Horizontal wires replace the vertical files

Traditionally, clippings of newspaper articles, pictures from magazines, pamphlets, charts, graphs, posters, proceedings, or copies thereof, and other miscellaneous information sources have been stored in vertical files in libraries. The practice of creating and maintaining vertical files is extremely time consuming. In a medical library, in particular, old information about diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis can quickly become incorrect, misleading, and possibly harmful. Adequately tending to the vertical files can require a librarian to create a balancing act between properly maintaining vertical files and meeting the needs of the users in other areas of the library. The maintenance of vertical files is, by nature, highly consumptive of paper and space consuming. A reasonable alternative to the traditional vertical files is the World-Wide Web. Search engines exist for locating specific information, and bookmarks and/or links which point users to particularly useful sites can be set in search software. Some methods for searching are discussed, and a variety of World-Wide Web information sources are offered.     

UnCover on the Web: search hints and applications in library environments

Among the huge maze of resources available on the Internet, UnCoverWeb stands out as a valuable tool for medical libraries. This up-to-date, free-access, multidisciplinary database of periodical references is searched through an easy-to-learn graphical user interface that is a welcome improvement over the telnet version. This article reviews the basic and advanced search techniques for UnCoverWeb, as well as providing information on the document delivery functions and table of contents alerting service called Reveal. UnCover's currency is evaluated and compared with other current awareness resources. System deficiencies are discussed, with the conclusion that although UnCoverWeb lacks the sophisticated features of many commercial database search services, it is nonetheless a useful addition to the repertoire of information sources available in a library.     

Sources of information on postgraduate medical training programs--update

This is an update of an earlier article listing directories, journal articles, and general books that aid the librarian, resident, or medical student in finding information on residency and fellowship programs. The article also gives suggestions for building a file of program catalogs related to residencies, fellowships, and clerkships and related materials.     

An SDILINE profile oriented to patient care.

Hospital physicians naturally require current medical information in order to treat their patients. An objectively obtained SDILINE storesearch was devised to obtain this information. A rank-ordered list of hospital discharge diagnoses, coded with ICDA terms, was translated into MeSH. The top two Bradford zones of journals defined as useful at the University of Missouri--Kansas City were ANDed to these MeSH terms. Citations retrieved from the storesearch are input into an in-house computerized data base. The method can be easily used by other medical or hospital libraries without access to computers.