Monday, August 31, 2009

September Awareness

September is:

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Welcome Public Health Students! 2010

Welcome to Tulane and the Matas Library of the Health Sciences. A brief introduction to the Library will be followed by tours is offered four times on Thursday, August 19th.

Matas Library Orientation Tours
Second floor, Medical School
Choose one 30-minute tour: 9:30 AM, 11:00 AM, 1:30 PM or 3:00 PM


Library staff will be available to answer your questions. We look forward to working with you on your research and assisting you with classes on citation managment and other information resources for public health, such as Gideon and Global Health databases. Ask us when you have a question!

medref@tulane.edu
(504)988-5155

Saturday, August 15, 2009

System Upgrade Sunday, 8-16 will interrupt some Tulane Library services

On Sunday, August 16, between the hours of 4:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m., the following resources will be unavailable:

  • Library Catalog
  • Article and Database Finder
  • E-Journals at Tulane/TULink
  • Proxy Server/Off-Campus Access to licensed resources
  • Databases at Tulane will be available, but on-campus only.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Why are some journals in Medline and some not?

Answer: Medline (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) is the bibliographic database from the NLM, the National Library of Medicine. Journals are selected for inclusion based on recommendations from the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC), a group created by the National Institutes of Health.

Decisions about indexing or rejecting specific journals are made collaboratively by the NLM director, the NLM board of regents, and the LSTRC. The review committee meets three times a year and considers approximately 140 titles at each meeting. Areas of emphasis in evaluating journals for possible inclusion in Medline include scope and coverage, quality of content, editorial work, production quality, audience, and types of content. The NLM describes “health professionals” as its intended area of focus for Medline. This category includes physicians, nurses, dentists, veterinarians, and the many types of allied health professionals in the research and health care delivery systems.

For more information about the process of journal selection for Medline, consult the Medline Journal Selection Fact Sheet. (The Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAAPA) August 2009, "Ask a Librarian!" column, co-written by Jim Anderson and Librarian Susan Klawansky)

How do you locate articles that are not indexed in MEDLINE?

Increase your coverage by using multiple databases and research sources. In addition to MEDLINE (or PubMed) try a combination of databases such as EMBASE.com, Web of Science, CINAHL, PSYCInfo, etc. You might wish to try our new cross platform search engine, Articles & Databases to discover databases that may be of interest in your area of interest. Tulane has hundreds of databases to choose from.

For example, when searching a topic in the injury prevention and safety literature, no single database included all of the relevant articles on any topic, and the database with the broadest coverage differed by topic. A 2008 study found that a literature search performed in only one database will, on average, lead to a loss of more than half of the available literature on a topic. (Lawrence, 2008)

Lawrence, D.W. What is lost when searching only one literature database for articles relevant to injury prevention and safety promotion? Inj Prev. 2008 Dec;14(6):401-4 (PMID: 19074247)

Suarez-Almazor, M.E. et.al. Identifying clinical trials in the medical literature with electronic databases: MEDLINE alone is not enough. Control Clin Trials. 2000 Oct;21(5):476-87. (PMID: 11018564)

Ask the Matas Librarians for more information about making database and research choices.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Rudolph Matas Library: Fall 2009

Regular Hours begin August 3, 2009

Monday-Thursday 8am - 11pm
Friday 8am -9pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm
Sunday 11am-11pm

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HOLIDAYS

Labor Day
Sept. 4 (Friday) OPEN 8am-6pm
Sept 5-7 (Saturday -Monday) LIBRARY CLOSED

Thanksgiving
Nov. 25 (Wednesday) OPEN 8am-6pm
Nov. 26-28 (Thursday -Saturday) LIBRARY CLOSED
Nov. 29 (Sunday) OPEN 1pm-9pm


Winter Recess

Dec. 23 (Wednesday) OPEN 8am-6pm
Dec. 24 (Thursday) -Jan. 1 (Friday) LIBRARY CLOSED

Library Hours are posted online:
http://medlib.tulane.edu/about/hours.htm

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Welcome T-1 Students - August 4th.

We enjoyed meeting your families on Saturday. Welcome to Tulane and the Rudolph Matas Library. The Matas Librarians look forward to helping you locate the information you need. We will meet you on Tuesday in the Matas Library for library registration. Please let us know what we can do to assist you.