National Training Center & Clearinghouse Educational Database Survey Results

The National Training Center & Clearinghouse (NTCC) would like to thank those of you who participated in the NTCC Educational Database Visitor Profile Survey conducted between June 1 and June 30, 2003. The findings of the survey are available at the NTCC Web site. [This link was removed because it is no longer valid.] Click on the word "survey."

To summarize, this is what we learned:

• Visitors' state of origin
• Gender, age, and education of visitors
• Profession or interest of visitors
• How users learned of the Educational Database
• What visitors were looking for
• Did visitors find what they were looking for
• Likelihood of a visitor returning

The report on the Web site contains text and charts showing the results to each of the questions. Plans are underway for a Fall usability study of the Clearinghouse database.

New Books Added to NCBI Bookshelf

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has recently added two books to the Bookshelf:

Cancer Medicine 6th ed.
Kufe, Donald W.; Pollock, Raphael E.; Weichselbaum, Ralph R.; Bast, Robert C., Jr.; Gansler, Ted S.; Holland, James F.; Frei III, Emil, editors.
Hamilton (Canada): BC Decker Inc.; c2003.

The Genetic Landscape of Diabetes [Internet].
Dean, Laura; McEntyre, J.R.
Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US), NCBI; 2004 Jun.

The books in Bookshelf may be searched directly from the Bookshelf site, via links from the Links pull-down menu from relevant PubMed^® citations, or through the Entrez Global query feature.

Minor Change to Shading on PubMed's® Results Screen

You may notice a slight change to the PubMed results screen which was made in preparation for future enhancements. The items count and page box just above the first citation on the results screen no longer have a gray background.

International Agreement to Expand PubMed Central®

NLM is joining forces with the Wellcome Trust and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to digitize the complete backfiles of a number of important and historically significant medical journals. The digitized content will be made freely available on the Internet - via PubMed Central and augment the content already available there.

For more information see the Press Release.

NLM Launches American Indian Health Site

The National Library of Medicine has recently launched American Indian Health, an information portal with links to Web sites, documents, databases, and other resources designed to bring together health and medical resources pertinent to the over 4 million American Indians in the United States. For more information, please contact tehip@teh.nlm.nih.gov.

New Chapters Added to NCBI Bookshelf

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has recently added two new chapters to Historical Works: Medicine in the Americas. These are available in Bookshelf:

Holt, L. Emmett
The Care and Feeding of Children: A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses.
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1894.

United States
Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) United States Statutes at Large
[59th Cong., Sess. I, Chp. 3915, p. 768-772; cited as 34 U.S. Stats. 768]

The Care and Feeding of Children by L. Emmott Holt (1855-1924), first published in New York in 1894, was the most successful child care manual for educated mothers during the first half of the 20th century, going through 75 printings in 12 editions, and was translated into several languages. For many, it essentially served the same purpose for our great-grandparents that Dr. Spock's child rearing manuals did for the parents of the "Baby Boom" generation, and it makes for interesting reading even today.

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of a series of significant consumer protection laws enacted by the Federal Government in the twentieth century and led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Its main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products, and it directed the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecutors.

The books in Bookshelf may be searched directly from the Bookshelf site, via links from the Links pull-down menu from relevant PubMed^® citations, or through the Entrez Global query feature.

New Report Summaries Added to NCBI Bookshelf

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has recently added seven new Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Evidence Report Summaries to HSTAT on the Bookshelf. HSTAT, Health Services Technology Assessment Texts, is a free, Web-based resource of full-text documents that provide health information and support health care decision making.

83. Effect of Supplemental Antioxidants Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Coenzyme Q10 for the Prevention and Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease

84. Use of Glycated Hemoglobin and Microalbuminuria in the Monitoring of Diabetes Mellitus

85. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Brain Injury, Cerebral Palsy, and Stroke

86. Total Knee Replacement

87. Literacy and Health Outcomes

88. Effectiveness of Antimicrobial Adjuncts to Scaling and Root-Planing Therapy for Periodontitis

89. Effects of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Lipids and Glycemic Control in Type II Diabetes and the Metabolic Syndrome and on Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Renal Disease, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, and Osteoporosis

The books in Bookshelf may be searched directly from the Bookshelf site, via links from the Links pull-down menu from relevant PubMed^® citations, or through the Entrez Global query feature.

[Update added 8/24/04]
Eight new Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Evidence Report Summaries were added to HSTAT on the Bookshelf.

75. Effect of the Supplemental Use of Antioxidants Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Coenzyme Q10 for the Prevention and Treatment of Cancer

91. Health Effects of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Asthma

92. Effects of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Arrhythmogenic Mechanisms in Animal and Isolated Organ/Cell Culture Studies

93. Effects of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Intermediate Markers of Cardiovascular Disease

94. Effects of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Cardiovascular Disease

95. Training of Hospital Staff To Respond to a Mass Casualty Incident

96. Regionalization of Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response

97. Pharmacological Treatment of Dementia

MedlinePlus® Adds Find a Hospital Feature

On Tuesday, July 27, the National Library of Medicine released a new Find a Hospital directory search. From MedlinePlus, users can search for information on over 6,000 hospitals in the United States, including address, specialty, services provided, and driving directions. The hospital data comes from the American Hospital Association and is based on the annual survey of hospitals. The mapping feature is provided by MapQuest.

The hospital directory is linked from the MedlinePlus Directories page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/directories.html

NLM Announces a New Version of the PubMed Tutorial

The National Library of Medicine is pleased to release a new version of the PubMed Tutorial. As always, the tutorial is available from the PubMed sidebar.

This new version incorporates some minor changes and corrections since the October 2003 version.

Additional PubMed® Animated Tutorials Available

NLM is pleased to announce three new animated presentations for users to see demonstrations of simple searches in PubMed. These demos were created with Qarbon.com Inc.'s Viewlet^™ technology. The presentations are:

• Search PubMed for an Author
• Searching PubMed by Author and Subject
• PubMed Simple Subject Search Example

Viewlets are SWF files (based on Flash 5 technology) that play via a browser with a Flash 5 (or later) plugin. There is an automatic audio narrative. If you wish to mute the sound, use the Volume control on your desktop.

These demos are currently available from the NLM Web site at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/dist_edu.html. They will be added to PubMed's Help in the near future.

PubMed Milestone - 15 Millionth Journal Citation

On August 11, PubMed attained a major milestone when the 15 millionth journal citation was added to the database. The citation is:

Zheng Y, Zhou ZM, Yin LL, Li JM, Sha JH.
Molecular cloning and characterization of a novel splicing variant of PIASx.
Acta Pharmacol Sin. 2004 Aug;25(8):1058-64.
PMID: 15301740 [PubMed - in process]

Printer-friendly Function Added to NIHSeniorHealth

On August 12, NIHSeniorHealth added a "printer-friendly" version. This change allows users to print NIHSeniorHealth content easily. Until now, printing a topic involved printing dozens of individual screens. Now, by clicking the new printer-friendly version icon on the left menu, users can print selected chapters or a complete topic such as "Arthritis" or "Prostate Cancer."

In addition to the "printer-friendly" version, the accessibility buttons at the top of every NIHSeniorHealth page are easier to use. The text size button now allows for more text sizes. The contrast and speech options clearly indicate whether those features are on or off. NIHSeniorHealth now also provides a new message, when necessary, to remind users to turn off their browser pop-up blocker when they choose the speech option.

NIHSeniorHealth, launched in October 2003, is a partnership of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health.

Take Part in a PubMed Training Experiment: Videobroadcast to a Remote Site

The National Training Center & Clearinghouse (NTCC)/NLM is pleased to announce that on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 a PubMed training class will be held in Houston, TX at the Houston Academy of Medicine - Texas Medical Center (HAM-TMC) and will be videobroadcast to the Regional Academic Health Center Library in Harlingen, TX.

The Harlingen remote site will be able to view and hear the class and send questions to the NTCC in Houston instructors via a chat mode function. Our goal is to evaluate the use of this technology for future training class broadcasts to remote sites. We encourage users to register by September 8 for these two classes and assist us in our evaluation.