Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

The UCLA Library is continuing our ongoing efforts to cancel print journal subscriptions when we license access to the electronic equivalent.  For 2008, we are focusing our efforts on the journals in all subjects identified by UCLA librarians where we have both print and electronic subscriptions. 

The 543 journal titles on the list and website have been identified by UCLA librarians where there is both a print and digital subscription and where they feel it is sufficient to have electronic access only.  If, however, you feel that it is important to maintain a print subscription to these titles, we would like to hear from you.

The list of proposed journal cancellations is available online through June 13, 2008. You can browse the list by holding library or individual title. Each title has an interactive button so you may send a comment directly to the librarian responsible for that subscription. If you have additional questions or comments please contact Janet Carter, Collection Coordinator for the UCLA Biomedical Library, at jcarter@library.ucla.edu.

UCLA affiliates now have access to GreenFILE, a database that indexes articles, government reports, books, and popular press articles on human impact on the environment. Locate information on green building practices, ecological management, sustainable agriculture, pollution, global warming, renewable energy, and more.

GreenFILE is included in the UCLA Library’s Academic Search Complete database subscription. Please note that you must follow the numbered steps below in the exact order to access this database!

1. Open the UCLA A-Z List of Databases.

2. Search for “Academic Search Complete,” and click on the link to enter this database.

3. Once inside Academic Search Complete, select GreenFILE from the drop-down list of databases and select “Submit” (see the screenshot below). This will automatically select GreenFILE as the sole database you are searching. Now you can search GreenFILE by typing search terms into the search boxes.

Locating statistics and information about economics, health indicators, and ecology in countries outside the U.S. can be difficult. SourceOECD is created by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) to provide access to this type of information. In addition to a searchable database of statistics, they provide statistical abstracts with basic information about OECD member countries.

The OECD also convenes groups of researchers to study aspects of economic development. These researchers gather the statistical data and use it to write working papers, books, and peer-reviewed journals, all of which are available on the SourceOECD website.

Some example titles of working papers:

• Trends in Severe Disability Among Elderly People
• Pharmaceutical Pricing and Reimbursement Policies in Mexico (part of a series; other titles in the series cover this topic in other OECD countries)
• Dynamics of Biotechnology Research and Industry in India
• Higher Education Management and Policy

Contact a reference librarian if you have questions about using SourceOECD.

In response to faculty requests, the UCLA Library has purchased a subscription to EcoSal. This online resource is a continually-updated version of the classic American Society of Microbiology (ASM) Press title  Escherichia coli and Salmonella: Cellular and Molecular Biology. The comprehensive resource is comprised of several hundred modules of information and interpretation, including extensive tabular and pictorial presentations.

The UCLA Library, Academic Senate, Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, and the Office of Intellectual Property Administration have created a series of lunchtime sessions to educate faculty about special topics in intellectual property. Upcoming sessions include:

• If You Don’t Ask, How Can You Tell?: Getting Permission to Use Material in Course Instruction and E-Publishing (December 6th, 2007)
• “Don’t I Own My Own Work?”: Negotiating to Keep Your Copyright (February 7th, 2008)
• “What Are My Rights?”: Software, Patents, and Open Source (spring quarter 2008; date TBA)

Read full descriptions of each workshop and register on the Library’s web page, Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: The Rights Stuff for Teaching and Publishing.

Learn how to find the full text of articles online, how to discover the best databases for articles on a given topic, and how to search databases and other resources effectively through in-person demonstrations and hands-on instruction.

This fifty-minute session, focused on health and life sciences, will take place Friday, November 9 at 11am in the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library (12-077 CHS) Classroom.  No registration is required– just bring your questions! For more information, contact us at biomed-ref@library.ucla.edu.

The National Academies are now providing podcasts on hot topics in science, chemistry, and medicine. Download the free, 10-minute audio files and play them on your computer’s media player or load them onto your MP3 player to listen during your commute or workout. The Sounds of Science podcasts are updated 1-2 times a week. Recent additions include “The Future of Emergency Care,” “Gone With the Wind: Environmental Impacts of Wind Energy,” and “Better Living Through Chemistry: The Future of Chemistry Research in the U.S.”

You don’t need to travel far to find rare books, manuscripts and digital resources documenting the history of the health and life sciences. Located on the 4^th floor of the UCLA Biomedical Library is the History & Special Collections Division, one of the finest repositories on these subjects in the country. The Division owns important classical and seminal works upon which the fields of health and life sciences are built.

The Division is involved in a variety of activities to promote the study of the history of medicine, allied health fields, and the life sciences. The Study of the History of Medicine at UCLA is an interdisciplinary program designed to assist in the exploration of resources related to the history of medicine. This portal includes a brief overview of the collection, explains access procedures for using the collection, and provides links to other departments on campus with historical collections. There are also links to events, fellowships, people, and research tools such as indexes, oral histories and organizations involved with the history of medicine.  

On November 16-17, 2007, History & Special Collections and the History of Medicine faculty from the School of Medicine will co-host “The Architecture of Healing: an international conference at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.” The conference will focus on the development of the hospital and its place in our society today as a center of healing and research. Registration forms are available online and are due by November 2^nd. 

The Division is involved with many online exhibits and digitization projects which have allowed unique materials to be easily accessible to a wider audience.  One interpretive exhibit, Spices – Exotic Flavors and Medicines, showcases beautiful drawings of spice plants and provides information on the historical importance of spices.  Another project, Relief of Pain & Suffering, is an exploration of attitudes towards pain and its relief from 1800 to the present. The impressive AIDS Posters collection consists of 625 posters from public health campaigns worldwide. The Donald Ryder Dickey Photographic Collection includes photos of California’s wildlife and landscapes taken from 1911-1929. This collection currently consists of 350 images, and 1000 additional photos will be added by 2008. 

The History & Special Collections Division’s books, journals, manuscripts, medical artifacts and digital resources are an extraordinary resource not available at many other universities. The librarians, archivists, curators, and staff of the Division encourage you to explore our collections online or in person on the 4^th floor of the Biomedical Library.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, and RDF Site Summary. RSS is a way to receive the newest updates from all your favorite web sites and databases without having to visit each web site and database individually. The RSS feed provides a short description of newly added content. You can then click on the feed description to be taken to the full content on the original web site or database. Subscribe to RSS feeds for all your favorite sites, and view all the updates on one web page.

The first step to using RSS is to set up an RSS reader (also called “feed readers” or “aggregators”). There are many different kinds of feed readers—some can even be installed on your cell phone or PDA! Some available options include:

• Bloglines
• iGoogle
• RSS readers are built into the web browsers Firefox 1.0 (and all subsequent versions) and Internet Explorer 7.0.

The Library does not endorse or provide technical support for any RSS readers. To find one that fits your needs, search the Web using the words “free RSS reader.”

Once you have set up an RSS reader, it’s time to start subscribing to feeds. RSS feeds can be used to facilitate searching, keep up with new research, and stay abreast of resources and events at UCLA. Many web sites have orange RSS icons to indicate that the site includes an RSS feed. See the list below for some great places to start. On any site, click on the RSS icon () and follow the instructions to subscribe.

• The UCLA Library has created a Recent Acquisitions RSS Service which offers RSS feeds for nearly 80 subjects. These feeds provide information on new books purchased by the UCLA Libraries.

• Visit the UCLA Gateway RSS Feeds and Podcasts page to view the many RSS feeds of UCLA events and happenings. Subscribe to the Daily Bruin’s headline feed for news, the Happenings feed to find out about concerts, lectures, and sports, or one of the many social activity feeds to keep up with your friends.

• Perform a search in PubMed, and then click on the “send to” pull down box and select “RSS feed.” Name your feed, click “create,” then subscribe to the feed. The search will be automatically re-run each time you open your RSS reader.

• CINAHL Plus, a nursing database, will also allow you to save a search as an RSS feed. After performing a search, click “create alert for this search” and subscribe. The search will be automatically re-run each time you open your RSS reader.

• Web of Science, BIOSIS Previews, and Zoological Record, three of our largest life sciences databases, allow registered users to create RSS feeds for citation alerts. Your feed is updated whenever the article is cited by another author. To do this, run a search in one of these databases, and click on the full record for the desired article. Click  and subscribe to the RSS feed. 

• Access Medicine is a collection of e-books, images, care guidelines, and drug information for those in the health care field. The Access Medicine RSS feed is updated daily and includes reviews, updates to e-books, and breakthroughs in therapy and clinical research. Click the RSS icon on the front page of Access Medicine to subscribe.