Finding medical search terms

If you're in need of additional biomedical search terms, MedTerm Search Assist provides helpful keywords and Medline MESH headings. Created by The University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System, it is still growing and requires your help in adding key words to the existing database. Terms currently covered can be found here: http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/terms/browse. To add a keyword, simply select 'Add a term' on the following page: http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/terms/ .

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This post has not been sponsored.

Unsure about UpToDate, confused about Clinical Key, don't know about Dynamed - come to our Point of Care study day!

Unsure about UpToDate, don't know about Dynamed, confused about Clinical Key Clinical Evidence and Clinical Knowledge Summaries, - come to our Point of Care study day!

Point of Care resources are the marmite of libraries – some librarians love them, some hate them. Costs or content, whatever you want to know about we have the staff development opportunity for you.

We are having a Point of Care resources study day on the 21^st January 2014. The world’s finest Point of care Resources will be demonstrated, with plenty of time for you to ask questions and network with colleagues. We will also have two librarian expert users to present on how their Trusts use these resources and they too can answer questions. The cost for the day is £50, to enable as many librarians to attend as possible. It will be held at University of Leicester Hospitals NHS Trust, at the Glenfield Hospital, which has excellent road links, and there is a connecting bus service from Leicester railway station.

Products to be demonstrated include: Clinical Evidence, Clinical Key, Clinical Knowledge Summaries, Dynamed and UpToDate.

For a full programme and booking form, please see our website: http://www.uhl-library.nhs.uk/directpages/pocday.pdf

6th International Clinical Librarian Conference presentations

It is expected that the presentations for the ICLC presentations, that were part of the One Health Conference, will be made available on the University of Queensland institutional repository - UqeSpace by the end of October 2013. Access will be free for all, in keeping with the free access policy of our past conferences. We would like to thank the University of Queensland for kindly hosting the presentations of the 6^th and the 4^th ICLC.

International Clinical Librarian Conference Evidence into Practice Award

The International Clinical Librarian Conference Evidence into Practice Award for 2013 was awarded at the One Health conference in May,  shown above are the winner, Ms Vasumathi Sriganesh, Sarah Sutton for the ICLC Organising Committee, and  2012/13 MLA President Jane Blumenthal.  The award was established this year, to honour a practising librarian or informationist who has made outstanding contributions to bringing evidence into practice in the field of healthcare. The winner, Ms Vasumathi Sriganesh, was presented with her award and cash prize of $500 at the One Health Conference. The cash award was kindly sponsored by Dynamed and Ms Sriganesh has asked that the award go to the QMed Knowledge Foundation.

Ms. Vasumathi Sriganesh worked as a hospital librarian and later as a consumer health librarian in Mumbai, India, during the years 1992-1997, when Medline was on CD ROM and a little later, when Internet access entered the Indian scenario. She discovered that she was good at handling these resources and also that most doctors were quite so successful. She felt that there was a need to reach out to a large audience and not only her library users.  

In 1997, she started off as an independent consultant to help health professionals use Internet resources. In 1999 she set up “QMed Services” as a consulting organization.  She later realized that she not only needed to offer help, but needed to do a lot of advocacy to ensure that correct literature searching, reference management and evidence based health care needed to be taught and actually included in the medical (and allied health) curriculum. She set up “QMed Knowledge Foundation” in 2007, as a “Not for Profit Trust”, so that there would be better acceptance of her recommendations and also her workshops. With the support of five colleagues, she has conducted more than 100 workshops on literature searching / searching for evidence. She has delivered an equal number of short lectures on these topics to promote awareness of the need for such knowledge. She also offers support authors of Systematic Reviews, by coordinating with Trial Search Coordinators, and helps the South Asian Cochrane Network & Centre in her country, with her expertise.  

Having created web-based resource manuals, her next activity is to create E-Learning modules and also initiate Train the Trainer programs to spread her programs more quickly, in the country. Her goal is to see that literature searching skills will be included in the curriculum, and that strong library support will be available to all health professionals for the provision of evidence based healthcare in the country.

The One Health Conference was an international meeting incorporating MLA ’13 and the 11th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (ICML), the 7th International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists (ICAHIS), and the 6th International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC). If you would like to catch up on any of the ICLC sessions, the One Health Blog includes blogs on all of the ICLC sessions by the ICLC official bloggers and other interested commentators. Head over here to find out more: http://npc.mlanet.org/mla13/.

Winner announcement: International Clinical Librarian Conference Evidence into Practice Award

The International Clinical Librarian Conference organising committee are proud to announce that Ms Vasumathi Sriganesh is the winner of the International Clinical Librarian Conference Evidence into Practice Award for 2013.

The International Clinical Librarian Conference Evidence into Practice Award was established this year, to honour a practising librarian or informationist who has made outstanding contributions to bringing evidence into practice in the field of healthcare. The award will coincide with the meeting, “One Health: Information in an Interdependent World”.  One Health is an international meeting incorporating MLA ’13 and the 11th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (ICML), the 7th International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists (ICAHIS), and the 6th International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC).

The recipient of the International Clinical Librarian Conference Evidence into Practice Award will receive a certificate at One Health and a cash award of $500 after the meeting. The cash award is kindly sponsored by Dynamed.

Ms. Vasumathi Sriganesh  worked as a hospital librarian and later as a consumer health librarian in Mumbai, India, during the years 1992-1997, when Medline was on CD ROM and a little later, when Internet access entered the Indian scenario. She discovered that she was good at handling these resources and also that most doctors were quite so successful. She felt that there was a need to reach out to a large audience and not only her library users.

In 1997, she started off as an independent consultant to help health professionals use Internet resources. In 1999 she set up “QMed Services” as a consulting organization.  She later realized that she not only needed to offer help, but needed to do a lot of advocacy to ensure that correct literature searching, reference management and evidence based health care needed to be taught and actually included in the medical (and allied health) curriculum. She set up “QMed Knowledge Foundation” in 2007, as a “Not for Profit Trust”, so that there would be better acceptance of her recommendations and also her workshops. With the support of five colleagues, she has conducted more than 100 workshops on literature searching / searching for evidence. She has delivered an equal number of short lectures on these topics to promote awareness of the need for such knowledge. She also offers support authors of Systematic Reviews, by coordinating with Trial Search Coordinators, and helps the South Asian Cochrane Network & Centre in her country, with her expertise.

Having created web-based resource manuals, her next activity is to create E-Learning modules and also initiate Train the Trainer programs to spread her programs more quickly, in the country. Her goal is to see that literature searching skills will be included in the curriculum, and that strong library support will be available to all health professionals for the provision of evidence based healthcare in the country.

A mentor for One Health?

The International Clinical Librarian Conference 2013, is part of the 2013 Annual Meeting and Exhibition of the Medical Library Association (MLA ’13), 11th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (ICML), 7th International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists (ICAHIS). The meeting theme is 'One Health: Information in an interdependent world'. Boston, MA, USA. 3rd-8th May 2013.

If you are attending One Health, and are an MLA member,  you can enhance your experience through MLA colleague connection. Colleague Connection is a mentoring program that pairs newer members or first-time annual meeting attendees with returning, more experienced members. If you are a new MLA member or first-time meeting attendee, consider pairing up with an experienced colleague at the meeting in Boston. Colleague Connection allows you to have your questions about the meeting answered, maximize your time, select the best programs and meetings to attend, meet new colleagues, build your professional network, and discuss new ideas.

Experienced MLA members benefit, too! Mentoring a colleague can expand your professional network, expose you to new ideas, and help you see the meeting from a fresh perspective. Sign up today. Those who register by Saturday, April 27, will be guaranteed to receive their mentor or mentee before leaving for the meeting. Once assigned, each pair of colleagues will be responsible for working out a time to meet and connect. For more information about participating, please contact Ryan Harris, AHIP, 410.706.1315.

Thanks Sarah

Your tricky literature searching questions answered!

The International Clinical Librarian Conference, the Pharmacy and Drug Information Section and the Institutional Animal Care and Use SIG of the MLA are having an invited panel session at One Health on the practicalities of  literature searching. One Health is a federated international meeting incorporating the 2013 Annual Meeting and Exhibition of the Medical Library Association (MLA ’13), the 11th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (ICML), the 7th International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists (ICAHIS), and the 6th International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC).

The panel of invited speakers will be discussing methods of constructing search strategies, filters or hedges and will discuss the tricks of the trade from their experience as expert searchers. We would like to invite you and your colleagues to send in your questions for the panel to address. If you are attending One Health you are welcome to come and hear the questions selected by the panel, answered live.  Those submitting a question, that is chosen to be answered by the panel, will also receive a written answer to their question, via email.

You don’t have to be a MLA member, clinical librarian, informationist or an embedded librarian to submit a question to the panel, just someone who searches health databases and would like some advice from your colleagues.

Questions to be emailed to Sarah.Sutton@uhl-tr.nhs.uk by 29^th of March 2013.