Each year, from October through May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prepares a weekly report of influenza activity in the country. Data is collected in 5 categories from 9 different sources; details of the source data and the surveillance methods can be found on FluView website.
The CDC monitoring efforts also includes the weekly publication from October – May of the Flu Map – a graphical representation of the country’s flu activity. This year’s Flu Map launched the week ending October 8, 2011. The map is updated weekly and can be found at http://cdc.gov/flu/weekly/usmap.htm.
The map below is an embedded widget so you can actually click back through previous weeks from here.
