Natural Standard--new integrative medicine database

Natural Standard is a new and extremely easy-to-use database consisting of comprehensive evidence-based medicine monographs, and also news brief's on the subject of complementary/alternative medicine therapies. It does not yet contain a huge amount of material, but it is updated frequently, and new information is continuously added. The focus is on the therapeutic "bottom line" of treatment safety and effectiveness. Dosing, Precautions/Adverse Effects, Pregnancy/Lactation Data, and Interactions information is all clearly displayed along with a "Review of the Evidence" table and a discussion summarizing the overall therapeutic value of the treatment modality.     

Developing and using a rubric for evaluating evidence-based medicine point-of-care tools

Objective:

The research sought to establish a rubric for evaluating evidence-based medicine (EBM) point-of-care tools in a health sciences library.

Methods:

The authors searched the literature for EBM tool evaluations and found that most previous reviews were designed to evaluate the ability of an EBM tool to answer a clinical question. The researchers'' goal was to develop and complete rubrics for assessing these tools based on criteria for a general evaluation of tools (reviewing content, search options, quality control, and grading) and criteria for an evaluation of clinical summaries (searching tools for treatments of common diagnoses and evaluating summaries for quality control).

Results:

Differences between EBM tools'' options, content coverage, and usability were minimal. However, the products'' methods for locating and grading evidence varied widely in transparency and process.

Conclusions:

As EBM tools are constantly updating and evolving, evaluation of these tools needs to be conducted frequently. Standards for evaluating EBM tools need to be established, with one method being the use of objective rubrics. In addition, EBM tools need to provide more information about authorship, reviewers, methods for evidence collection, and grading system employed.

Highlights

• Eleven of the fourteen previous evidence-based medicine (EBM) tool evaluations were based on clinicians evaluating tools based on their perception of the products'' ability to answer a clinical question.
• EBM tools'' evidence summaries are not updated as often as products claim.
• Although many EBM tools claim to be evidence based, only 74% of the 70 evaluated treatment summaries included graded evidence.

Implications

• To offer the best tools for users, medical libraries should evaluate EBM resources regularly, including the quality of the evidence provided.
• Medical librarians have a role to play in evaluating the quality of EBM products and can develop assessment tools to aid in this evaluation.

     

中医病案数据库元数据方案的设计

目的：设计一套适用于中医病案数据库的元数据方案,以满足中医病案数据库保存和分析的需要。方法：经过资源分析、文献及网络调研、用户调查后,采用 MARC 元数据设计了中医病案数据库元数据方案。结果：中医病案数据库元数据方案由17个字段组成,分为9个部分。结论：使用 MARC 作为中医病案数据库的元数据标准,初步达到了组织和描述中医病案资源的目的,但在元数据标准的选择、著录的标准化方面仍需讨论。     

An overview of 45 published database resources for complementary and alternative medicine

Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has succeeded to implement itself in the academic context of universities. In order to get information on CAM, clinicians, researchers and healthcare professionals as well as the lay public are increasingly turning to online portals and databases, which disseminate relevant resources. One specific type of online information retrieval systems, namely the database, is being reviewed in this article. Question: This overview aims at systematically retrieving and describing all databases covering the field of CAM. One of the requirements for inclusion was that the database would also have to be published in a medical journal. Data sources: The databases amed , CAMbase , embase , and medline /Pub Med were searched between December 2008 and December 2009 for publications relevant to CAM databases. The authors’ specialist library was also searched for grey literature to be included. Study selection: All included databases were then visited online and information on the context, structure and volume of the database was extracted. Main results: Forty‐five databases were included in this overview. Databases covered herbal therapies (n = 11), traditional Chinese medicine (n = 9) and some dealt with a vast number of CAM modalities (n = 9), amongst others. The amount of time the databases had been in existence ranged from 4 to 53 years. Countries of origin included the USA (n = 14), UK (n = 7) and Germany (n = 6), amongst others. The main language in 42 of 45 databases was English. Conclusions: Although this overview is quite comprehensive with respect to the field of CAM, certain CAM practices such as chiropractic, massage, reflexology, meditation or yoga may not have been covered adequately. A more detailed assessment of the quality of the included databases might give additional insights into the listed resources. The creation of a personalised meta‐search engine is suggested, towards which this overview could be seen as a first step.     

中医药特色数据库建设的内容和层次分析

通过调查国内22所中医药院校的特色数据库建设情况发现,中医药信息资源还没有被充分开发,建库层次缺乏深度,提出了更新内容、深化层次是中医药特色数据库构建的发展方向。     

中医药类英文科技期刊国际同行评议专家数据库建设

学术期刊同行评议过程是保证学术论文质量的重要环节.目前的同行评审公共平台所包含的专家学者均以全球性学科为主.而中医药是我国独具特色的卫生资源,也是我国少数几个拥有自主知识产权且在国际上具有竞争优势的行业之一,因此,建立一个全球范围的、专门的、包含大量针对传统医药相关专家的同行评议数据库就显得尤为重要.本文建立了 一个信息量大、更新及时、交互式管理的中英双语国际中医药同行评议专家数据库系统(TCMPEER),并以Web Service方式设计公共开放接口,提供实时在线专家遴选服务.该数据库能实时掌握更新国内外医学界专家学者动态、研究近况,为评审专家遴选工作提供信息服务和决策支持.该数据库重点解决以专家数据信息为中心,从展示、关联、交互、服务等多维度辐射扩展,为专家带来完全精准匹配的增值服务.本研究构建的专家数据库着重服务于中医药类英文期刊,形成优势公共资源,未来将与行业学会对接,首批实现以我国创办的中医药类英文刊集群共同进入实质性业务运营,进而辐射世界,补充替代医学领域相关专家数据库.     

Searching a biomedical bibliographic database from Bulgaria: the ABS database

BACKGROUND: The University of Sofia, Bulgaria, disseminates local biomedical literature (1994 to present) through a free online database, ABS. OBJECTIVES: Our objectives were to systematically search ABS, identify citations to controlled trials and discover what proportion of these studies are to be found on medline. METHODS: We searched using Bulgarian and English phrases; manually selected citations of controlled trials and sought these citations on medline. Results: Using the two languages, we found a total of 628 unique citations, 47 of which seem to be relevant controlled trials (precision 7.48%, 13% of ABS citations were found on medline). The trials in ABS commonly focused on evaluation of care for people with cardiovascular or urological problems. DISCUSSION: ABS is another source of easily accessed trials not readily available elsewhere.     

PEDro: a physiotherapy evidence database

PEDro is produced by the Centre for Evidence-Based Physiotherapy (CEBP), located in Sydney, Australia. PEDro is intended to be used to gain "rapid access to bibliographic details and abstracts of randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy." This column will provide some background information on the database, as well as cover the basics of searching its content.     

依托现代高新技术弘扬湖湘文化精髓--《湖南人物库》建设实践与思考

从《湖南人物库》的建库背景谈起，阐述了该数据库的收录范围、体系结构及主要特点。探讨了利用现代高新技术，弘扬湖湘文化精髓的新途径、新方法。     

Combining history of medicine and library instruction: an innovative approach to teaching database searching to medical students

Library faculty members at the Health Sciences Library at the LSU Health Shreveport campus offer a database searching class for third-year medical students during their surgery rotation. For a number of years, students completed "ten-minute clinical challenges," but the instructors decided to replace the clinical challenges with innovative exercises using The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus to emphasize concepts learned. The Surgical Papyrus is an online resource that is part of the National Library of Medicine's "Turning the Pages" digital initiative. In addition, vintage surgical instruments and historic books are displayed in the classroom to enhance the learning experience.     

ABLEDATA: a database of products for the disabled

ABLEDATA (ABLE), a database funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) of the U.S. Department of Education and produced by the Adaptive Equipment Center of Newington Children's Hospital, Newington, Connecticut, provides information on more than 17,000 rehabilitation products from over 2,000 manufacturers in the U.S. and Canada. ABLE, which is available through BRS Search Service, BRS Colleague, and BRS After Dark, is a useful resource for rehabilitation professionals and others who wish to locate appropriate assistive devices for all categories of disabled persons.     

Comprehensive access to periodicals: a database solution

Providing access to periodicals holdings simply and efficiently has, historically, presented problems at Old Dominion University’s (ODU) Perry Library for a number of reasons. The availability of a large number of online journal titles from aggregators and the need to support remote access to these resources led to the Perry Library’s developing a comprehensive online periodicals database of print and online titles. This online system uses the Perl computer language and the MySQL relational database system.     

Finding alternatives when a major database is gone

Question

What to do when a major database ceases publication?

Setting

An urban, academic health sciences library with four campuses serves a university health sciences system, a college of medicine, and five other health sciences colleges.

Methods

Usage statistics of each e-book title in the resource were carefully analyzed. Purchase decisions were made based on the assessment of usage.

Results

Sustainable resources were acquired from other vendors, with perpetual access for library users.

Conclusion

This systematic process of finding alternative resources is an example of librarians'' persistence in acquiring perpetual electronic resources when a major resource is cancelled.     

Developing a Data Identifier Taxonomy

As the amount of research data management is growing, the use of identity metadata for discovering, linking, and citing research data is growing too. To support the awareness of different identifier systems and the comparison and selection of an identifier for a particular data management environment, there is need for a knowledge base. This article contributes to that goal and analyzes the data management and related literatures to develop a data identifier taxonomy. The taxonomy includes four categories (domain, entity types, activities, and quality dimensions). In addition, the article describes 14 identifiers referenced in the literature and analyzes them along the taxonomy.     

Developing a State Law Collection

The acquisition of state legal material is frequently hampered by the lack of a source of information which details availability, currency and coverage of the materials. The use of these materials also may be hampered by lack of information regarding the publication of official reports or administrative codes or less used materials. This article attempts to list the more useful research materials for each state, to indicate which of these is current and to list more comprehensive bibliographic sourccs for state legal research.     

Developing a State Law Collection

No abstract available for this article.     

Evaluating CD-ROM versions of the MEDLINE database: a checklist

The emergence of CD-ROM (compact disc/read-only memory) versions of the MEDLINE database requires experienced MEDLINE searchers to examine assumptions about searching MEDLINE, since some expectations may not be fulfilled by this new technology. When applied to a particular CD-ROM MEDLINE product, the evaluation procedure involves testing assumptions concerning database contents; mechanics of searching; display, print, and download capabilities; and user-friendly features. The extent to which a CD-ROM product preserves and exploits important MEDLINE strengths should be assessed, e.g., the MeSH controlled vocabulary, the designation of major and minor MeSH emphasis, and the use of subheadings. Search software characteristics that affect ease of searching and quality of results also need to be examined, e.g., the ability to truncate search terms and the order of precedence in which Boolean operators are evaluated. A checklist to assist in the evaluation process is presented, including search examples for use in testing search functions.