National Library Week 2012

This week we'll be celebrating National Library Week with the theme "You belong @ your library." I know that most of our students and faculty don't spend a lot of time "at" Frontier's library in Aunt Hattie's Barn. Most of your "library time" is spent in cyberspace, visiting our website and using various online resources.  However, we do want our physical library to be a useful place for you when you visit campus for Crossing the Bridge, Clinical Bound, and/or DNP Intensive (and of course for new students who are on campus for the first time at Bridge Bound or Frontier Bound). So, what do you think belongs @ our library? Textbooks? Leisure reading materials? Charging stations for your mobile device? Comfy seating? Let us know in the comments! I can't make any promises (we may not run right out and buy a recliner, for example) but we will certainly consider all suggestions for making the library a welcoming and functional space!

More Daily POEMs

In our last post, I highlighted Daily POEMs from Essential Evidence Plus.  One thing this service is good for is alerting me to clinical topics that students and faculty might want more information on.  I keep an "Of Interest" folder in my Inbox so I can file away the POEMs that seem especially interesting.  Lately it seems like there have been several on women's health topics.

Late last month, one POEM showed that breast cancer screening benefits are overrated. Earlier in the month, on Valentine's Day in fact, there was a POEM showing the benefits of delayed cord clamping. More recently, a POEM showed that for low-risk women, there was no difference between giving birth at home, in a birth center, or in an OB unit.

Finally, today a Daily POEM arrived in my Inbox that made me smile - "Three-step identification method for recognizing dangerous snakes." Now, I'm sure this is a serious problem, it just seems so different from the pregnancy, women's health, and primary care topics that we normally deal with in the library.  I'm happy to know that if I need to identify a venomous snake, I know which resource to turn to.

Daily POEMs

October is almost over, but not quite! We still have a few days left of National Medical Librarians Month. I'd like to continue our celebration by discussing another little known resource, Daily POEMs from Essential Evidence Plus. Many of you may have used Essential Evidence Plus before (and if you haven't be sure to check it out!) but you may not know about the Daily POEMs Alert service. POEM stands for Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters, and each one contains a clinical question, bottom line (answer), and reference, as well as information on the study design, funding, setting, and a synopsis. You can have these emailed to you daily.

Email message with Daily POEM

If you don't want to clog your Inbox, though, never fear! You can search within the POEMs on EE+ by choosing "POEMs research summaries" in the drop-down menu.

You can also browse the POEMs by date or topic by clicking on "POEMs Research Summaries" under "Browse Our Databases."

Here are some recent POEMs of interest, so you can get an idea of the topics addressed:

• Oral steroids beneficial with antibiotics for chronic rhinosinusitis in children and adolescents
• Outcomes of oxytocin regimens for augmentation of labor
• Immediate insertion after uterine aspiration increases IUD use rate

In addition to the daily messages and database, a weekly podcast is available too!

I hope you'll consider using POEMs when you need to answer a clinical question!

Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) Database

In celebration of National Medical Librarians Month, we'd like to highlight some resources that you may not be familiar with.  The first resource we will feature is the Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) database.  This database provides information from journals about behavioral measurement instruments.  Please note that it does NOT provide the full-text of the instruments. Rather, it points the user to journal articles that either contain or discuss the instrument.  Limit your search to "primary source" for a better chance of the instrument being included in the article.

While the database record is pointing you to a journal article, it doesn't provide the full-text of the article either.  When you request an item via interlibrary loan from this database, you are requesting the journal article, not the instrument itself.  Some instruments are available directly from the database publisher, but a fee is charged.  If you are interested in obtaining an instrument this way, please contact us directly.

Other information that may be included in the instrument record is reliability, response options, references (to the primary source if it's a secondary source, for example), number of questions, and an abstract. Below is a sample record:

If you have questions about using HaPI, or any other database, be sure and contact the library.

National Medical Librarians Month

October is National Medical Librarians Month!  Medical Librarians are your ultimate search engine.  People tell us all the time that they searched for something for days and days...don't do that, call us!  We are here to help!

859-253-3637

To celebrate we'll be featuring library resources to help improve your searching all month.  Be sure to stay tuned!

Electronic Journals List Downtime

Our Electronic Journals (AtoZ) List will be unavailable tonight from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time, due to system maintenance from EBSCO.  If you think you will need links to journals during that time, and can't get them before or after, please contact us this afternoon. We'll see what we can do to get you direct access.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

National Library Week and Links of Interest

This week we are celebrating National Library Week with a theme of "Create your own story @ your library."

To that end I'd like to share some links that tell a few stories...

Mapping Maternity Care and Birth Outcomes - this site tells a story that we are all too familiar with...the rising c-section rate and cost of maternity care.  It provides a variety of statistics for the U.S. and other developed countries.  The interactive state statistics are particularly interesting.

The CDC Division of STD Prevention has several publications available for free.  Help tell patients and others about STD treatment guidelines, STD facts, and statistics.  Some publications are available in Spanish as well.

Also from the CDC is a page on health literacy. This information is aimed at all people and organizations that communicate with people about their health.  Some of this information is also broken down by state.

If you haven't checked out the Healthy People website, be sure to take a look.  The list of topics and objectives for 2020 is here.

What stories do you have to tell?