The McGoogan Library of Medicine is promoting four new resources that will benefit UNMC faculty, staff and students. The resources — ScienceDirect Backfiles, Exam Master, FIRSTConsult and images.MD – respectively provide online access to past journal articles, online tests capabilities, clinical diagnosis information and downloadable medical images.
“We would have none of the ScienceDirect backfiles without very generous donors,” said Nancy Woelfl, Ph.D., director of the McGoogan Library. In addition, FIRSTConsult, images.MD and Exam Master are being financed through student fees, which totals $2 per credit hour, she said. “All of these will be wonderful resources for distance learners.”
Read on to find out more about each of the resources, which are available via the McGoogan Library Web site’s quick links. Employees and students may use these resources from off campus using their Lotus Notes ID and password.
ScienceDirect Backfiles — Published by Elsevier, includes digital backfile content of over 575 unique biomedical journals. McGoogan Library officials have purchased six collections: biochemistry, immunology and microbiology, clinical medicine and dentistry, neuroscience, nursing and health, and pharmacology. Although the library may not necessarily have current subscriptions to journals featured in the collections, it now has backfiles of the journals from their inception to 1995.
“Within these collections, there are 210 journals that are new to campus,” said Ann Kaste, digital resource librarian. “Others we’ve had at some point so it really helps fill in our collection for another 310 journals.”
“This is really a big step,” Dr. Woelfl said. “The dream basic scientists have articulated for complete sets of electronic journals is beginning to come true. This also allows us to offer more electronic resources to the clinical community.”
The College of Medicine Alumni Association and the following endowments made the purchase possible: the Shearer Fund, the Norman and Roberta White-Miller Fund, the John and Gretchen Velde Fund and the Nancy Slaughter Fund.
ExamMaster – Medical students and residents now have the ability to create free online tests and scramble questions to help prepare for USMLE and medical specialty board exams. The Web-based study and testing tool is another alternative to registering for Kaplan courses, Kaste said.
“We’re hoping to save students money with Exam Master,” Kaste said, encouraging UNMC students to register online to build test questions and practice tests.
FIRSTConsult – This evidence-based clinical information tool is available for primary health care providers and students, as well as the layperson. FIRSTConsult is comparable to the more costly UpToDate, Kaste said, and has downloading capabilities to handheld products.
“It’s a reasonable, user friendly alternative,” Dr. Woelfl said. “The library is working to be more integrated with the clinical services.”
FIRSTConsult features five primary areas:
- Differential diagnosis files — Evaluate a patient’s chief complaint and access a comprehensive list of possible diagnoses and their clinical benchmarks by age and prevalence.
- Medical condition files — Cover in-depth the conditions most seen in primary care.
- Procedure files — Provide systematic guidance on 34 surgical and diagnostic procedures commonly performed in a primary care setting.
- Reference centers — Covers clinical topics that are broader than the disease-specific Medical Condition files.
- Reference centers — Addresses topics that are not disease-specific, such as pregnancy and bioterrorism.
- Patient education – Provides printable handouts for more than 300 conditions in English and Spanish.
images.MD – Free access to an image database of more than 50,000 medical images from more than 90 collections and 2,000 contributors. The full-sized, high quality images are available for PowerPoint presentations or customized CD-ROMS. To access the database, users simply need to fill out image.MD’s online registration form.
For more information, or questions, contact the McGoogan Library Reference Desk at 559-6221.