Finally, MY area! Here are my thoughts on Health Source - Consumer. It's a good idea to ask people to take a look at the list of publications because they are ALL OVER THE PLACE. There are lots of pamphlets with outdated information and the sources are not the best (doitnow.org?). I would much prefer users (both librarians and patrons) go to MedlinePlus for pamphlet info. But there are also some great sources: Harvard Mental Health Letter (and other Harvard pubs), Mayo Clinic consumer pubs, as well as some EXTREMELY TECHNICAL full-text journals. I did a subject search for parkinson's disease and the most recent full-text article is from Nutrition Reviews. It is highly technical; here is a paragraph:
Mechanisms of action. Different mechanisms have been
proposed for the neuroprotective activity of EGCG in PD.
The study conducted by Levites et al. 75 was the first to
demonstrate the neuroprotective activity of both green
tea extract (0.5 and 1 mg/kg) and EGCG (2 and 10 mg/
kg) on MPTP-induced parkinsonism in animal models. It
is possible that the neuroprotective effects are mediated
by iron-chelating activities and free-radical-scavenging
activities possessed by the catechol group. Since green tea
catechins can pass through the blood-brain barrier, they
can act as both ROS scavengers and iron chelators to clear
the redox active ferrous iron deposited in the SN, reducing
the iron-induced oxidative stress that can lead to neuronal
death.
Clearly, this is not appropriate for 99% of public library users. It helps to limit to source type: magazine; then you will not get the scholarly articles.
Thank you so much for sending people to MedlinePlus for the second part of this assignment! At the EMMC library, this is our top choice for consumer health questions. This resource started out somewhat skimpy but has developed over the years into a robust source of trusted, authoritative, and understandable information. It is much better than Health Source: Consumer for answering consumers' requests for information. As you have pointed out via your questions, it is useful for current topics in the news, detailed information about drugs (side note: please do NOT refer people to the PDR), links to websites (all vetted by the National Library of Medicine) on health topics, diseases and conditions. And the videos are amazing. We get lots of questions by telephone, asking if we have a video of x procedure and we refer them to MedlinePlus. Just make sure most folks know many of these videos are graphic and last for an hour.
FYI - it is also possible to get information about providers from MedlinePlus. On the botton of the home screen, click on "Directories" and you will get a list of links to the various societies that credential physicians, hospitals, etc. We also get this question alot at EMMC.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Thinking about Business
I think I should stop leaving these assignments for the end of the work day. But it's too late now...
Business Source Complete looks like any of the other Ebsco databases in MARVEL and I'm pretty familiar with them. The search for FM radio brought up a lot of information. It's interesting that you can find market research reports which are usually (I thought) hard to find, at least for free. But these are old, 2004 and earlier and some aren't really what I would call market research. The articles under the type of "product review" are good, also.
I tried the visual search option and, perhaps because of my age and comfort zone, did not like it too much. I'd like to know what others thought (and their ages!).
Using EconLit for the various searches, I learned that the SmartText option helps to garner a few extra citations when you aren't coming up with much. This got a few additional citations when searching for small business and the EPA. This database is much more academically or scholarly oriented; it includes dissertations, research articles, working papers. I would want to be careful about who I recommended it to.
I can see how the Regional Business News would be a useful database. I searched for Apple and found 30,000+ items, most of them from the news wires. Then I searched for the Jackson Laboratory and found 27 items. It was interesting in that about one-third were obits for people who were on the JKL board. I wouldn't have thought of that. But this search picked up a lot about the lab and what's happening with it, not only in ME, but also in FL and CT, areas where expansion is/was in the works or is being considered.
Value Line: I was, at one time, the "business librarian" at Fogler and I remember the gazillions of questions from the business students about Value Line. So I'm always amazed that we have access to it via MARVEL. It is an amazing resource and worth learning...when you have a lot of time... I used the public library version and think this could be quite confusing to someone who had never seen the print version. I looked at the 4 pdfs listed for this week and I found some of them confusing. The index lists page numbers for companies, but I couldn't find all of those pages in the pdfs. Then I did a search by putting Tim Hortons in the search box and found a number of articles. In the first one, I clicked on the stock symbol to get the one-page summary of financial data. On the article, there was a button offering the full research report; however, clicking on it led to a request for a full subscription at a cost of $598. I assume the academic version of Value Line would let you have the full report.
All in all, I'm glad I don't have to navigate and understand Value Line. I think I would assign one person the job of delving into this database and refer all questions to him/her.
I use the Wall Street Journal quite a bit because administrators often hear about a story in the WSJ and want the full text. It is another huge benefit of MARVEL to my library. I limited the search on small business and health care reform to health care policy because I think owners of small businesses would be interested in reading about how the ACA is going to affect them. Then I changed the display so that the most recent articles (rather than relevancy) were listed first and there were a number of useful items. Someone could set an an alert so that new articles on this topic would be emailed to them each week/month/whatever. I'm late in getting to this assignment so I know that Obama won the election, but if I had done it when it came out, the election would not have happened yet and the alert would be even more meaningful.
Phew...this was a LONG assignment!
Business Source Complete looks like any of the other Ebsco databases in MARVEL and I'm pretty familiar with them. The search for FM radio brought up a lot of information. It's interesting that you can find market research reports which are usually (I thought) hard to find, at least for free. But these are old, 2004 and earlier and some aren't really what I would call market research. The articles under the type of "product review" are good, also.
I tried the visual search option and, perhaps because of my age and comfort zone, did not like it too much. I'd like to know what others thought (and their ages!).
Using EconLit for the various searches, I learned that the SmartText option helps to garner a few extra citations when you aren't coming up with much. This got a few additional citations when searching for small business and the EPA. This database is much more academically or scholarly oriented; it includes dissertations, research articles, working papers. I would want to be careful about who I recommended it to.
I can see how the Regional Business News would be a useful database. I searched for Apple and found 30,000+ items, most of them from the news wires. Then I searched for the Jackson Laboratory and found 27 items. It was interesting in that about one-third were obits for people who were on the JKL board. I wouldn't have thought of that. But this search picked up a lot about the lab and what's happening with it, not only in ME, but also in FL and CT, areas where expansion is/was in the works or is being considered.
Value Line: I was, at one time, the "business librarian" at Fogler and I remember the gazillions of questions from the business students about Value Line. So I'm always amazed that we have access to it via MARVEL. It is an amazing resource and worth learning...when you have a lot of time... I used the public library version and think this could be quite confusing to someone who had never seen the print version. I looked at the 4 pdfs listed for this week and I found some of them confusing. The index lists page numbers for companies, but I couldn't find all of those pages in the pdfs. Then I did a search by putting Tim Hortons in the search box and found a number of articles. In the first one, I clicked on the stock symbol to get the one-page summary of financial data. On the article, there was a button offering the full research report; however, clicking on it led to a request for a full subscription at a cost of $598. I assume the academic version of Value Line would let you have the full report.
All in all, I'm glad I don't have to navigate and understand Value Line. I think I would assign one person the job of delving into this database and refer all questions to him/her.
I use the Wall Street Journal quite a bit because administrators often hear about a story in the WSJ and want the full text. It is another huge benefit of MARVEL to my library. I limited the search on small business and health care reform to health care policy because I think owners of small businesses would be interested in reading about how the ACA is going to affect them. Then I changed the display so that the most recent articles (rather than relevancy) were listed first and there were a number of useful items. Someone could set an an alert so that new articles on this topic would be emailed to them each week/month/whatever. I'm late in getting to this assignment so I know that Obama won the election, but if I had done it when it came out, the election would not have happened yet and the alert would be even more meaningful.
Phew...this was a LONG assignment!
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Novelist Deserves a Plus, Novelist Plus Not so Much
First off, I'm the director of a hospital library and we don't buy fiction so I did a lot of this assignment using nonfiction authors and titles. Thus, my assessment of the Novelist databases.
For the initial part of the assignment, I searched for "Jane Rizzoli" and could definitely see how using the view option would help when showing this database to patrons. I liked the "grid" view where the patron basically sees the book jackets and some minimal information. This would make browsing a long list easier, not to mention printing.
For the second part, using the David Baldacci example, I thought the "Read-Alikes from NoveList" feature was great. I love the way it gives you so much detailed information and really helps you decide which author and title is the best book for you. If your library doesn't have the book the patron was looking for when they came into the library, I would think you should be able to find a successful substitution using this database. It's like having a million brains at your fingertips.
Next, I spent time exploring Novelist Plus from my perspective (although I will say in almost 20 years I have never encountered anyone who has come into my library and said, "I've read Susan Love's Breast Book," can you recommend something else?") I put in a few well-known popular medical writers (Susan Love, Andrew Weil, Atul Gawande) and either did not find much for read-alikes or found the read-alikes to be a bit off. They seemed to be mainly selected based on genre more than anything else and there was nowhere near the detail of the fiction entries. Then I started trying some older fiction from my youth (Monkey Wrench Gang, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and those had, IMHO, iffy read-alikes as well. I wonder what others think?
For the initial part of the assignment, I searched for "Jane Rizzoli" and could definitely see how using the view option would help when showing this database to patrons. I liked the "grid" view where the patron basically sees the book jackets and some minimal information. This would make browsing a long list easier, not to mention printing.
For the second part, using the David Baldacci example, I thought the "Read-Alikes from NoveList" feature was great. I love the way it gives you so much detailed information and really helps you decide which author and title is the best book for you. If your library doesn't have the book the patron was looking for when they came into the library, I would think you should be able to find a successful substitution using this database. It's like having a million brains at your fingertips.
Next, I spent time exploring Novelist Plus from my perspective (although I will say in almost 20 years I have never encountered anyone who has come into my library and said, "I've read Susan Love's Breast Book," can you recommend something else?") I put in a few well-known popular medical writers (Susan Love, Andrew Weil, Atul Gawande) and either did not find much for read-alikes or found the read-alikes to be a bit off. They seemed to be mainly selected based on genre more than anything else and there was nowhere near the detail of the fiction entries. Then I started trying some older fiction from my youth (Monkey Wrench Gang, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and those had, IMHO, iffy read-alikes as well. I wonder what others think?
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