UpToDate Alert

From Sherrilynne Fuller, Ph.D., Director, Health Sciences Libraries, Associate Dean, University Libraries - dated April 4, 2008

As a result of extraordinary price increases to provide UpToDate access for our distributed community of UW Health Sciences students, faculty and staff across the Pacific Northwest Region, I have had to make the painful decision to cancel this heavily used resource. In spite of extensive negotiations with the publisher over the past two years we simply were unable to negotiate a price that our Health Sciences Libraries budget could afford. The price for UW is much higher than for other institutions, in large part, because we are a regional health sciences center with regular faculty and students across Washington as well as in other states throughout the WWAMI region. The new price would be almost 60% of the Health Sciences Libraries resources budget.

While UpToDate has been used by many as an important clinical resource, the Health Sciences Libraries currently licenses and provides additional clinical resources that we encourage you to use. We have gathered these resources into one valuable site called the Care Provider Toolkit located on the HealthLinks site. Please have a look at this site and if you have suggestions of additional resources that we currently do not provide, please let us know.

Please use this comment form if you'd like to suggest a resource to be added or submit a comment.

Efforts are underway to find a funding strategy and an UpToDate model that is affordable and acceptable to the UW.