May 2009 Archives

VCU Libraries now provides access to the online Encyclopedia of Healthcare Information Systems from IGI Global. This online work provides an extensive compilation of international research on the use, adoption, design and diffusion of information communication technologies in healthcare. Topics covered include computerized medical records, patient safety, economic implications, medical information security, physician-patient communication, telehealth, and much more. There are over 170 chapters written by leading experts from around the world. Each entry includes an overview, highlights of recent trends and advancements, tables, figures, references, and a list of key terms. Bibliographic information at the chapter level can be imported into RefWorks. Basic and advanced searching is available, as is a keyword index. Consult the Encyclopedia of Healthcare Information Systems for comprehensive, authoritative coverage and information pertinent to healthcare information systems.

STAT!Ref has been optimized for delivery on mobile devices! Now you can get healthcare answers from authoritative medical reference sources right on your smartphone. Simply click on STAT!Ref from the VCU Libraries list of Databases A-Z and login with your VCU eID and password. STAT!Ref will recognize that you are using a mobile device.

Here is a list of titles available on STAT!Ref through VCU Libraries:

• The 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2008 - 16th Ed.
• AHFS Drug Information (2009)
• Basic and Clinical Pharmacology - 10th Ed. (2007)
• Current Diagnosis and Treatment Critical Care - 3rd Ed. (2008)
• Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment - 48th Ed. (2009)
• Current Surgical Diagnosis and Treatment - 12th Ed. (2006)
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - Text Rev. (DSM-IV-TR, 2000)
• Drugpoints System 2009
• Family Medicine: Principles and Practice - 6th Ed. (2003)
• Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics - 11th Ed. (2006)
• Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine - 17th Ed. (2008)
• Infectious Diseases: The Clinician's Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention (2008)
• Jablonski's Dictionary of Medical Acronyms & Abbreviations - 6th Ed. (2009)
• The Merck Manual of Diagnosis And Therapy - 18th Ed. (2006)
• Review of General Psychiatry - 5th Ed. (2000)
• Rudolph's Pediatrics - 21st Ed. (2003)
• Williams Obstetrics - 22nd Ed. (2005)

On July 1, 2009, the American Psychological Association will be releasing a new edition (6th) of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The citation methods in this edition will supersede the fifth edition as the APA citation standard. Copies may be pre-oredered now from the APA Website. The VCU Libraries will be purchasing multiple copies for the reference collection in time for the fall semester.

Legal Health Basics
Wednesday, May 27
Noon - 12:15 p.m.

VCU Libraries presents the last of its 15X15X15 online workshop series, featuring Legal Health Basics. Need help finding a legal citation? Want to know how to Shepardize a case? This class will demonstrate basic search strategies using Lexis-Nexis Academic as well as the Code of Virginia online.

This library workshop will take place online via the Wimba Live classroom found within Blackboard. As you register for this course, you will be added to the Health Sciences Resources Blackboard course, which will appear under the My Courses heading when you log into Blackboard. This course contains tutorials and other information pertaining to the various databases used at Tompkins-McCaw Library and is a useful tool for you to consult after the online class to help you further understand databases such as PubMed.

To participate in the online class you will need to check your computer to make sure you have all the necessary software to participate in the class. You will need a pair of headphones or speakers that are connected to your computer. You may also use a microphone to communicate with the instructor, but that is not required. We will have someone monitoring any questions you may have via the classroom chat. Access http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cQVr6Vn7p for all online instructions to prepare your computer for the class. To listen to the instructions on screencast you will need your headphones or speakers.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/training/course_detail.asp?ID=6554.

Imagine having access from your computer to a 12-volume encyclopedia covering virtually every idea and fact about the brain! The online version of the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience published by Academic Press and available from the VCU Libraries is an authoritative source of information that is accessible 24x7. Editor and former President of the Society for Neuroscience, Larry Squire, has gathered recognized leaders and experts in the field to prepare articles on nearly 1500 topics. Most of the entries are self-contained reviews that can be read as independent articles. Extensive cross-referencing and dynamic linking to referenced journal articles can increase the scope of your research quickly. Each of the entries in this compendium can be viewed, downloaded or printed in their original format.

Speaking about the breadth and depth of the work, Larry Squire says, “Neuroscience is still a developing field, but the Encyclopedia will have succeeded if it conveys the considerable promise that neuroscience offers for conquering the diseases that affect the nervous system and for understanding the brain, the mind, and ourselves.” Encyclopedia of Neuroscience can now be accessed through the VCU Libraries Catalog.

Thanks to the VCU Board of Visitors and the Office of the Provost, the VCU Libraries soon will relocate up to 200,000 little-used volumes from James Branch Cabell Library to a newly-acquired off-site shelving facility. Together with other changes in Cabell Library, the relocation will open up nearly 19,000 square feet on Cabell’s second floor for critically-needed academic work and study space for students and faculty. This new space is being designed as a “Learning Commons,” a learning space concept that has proven effective and popular at academic research libraries. The Learning Commons will provide a diversity of seating for both solitary study and small group collaboration, comfortable lighting, advanced information technology support, and ample electrical power for student laptops.

The new off-site facility that makes this expansion possible will be housed in the former Ukrop’s Super Market located conveniently between Grace and Broad Streets on Harrison Street. Renovations will transform the building into a dual-use facility, with six state-of-the-art classrooms as well as a separate, secure storage facility for library materials. The VCU Libraries will move little-use books, bound journals that now are available online, and other materials to the facility between the 2009-10 fall and spring semesters. The relocated volumes will remain in the catalog with a simple notation to indicate their new location. Library users will be able to request the relocated items online through the catalog at any time, and can expect delivery to Cabell Library once or twice a day for pickup.

The platform for Social Work Abstracts, AGELINE, and Mental Measurements Yearbook is changing from SilverPlatter to OvidSP. This means that the look and feel of these databases will be very different from what you may have been accustomed to. The platform will change before the start of the first summer session. If you would like to test out the OvidSP platform before the full changeover, you can do so by using the Ovid Web Gateway Databases. If you have any questions, or would like individual or group instruction on how to use these databases, please contact Jen Darragh, Reference Librarian for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, for help.

The Carver-VCU Partnership Oral History Collection is the latest release in the VCU Libraries Digital Collections.

The collection, available at http://go.vcu.edu/carver, consists of 15 oral histories conducted in 1999 and 2000 as part of a project funded by a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy. The project, described as a “Living Newspaper,” produced a play entitled “Sheep Hill Memories – Carver Dreams.” Those interviewed are longtime residents, including Barbara Abernathy, former president of the Carver Area Civic Improvement League, and Dr. Roy A. West, former mayor of Richmond. Also interviewed are newcomers to the community and those who have moved away from the neighborhood. The documentary play, which used information collected from the oral histories and other sources, focused on the history and survival of the Carver neighborhood.

The interviews, presented as MP3 files with complete PDF transcriptions, are part of the ongoing Carver-VCU Partnership that began in 1996. The Partnership's stated goal is to “create a shared urban community with a commitment to improving the neighborhood’s quality of life.” Carver is situated in Richmond, Virginia, just north of VCU’s Monroe Park campus, and is primarily a working class African American neighborhood, home to some 1,500 residents.

Visit all of the VCU Libraries Digital Collections at http://dig.library.vcu.edu/.

Aluka is a new electronic resource available from the VCU Libraries. A Zulu word meaning “to weave," Aluka is an international, collaborative initiative to build an online digital library of full-text scholarly resources about Africa. An ongoing project that links researchers around the world, Aluka features materials posted by partner institutions that document the history, culture, and biodiversity of Africa. Resources include archival documents, periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, and reference works, as well as three-dimensional models, maps, oral histories, plant specimens, and photographs. Aluka collections are divided into three main categories: African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes; African Plants; and Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa.

African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes makes available an extensive range of materials related to significant cultural centers of Africa, the history of African exploration, maps of Africa throughout history, travelers’ accounts, aerial and satellite photography, and ongoing scholarly research.

African Plants comprises scientific data from the African Plants Initiative (a collaboration of more than 50 research centers in Africa, Europe, and the United States) and features high-resolution digital images drawn from the estimated 60,000 plant species native to Africa, Madagascar, and the other islands surrounding the African continent.

Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa reflects the regional and global nature of political movements to achieve de-colonization. Documents in this collection address issues of colonial rule and international efforts that supported generations of resistance. A growing collection, with more than 180,000 pages of documents, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print books of special relevance, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches – as well as an extensive collection of documentary photographs.

Aluka will continue to expand these extensive collections, and add important new collections in the coming months and years – with particular focus on the histories of individual nations. Current collections that will be significantly expanded with additions of documents still being processed include the United Nations Documents collection and the World Council of Churches Programme to Combat Racism Collections. Finding aids, research guides, and bibliographies, intended to provide additional leads to information on a wide range of relevant materials held at scholarly institutions in Africa and around the world, will soon be available.

“Superb … one of the greatest scientific publications of the twenty-first century” – Library Journal

VCU Libraries has just acquired a valuable online resource, Encyclopedia of Life Sciences (ELS), which features more than 4,430 specially commissioned and peer reviewed articles. The articles are written by experts in the field to provide comprehensive, authoritative, and current coverage of the subject area. All articles are generously illustrated, which makes it an essential read for life scientists and also excellent for teaching.

To make it easy to use, articles are divided into three different categories: Introductory, which is more suitable for undergraduates; Advanced, which provides a more detailed discussion of the specialist subject; and Keynote, which provides a platform for debate, where controversial issues and hot topics can be discussed.

The glossary provides important information for non-specialists, and includes biological, biochemical, and taxonomic information, acronyms, synonyms, units, and other technical data. Encyclopedia of Life Sciences is a wonderful resource for students, faculty, and researchers in the life sciences as well as for non-specialists. It can be accessed through the VCU Libraries catalog.

The U.S. Government Printing Office has announced the release of A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise. The document provides a description of the Obama Administration's fiscal policies and major budgetary initiatives and is an overview of the full Fiscal Year 2010 Budget expected to be released this spring.

Issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Budget of the United States Government is a collection of documents that contains the budget message of the President, information about the President's budget proposals for a given fiscal year, and other budgetary publications that have been issued throughout the fiscal year.

Learn more about VCU Libraries' government documents collections. For assistance, call the Cabell Library reference desk at 828-1101.