A bibliometric analysis of the clinical development of drugs in Norway for the year 2000

Purpose: Bibliometric analysis of publications was used to investigate the research output relating to the development of drugs in Norway and to evaluate the impact of Norwegian involvement in this research. Material and methods: One hundred and nine articles published between 2002 and 2008 were analysed. Bibliometric methods used were as follows: information on peer review, impact factor (IF), the Science Citation Index (SCI) and the representation of Norwegians in the list of authors. Results: All publications were in journals with peer review or in publications with corresponding evaluation. Industrial support, international research cooperation and drug development in phases I, II and III seem to promote publication in journals with high IF and a high SCI. In 63% of the international project articles, the Norwegian contributors were not represented in the list of authors. Conclusion: In addition to a scientific standard secured by referees, three probably independent factors – industrial support, international cooperation and early phases of the research (phases I, II and III) – seem to promote publications in journals with high IF and a high SCI. A more active Norwegian contribution to the research should be encouraged.     

Librarian-Lead Tutorial for Enhancement of Pharmacy Students' Information-Searching Skills in Advanced Experiential Rotations

Pharmacy schools across the United States expose students to literature searching and evaluation mostly during required didactic drug information courses. The majority of Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students do not utilize library-available electronic resources on a regular basis, and their didactic experience alone is not sufficient to make them successful in their advanced experiential drug information (DI) rotations. This pilot study demonstrates an improvement of students' perceptions regarding information searching and evaluating abilities as the result of their participation in a small group tutorial with a reference librarian, thus indicating effectiveness of the tutorial in refreshing and enhancing database knowledge skills.     

Leveraging Change to Integrate Library and Informatics Competencies into a New CTSC Curriculum: A Program Evaluation

This program evaluation reports on the curricular development and integration of library, biomedical informatics, and scholarly communications (LBS) skills into a required informatics course for a new graduate degree program in the University of New Mexico's Clinical and Translational Sciences Center (CTSC). The course built on the opportunity presented by the new degree program to integrate LBS competencies rarely included in most traditional clinical research training programs. This report tracks the experiences and evaluations of two cohorts of graduate students who have completed the course. This article presents lessons learned on curricular integration and offers thoughts for future work.     

Science.gov: Gateway to Government Science Information

Science.gov is a portal to more than 40 scientific databases and 200 million pages of science information via a single query. It connects users to science information and research results from the U.S. government. This column will provide readers with an overview of the resource, as well as basic search hints.     

Engaging Students in Active Learning: Use of a Blog and Audience Response System

Librarians provide instruction to medical students as part of a core course in the medical school curriculum. Instruction was provided, in part, through didactic sessions covering professional-level medical information resources, PubMed search skills, psychosocial information, and evidence-based medicine. Librarians redesigned instructional sessions with the goals of increasing student engagement and minimizing the lecture format, maximizing the number of students receiving feedback on their search and evaluation skills, and permitting students to see a variety of possible responses as well as engage in peer- and self-evaluation. Librarians integrated the use of a blog and an audience response system (ARS) into the instruction to help accomplish these goals.     

Meeting Reference Responsibilities Through Library Web Sites

Summary

Among the many ways the World Wide Web has changed libraries are the additional tools gained by librarians and library users for answering reference questions. In addition to the growing number of licensed resources providing the full text of articles from newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and reference works are the millions of free Web sites offering an incredible variety of information about everything. Locating the most useful of these sites and organizing them into categories on library Web sites can be enormously beneficial both to patrons and libraries. After deciding to make their sites reference portals, librarians must make a number of important decisions.     

The Reference Question–Where Has Reference Been? Where Is Reference Going?

ABSTRACT

This article describes the genesis for a seminal conference program at the ACRL National Conference of 2007, dealing with the future of reference service and the changes in technology that have affected reference over the past 30 years.     

LIBRARY SERVICE TO THE DISABLED

Recent legislation has mandated equal rights for disabled people and an appropriate education for all disabled children. All professions are upgrading service, making architectural adaptations for the physically disabled, and adapting programs to the needs of this important segment of the population. The library profession needs to deuelop information and referral collections for disabled persons, learn about special curriculum materiales for disabled children, and deuelop the new field of "Rehabilitation Librarianship," since many rehabilitation facilities do not yet haue trained librarians on their staffs. Most important information is to be found in periodicals and newsletters. This bibliography offers a basic listing of journals in the fields of medical and uocational rehabilitation, special education, and journals written for disabled people themsleues. Existing data bases are mentioned and the continuing need for a central information clearinghouse cited.     

How Google Uses Metadata to Improve Search Results

This article critically examines four Google search products (Google Advanced Search, Google News Advanced Search, Google Books Advanced Search, and Google Advanced Scholar Search) and shows how each uses metadata to enhance or improve search results. In addition, the article shows how metadata can increase search precision and recall in information discovery systems. From a library perspective, this article analyzes some of the metadata-enabled features of Google's advanced search pages and compares these features to those found in a typical online library catalog. From a serials perspective, Google News Advanced Search demonstrates how Google indexes news websites, sites that are essentially continuing resources. As Google incorporates more and more metadata functionality into its advanced search pages, they increasingly begin to function more like online library catalogs and less like search pages found in a traditional Internet search engine. The simple search box has many limitations, and like libraries, Google is increasingly creating and offering metadata-enabled search features that improve search precision and recall in its products.