ROAR & DOAR: Registry / Directory of Open Access Respositories

  I started to look for open access repositories and was getting absolutely overwhelmed until I discovered ROAR and DOAR.
See also eScholarship Respository (California Digital Library)
Directory of Open Access Repositories - OpenDOAR
OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is [...]

A Google Scholar Primer

 Almost a year ago I wrote A Google Primer, which some of you have told me you have found useful. This week I took a careful look at Google Scholar, and I’ll pass on some of the things I discovered. Scholar’s advantages and disadvantages have been well documented and I won’t go into them in detail [...]

The changing library: what clinicians need to know

  This article adapted from grand rounds presented by faculty from the Mt. Sinai Medical Center and published in the October 2006 issue of the Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine provides a nice overview of the services currently offered by medical libraries. The authors discuss the following myths, issues I deal with every working day:
Myth [...]

Reaction to Googling for a diagnosis, a recent BMJ study

  I wasn’t going to write about the study published recently in the BMJ, mainly because everyone else has. So what I’m going to write about is some of the reaction to the study. First, here is the abstract; free full text is available online:
Tang H, Ng JHK. Googling for a diagnosis–use of Google as [...]

A Google Primer

See also A Google Scholar Primer; A little Google history from the Internet Archive
A recent Google search revealed that the word google was first used in the 1927 Little Rascals silent film Dog Heaven (according to Wikipedia, anyway), and the word meant having a drink of water. However, my Shorter OED identifies google as a cricket term first [...]

Expert synthesis of the literature to support critical care decision making

 A new column presenting case studies in health sciences information provision made its first appearance in the October 2006 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA). The column will be curated by Rebecca Jerome of Vanderbilt University. The editors invite comments on these articles through its online forum.
Jerome RN, Miller RA. Expert synthesis of [...]

Mapping the Literature of Nursing: JMLA April 2006; Volume 94 (2 Suppl)

  The current issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) is a supplement entitled Symposium: Mapping the Literature of Nursing, a project of the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section of the Medical Library Association. JMLA is an Open Access journal and free full text is available through PubMed Central.
Sample titles from [...]

Physician use of the curbside consultation to address information needs: report on a collective case study

This study published in the April 2006 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) combines CME and librarianship in an interesting way. I have included the recommended guidelines for both participants in the consultation. They pretty much apply to human interaction in general: 
Perley CM. Physician use of the curbside consultation to address information needs: [...]

How to identify randomized controlled trials in MEDLINE: ten years on

Glanville JM, Lefebvre C, Miles JN, Camosso-Stefinovic J. How to identify randomized controlled trials in MEDLINE: ten years on. J Med Libr Assoc 2006;94:130-136.
 
 Objective: The researchers sought to assess whether the widely used 1994 Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS) for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in MEDLINE could be improved in terms of sensitivity, precision, [...]

An evaluation of a collaborative model for preparing evidence-based medicine teachers

Scherrer CS, Dorsch JL, Weller AC. An evaluation of a collaborative model for preparing evidence-based medicine teachers. J Med Libr Assoc 2006;94:159-165.
Purpose: The authors studied the effectiveness of a train-the-trainer collaboration model between librarians and medical faculty to instruct librarians and health professionals in teaching evidence-based medicine (EBM) principles.
Methods: A telephone survey was administered to [...]