Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

The Biomedical Library’s History and Special Collections Division will co-host a conference on November 16th and 17th. The conference, titled “The Architecture of Healing: an International Conference,” is co-hosted with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. To review the planned programs, pre-register for the event, and find out more about the location, visit the Architecture of Healing blog.

GIDEON, which stands for Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network, is a decision support tool for assisting with the diagnosis of and background information on tropical and infectious diseases, epidemiology, microbiology and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Using the four modules (Diagnosis, Epidemiology, Therapy, and Microbiology), you can:

• Generate a country-specific diagnosis based on symptoms, signs, and laboratory data.
• Display the epidemiological profile of a selected disease and generate a list of diseases that fit a given set of epidemiological parameters.
• Review the pharmacology and usage of anti-infective drugs.
• Identify a taxon based phenotypic characteristics. View a list of the typical positive and negative reactions for a specified organism and compare the reactions of two or more species.

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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.”

Health literacy is an important skill for anyone navigating the confusing world of health care. Health literacy includes the ability to:

• Locate medical information
• Read medical information
• Comprehend medical information
• Understand the medical services and options available
• Use prior knowledge to make informed health care decisions

Health care professionals and patients can encourage health literacy in a variety of ways. Learn more about what you can do by meeting with librarians from the Biomedical Library and health care professionals representing the UCLA Health System Patient Education Committee. We will have a table in Cafe Med on Thursday, October 25th, from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM. Please visit us to get handouts about health literacy, see demonstrations of online resources, and find out how the Library can help you!

If you cannot attend the event on October 25th, you can review the Consumer Health Subject Guide, created by the Biomedical Library for this event. Or, contact us at biomed-ref@library.ucla.edu to talk to a staff member.

The “kidney swap” procedure was the first of its kind to be performed in southern California. In this procedure, a living donor who wishes to give their kidney to a loved one but cannot because of incompatibility is paired with another patient and incompatible donor. The donors “swap” their organs, providing two patients with an improved quality of life.  

The UCLA Medical Center has one of the largest and most active kidney transplant programs in the world. The “donor swap” procedure is rarely performed within the U.S., but UCLA health care professionals hope that the success of the procedure performed on September 20 will encourage other transplant centers to plan their own kidney swap donation programs.

Learn more about this exciting development by reading the UCLA Health and Medicine News.

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.