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Books & Bytes

Volume 8, Number 3    February 1996

Books & Bytes is produced by the HSLIC Library Staff for Health Sciences Center personnel. Copyright University of Washington.

Table of Contents

  1. Health Reference Center Gold Offers Patient/Consumer Health Information
  2. UW Libraries Holdings Information to Appear in MEDLINE®
  3. Resources for Alternative and Traditional Medicine
  4. Photocopy/Fax Rate and Service Changes
  5. New Health Sciences Libraries Home Page Debuts
  6. Library Support for Patient Education
  7. Serials Title Changes November-December 1995
  8. Public Health Information on the Web
  9. INPHO: Public Health Information Network
  10. EthnoMed: A Web Resource for Clinical Use
  11. Getting Connected From Off-Campus
  12. Liaison to the School of Public Health
  13. GPO Access now Available Via Internet
  14. AHA Video Conferences
  15. Recent Gifts
  16. Personnel Notes
Contributors to this issue: Philip Arny, Ellen Howard, Terry Ann Jankowski, Paula Palmer, Neil Rambo, Sarah Safranek, Janet Schnall, Jean Shipman, Carolyn Weaver, Colleen Weum.

Health Reference Center Gold Offers Patient/Consumer Health Information

Health Reference Center Gold (HRCG) is now available as a networked information resource for patient and consumer health information. Formerly available only on a dedicated terminal in HSLIC, HRCG will soon be accessible on campus from any properly equipped Windows machine with an ethernet connection to the campus network. UW faculty, staff, or students running Windows 95 or Windows NT will also be able to use UW Dial-IP protocols to connect to the system from home or office.

Health Reference Center is an authoritative source of consumer-oriented health information that is available in many public libraries, including Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System. The comprehensive version at HSLIC contains:

Personal Connections to HRCG

HRCG is already available on many of the self-service computers at HSLIC and the K.K. Sherwood and Social Work Libraries. It will eventually be available from most UW campus locations, including the UW Bothell and Tacoma branch libraries and the Roosevelt Clinics. As a public service, the UWMC Service League is funding stations for patient use at UWMC and in the main branch of University Bookstore.

For access to HRCG via a UW departmental ethernet connection, you will need a PC running Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, or Windows NT using the Microsoft TCP/IP stack. Modem access is limited to UW faculty, staff, or students with a UW computer system account who are running Windows 95 Dial-up Networking or Windows NT Remote Access with the Microsoft TCP/IP stack. Cross-platform access for Macintosh users is on hold pending solution of networking problems.

To request an HRCG password and setup instructions for accessing the server, send an email message to hsl at u.washington.edu. Enter 'HRC Access' as the Subject. In the body of the message include your name, UW email address, mailing address, UW department, and UW status (faculty, staff or student).

Startup funding for the networked HRCG was provided by the UW Libraries' Kenneth S. Allen Endowment Funding for the Collections in recognition of the value of consumer health information to the broader campus community.

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UW Libraries Holdings Information to Appear in MEDLINE®

UW Libraries journal title holdings information will soon be available for entries retrieved from MEDLINE® and EXPANDED ACADEMIC INDEX. MEDLINE® users previously had to search for the journal title in the Libraries Catalog to locate it on campus. That extra step will no longer be necessary with the next release of Willow and Wilco, expected in February. Holdings information will appear in the "full record" display as shown below:

Document 6
Accession No.:      96053763.
Author:     Ip-R-Y.  Dornan-J. Schentag-C.
Title:      Traumatic brain injury:  factors
            predicting return to work or
            school.
Source:     Brain-Inj. 1995 Jul. 9(5). P 517-
            32.
Journal Title:  BRAIN INJURY.
Abstract:       Prediction of outcome_ 
                [abstract truncated]
Holdings:   Health Sciences Serials
            SHELVED BY TITLE: Brain
            injury  CALL NUMBER: W1
            BR113E
LIB HAS:    v.1(1987)-v.5(1991), 
            v.7(1993)_

An online announcement will notify users as soon as the new feature is available. Holdings links will initially be limited to MEDLINE® and EXPANDED ACADEMIC INDEX, where the linking mechanism is being tested to determine the feasibility of expanding this feature to all UW Libraries databases.

If you do not want holdings information to display with the full record, use the change options feature in Willow or Wilco to "unselect" it. Questions or comments may be sent to hsl at u.washington.edu.

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Resources for Alternative and Traditional Medicines

What is the difference between dry needling and acupuncture? Can you tell me about healing touch, especially with regard to pain control? I've been taking echinacea; what do you know about it? What universities are offering Alternative Medicine programs?

As more patients seek to combine alternative or traditional therapies with allopathic (orthodox) therapy, health care providers must be able to respond to questions such as these in order to provide guidance to their patients.

Nationally, the demand for this type of information continues to grow. The National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) was established in 1992 "to facilitate the fair evaluation of various treatment modalities by the appropriate institutes within the NIH." Over 6000 requests for grant applications for OAM's first RFA (Request For Application) produced the largest response in the history of the NIH. The demand for alternative medicine treatment is especially heavy in the Pacific Northwest, where naturopathic education originated. Two of the four Naturopathic schools are located in Washington and Oregon, which are among the seven states that currently license Naturopathic physicians.

To support information needs in the areas of alternative and traditional medicines, HSLIC has recently added a number of books and journal subscriptions, as well as IBIS, a new self-service database. Funding for this material was obtained from the UW Libraries' Kenneth S. Allen Endowment Funding for the Collections, which supports non-core collection acquisitions.

IBIS

IBIS (Interactive BodyMind Information System) contains references to 282 common medical conditions and diagnoses, offering treatment modalities using authoritative sources collected by health professionals and reviewed by experienced clinicians. The modalities include nutrition, botanical medicine, Chinese formulae, acupuncture, homeopathy, physical medicine such as hydrotherapy, vibrational therapies, and psychospiritual approaches. The data base will be available for self-service searching at all three health sciences library branches.

Journals

The availability of these resource materials will have a broad impact on numerous health care providers, faculty and students and will directly support at least ten current courses in medicine, nursing, and public health. Alternative and traditional medicines have joined western allopathic medicine as acceptable treatment practices, and HSLIC is very pleased to be able to provide these important resources.

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Photocopy/Fax Rate and Service Changes

New Photocopy Rates

The following base rates for HSLIC photocopy services are now in effect:

Surcharges of 14.7% overhead and 8.2% sales tax apply to all transactions not charged to a UW budget number.

Faxing Charge Eliminated

Free fax delivery is now available for photocopies requested through Document Services by UW faculty, staff and students located in Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Washington State. Free faxing includes documents photocopied from HSLIC's collection and those obtained from other libraries or commercial suppliers. Document service fees of $4.00 (UW budget) or $4.90 cash per item still apply. Faxes to locations outside the WAMI region cost $3.20 (cash) or $2.58 (budget). International faxes are slightly higher.

This service is offered to foster the distance-learning initiatives of the Health Sciences schools and to address the demand for desktop delivery of full-text information expressed in a recent UW Libraries user survey. It also supports the various UW patient care clinics located throughout the region. HSLIC staff have been experimenting with computerized document delivery and hope to be able to offer this service in the future.

HSLIC will no longer transmit faxes except in fulfillment of a document order. An information sheet available at the Circulation Desk lists locations on campus offering fax service.

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New Health Sciences Libraries Home Page Debuts

A new home page for the Health Sciences Libraries was recently released, featuring arrows on the left to direct you to library information and buttons on the right pointing to other resources. We invite you to explore what the Health Sciences Libraries has to offer at /hsl/. Following is a preview of what you will find at each location.

GENERAL INFORMATION leads to Library Locations and Hours of operation, and a Staff Directory including Telephone Numbers and Email Addresses.

SERVICES AND COLLECTIONS includes our Factsheets, covering library policies and procedures; information about Health Information For You services for non-UW affiliates; Tools for Researchers at the Health Sciences Center; the monthly New Books List; and electronic Service Request Forms which allow you to renew books, place materials on Course Reserve, register for library classes, reserve study rooms, or submit purchase suggestions.

OUR PUBLICATIONS offers Medical Grand Rounds Bibliographies, Books & Bytes, and Information Guides to computer, database and Internet help.

CLASSES, LECTURES AND EVENTS leads to a listing of library Tours, a Schedule of and Registration Forms for HSLIC Classes, along with a listing of IAIMS Events and Opportunities.

OTHER PROGRAMS provides links to the library's contractual and collaborative programs: IAIMS, INPHO (Information Network for Public Health Officials), NN/LM PNR (National Network of Libraries of Medicine/Pacific Northwest Region), RFS (Research Funding Service). There are also links to the Libraries Home Page and the King County and Seattle Public Library systems.

DATABASES links to resources available within and outside the University of Washington, including everything offered in UWIN; CIS (Current Index to Statistics); and LEXIS-NEXIS (available to UW users with passwords). Resources outside the University of Washington include such databases as AIDSLINE, Bioethics, CDC WONDER (CDC reports, guidelines, and health data), Internet Haz-Dat (Hazardous Substances Database) and PID (Poisons Information Database).

Under JOURNALS you will find links to Headline News, a compilation of daily or weekly online resources; Electronic News, a collection of active links to online journals, showing those that are available as abstracts, table of contents or full text, as well as those available in print within the Libraries system; and Newsgroups and Listservs, a list of listservs and usenet groups of interest to the health sciences community.

LIAISONS connects you to the designated liaison librarian for your health sciences school, department, or program. Each liaison is developing Web pages for his or her program areas containing applicable resources filtered from the Internet.

REFERENCE contains links to general desktop reference tools (Dictionaries, Directories, Thesauri) as well as specialized reference tools such as Basic Sciences Resources, Employment and Career Guides, Government Resources, Grants and Funding information, Patents and Trademarks, Style Manuals and Guides, and Tools for Researchers.

HealthLinks is a connection to the Health Sciences Center home page, with links to areas of interest such as Clinical Care, Education, Public Health, Research, and Personal Health; along with information about the Health Sciences Schools, Programs and Services, and the Medical Centers.

Your comments and suggestions about the new home page are welcome; email hsl at u.washington.edu.

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Library Support for Patient Education

Part of the mission of the UW Health Sciences Libraries is to support patient education at UWMC and Harborview Medical Center and their clinics. As the most comprehensive health sciences library in the Pacific Northwest, we also receive numerous information requests from the general public. However, HSLIC services in this area have been constrained until recently by a collection development policy designed to support curricular, research, and clinical needs of health professionals and exclude lay-level materials.

During the last biennium we began to address UW patient education needs by acquiring a collection of electronic resources that can be used both by health professionals in support of patient education and by patients or consumers on a self-service basis. The newest acquisition is Health Reference Center Gold. (See related article in this issue for details.)

Several consumer-oriented CD-ROM products are also available on a dedicated PC in the self-service searching area at HSLIC. These programs are provided as a service to health care providers who are interested in seeing the products which their patients may be acquiring for home use. Currently available:

Additional consumer-oriented products may be selectively added to the collection based on the recommendations of UW health care providers. Send your suggestions for patient or consumer health products to hsl at u.washington.edu or use HSLIC's purchase recommendation form.

Nursing & Allied Health is the UWIN/Willow database which is most useful for patient and consumer health information, since it includes audiovisuals and pamphlet materials in addition to journal articles. In MEDLINE® use the subject heading Patient Education to retrieve materials on consumer health information.

In HealthLinks (/) select Your Health from the home page as a gateway to consumer health information on the Internet. In addition to Web sites that we have identified as being particularly useful for consumers, you will find full-text HealthBeat articles written by the staff of UW Health Sciences/Medical Affairs News and Community Relations in collaboration with Health Sciences Center faculty.

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Serial Title Changes
November - December 1995

Newly added titles:

Title changes:

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Public Health Information on the Web

Visit the Public Health Web page from HealthLinks to access public health resources such as MMWR Online, the online journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, and CDC WONDER.

MMWR Online

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), published by CDC, is the leading source for up-to-date statistical reports on public health topics such as emerging infectious diseases, immunizations, and environmental health. MMWR's series of publications can be accessed electronically in a number of different ways:

Adobe Acrobat Reader software is required to view MMWR in its original format (similar to the printed publication) and to use hypertext for full search capabilities. Acrobat Reader may be downloaded without charge from the following locations:

Emerging Infectious Diseases

Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) is a peer-reviewed online journal published by the National Center for Infectious Diseases. Access from the HealthLinks Public Health page or point your Web browser to http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/index.htm. EID publication goals are to promote recognition of new and reemerging diseases and create a forum for discussion and exploration of factors involved in disease emergence, prevention, and elimination. EID was conceived as part of CDC's plan for understanding and combating emerging infectious diseases. Each issue is comprised of three sections:

  1. Perspectives - factors that underlie disease emergence;
  2. Synopses - concise, state of the art summaries of specific diseases or syndromes and related infectious disease issues;
  3. Dispatches - brief laboratory or epidemiologic reports with an international scope.
EID is also available through FTP and email. To download the journal through anonymous FTP go to ftp.cdc.gov and select the pub/EID directory. Although FTP access is recommended because of file size, it is possible to have the journal sent to your mailbox by subscribing to one of the following mailing lists:

CDC WONDER

CDC WONDER, previously available through a DOS dial-in software package, is now on the Web at http://wonder.cdc.gov/. CDC WONDER is a general-purpose public health information and communications system which provides access to about 40 text-based and numeric databases. "WONDER is the single most important automated way of getting information from the CDC," states Patrick O'Carroll, special assistant to the director of the CDC Public Health Practice Program Office. "The information is not precanned according to what scientists think you need, but allows you to specify your own ad hoc queries against a variety of information from fluoridation to mortality data."

WONDER also provides free-text searching and document retrieval from the MMWR 1982 to present, as well as the CDC Prevention Guidelines Database (PGDB). PGDB, which is composed of 400+ documents, includes guidelines for the prevention and control of many diseases and other public health threats such as birth defects, as well as ACIP immunization recommendations, CDC's sexually transmitted diseases treatment guidelines, and the book Health Information for International Travelers.

To compose a tailored query, select Searches and Queries from the CDC WONDER home page. Fill in a form specifying information and delivery format and submit to CDC WONDER. The results will be returned to you in a short period of time, or the system will give you the option to receive the results by email or to check back at a later time.

To find a particular guideline in PGDB, select Guidelines and Reports from the CDC WONDER home page. Then choose Select by Topic. Choose Select by Title to perform a keyword search. Note that PGDB, MMWR and other CDC publications are also available directly from the CDC home page (http://www.cdc.gov). The advantage of using the WONDER program is the ability to create queries for specific information for delivery in the format most useful to you.

A user ID and password are necessary to submit requests for reports or data using the Searches and Queries option. User IDs and passwords can be generated automatically by the system in 2-3 weeks. Anonymous User accounts are available for the occasional user or until permanent accounts can be assigned.

UW Public Health Web Sites

The UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine (SPHCM) Web page at http://depts.washington.edu/sphcm/ provides information about the school and its departments and programs. Departmental home pages contain links to relevant local and remote resources. Two of the SPHCM librarians have created useful home pages which link from the SPHCM Web site.

UW Environmental Health Library Home Page

The Department of Environmental Health Library at http://staff.washington.edu/ehlib/ provides links to relevant local, regional, and government resources, as well as information about its own services and holdings, including an online version of the monthly Current Contents Bulletin and a listing of the library's journals and newsletters.

Although the Department of Environmental Health Library is not a part of the UW Libraries system, the collection is available both to the UW community and to the public.

UW Department of Health Services Home Page

The UW Department of Health Services librarian has created a comprehensive list of health services and other public health resources on the Internet, searchable either by site name or by subject. Other resources developed by the librarian include bibliographies, instructions to authors for key journals, and a glossary of health care terms. Direct your Web browser to http://depts.washington.edu/hserv/.

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INPHO: Public Health Information Network

The UW is a partner in a collaborative effort to improve the use of electronic communication and information resources among public health practitioners in Washington State. The Information Network for Public Health Officials (INPHO) is a national demonstration project initiated by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to help build strategic information partnerships at the state and community levels. Key elements of the INPHO framework include linkages (e.g., Internet connections), access to electronic information resources, and high speed exchange of data. Twelve states, including Oregon and Washington, have received funding from CDC to build a state-based public health information infrastructure.

In Washington State, the Department of Health leads the project, working with the UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Computing & Communications, and HSLIC through the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region (NN/LM PNR) contract from the National Library of Medicine. The components of the Washington project are:

Through INPHO, local public health officials in Washington receive help in connecting to the Internet and training in its use. NN/LM PNR staff have led the design and implementation of an INPHO home page, shown below, which may be found at /nwcphp/.

Willie Bodger provides technical and user support to INPHO project participants. He can be reached at the INPHO Help Desk at 616-4142 or by email to inpho@hs.washington.edu. Willie and NN/LM PNR librarians will also be training INPHO project participants in Internet use and information access.

This project is an opportunity for HSLIC and the UW to participate with federal, state, and local agencies in applying information to public health at the local level. This unique collaboration reflects the importance of the Internet for communication and information management and the increasing value being placed on population-based health information in a managed care environment.

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EthnoMed : A Web Resource for Clinical Use

Health care facilities in the Puget Sound are seeing increasing numbers of non-English speaking refugees and other immigrants, many from non-European cultures. The care provided to such patients may be less than adequate, since health providers are not trained in the practice of cross-cultural medicine and must try to bridge cultural and language barriers during a very brief medical visit.

To meet the needs of both patients and providers, EthnoMed was started in the autumn of 1994 as a joint project of HSLIC and the Harborview Medical Center's Community House Calls Program. The objective of the project is to make information about culture, language, health, illness and community resources directly accessible in clinical areas to health care providers who are seeing patients from several Southeast Asian and East African refugee groups.

EthnoMed is designed to be available in neighborhood or school clinics or at local hospitals - wherever the Internet is accessible - so that the file can be consulted immediately before seeing the patient. Patient education materials are planned in a variety of languages (including some which use non-Roman alphabets). The targeted ethnic communities and primary care providers using the information can make comments to the editors to be incorporated into the files as appropriate. It was determined early on that the type of files desired would be best distributed as Web documents. To reach the EthnoMed home page, point your Web browser to http://www.ethnomed.org/.

All EthnoMed files will be identical in structure for each targeted ethnic group, containing cultural documents, discussion forums, and a connection to the email address for the project. Information about the preparation of documents is provided for potential writers and editors.

The EthnoMed development team currently consists of Ellen Howard and Martha Means, Librarians; Ellie Graham, M.D., and Carey Jackson, M.D., UW faculty at Harborview; Neil Kaneshiro, fifth year resident; and Ann Marchand, Harborview Pediatrics. Team members work with others at the UW and in the community who serve as writers, community contacts, and reviewers.

Feedback from health professionals working with ethnic groups in Seattle and elsewhere has been very positive. As a result, EthnoMed received funding from the UW Libraries' Allen Program to develop the pilot project into a working model. Once the problems of creating and updating the multitude of associated files are resolved, the EthnoMed team hopes to collaborate with other groups in developing similar files for other ethnic communities.

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Getting Connected From Off-Campus

There is great interest in off-campus access by UW faculty, staff and students to electronic information resources, including the Internet, email, and databases such as MEDLINE® This interest has intensified now that UW Computing & Communications supports connections to the Web through its Dial IP service and the graphical browser, Netscape.

In response to this interest, Health Sciences departments will soon receive a letter from HSLIC Library Liaisons offering academic and clinical faculty and staff a new training session, "Getting Connected: Using your Modem to Access Electronic Information Resources." This class is a basic introduction to connecting home PC or Macintosh computers to the Internet via the campus network.

For those departments already beyond this basic introduction, the following sessions are offered regularly.

Other specialized sessions can be tailored to meet your departmental needs. Recent offerings include:

To schedule one of these sessions for your department, please contact your library liaison. For a copy of the brochure Getting Wired, which lists available classes, contact the Information Desk at 543-3394 or send an email message to hsl at u.washington.edu.

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Liaison to the School of Public Health

Sarah Safranek is the designated librarian liaison to the School of Public Health and Community Medicine. She serves as the HSLIC contact for all aspects of library service to the faculty, staff and students of the SPHCM except for Pathobiology, which is assigned to Lisa Oberg (543-7492 or lisanne@u.washington.edu) and Stuart Yarfitz (616-4626 or stuy@u.washington.edu).

Sarah offers customized research and information services, including online search services, training in the use of HSLIC's CD-ROM products and UWIN databases and resources, and collaboration with the Department of Environmental Health and Health Services Research librarians on library orientations and information delivery. She will also be identifying pertinent Internet resources and offering assistance in their use. You can reach her at 543-3408 or by email to safranek@u.washington.edu.

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GPO Access Now Available Via Internet

GPO Access, the award-winning Government Printing Office (GPO) online service, is now available without charge via the Internet, offering desktop electronic access to the Congressional Record, Federal Register, congressional bills, and a growing list of other government documents on the day of publication.

GPO Access was formerly available only to on-site users in some 600 Federal Depository Libraries, to remote users connecting through depository library "gateways," and to subscribers. The new system gives equal access to those using a depository library and those with dial-up or Internet connections to electronic information.

Internet users can access the databases through the Superintendent of Documents' home page at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/ or by visiting Government Resources via HSLIC's home page: /government/. Users may also telnet to swais.access.gpo.gov; then login as guest. Or use a modem to call 202-512-1661; type swais and then login as guest. General information on accessing these databases is available by email to help@eids05.eids.gpo.gov; phone: 202-512-1530; or fax: 202-512-1262.

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AHA Video Conferences

Videotapes of American Hospital Association teleconferences are now available in the Teaching Learning Center (TLC) a week after the live broadcast. For details on upcoming broadcasts, contact Roy Farrant at UW Communications Services, 548-6367. The tapes are funded jointly by the UW Medical Center and the Health Sciences Libraries.

Titles currently available:

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Recent Gifts

Acknowledgment and appreciation are extended to the following individuals and departments who have recently made contributions to the HSLIC collections:

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Personnel Notes

Sherrilynne Fuller, Ph.D., HSLIC Director, was recently appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine Committee on Increasing Health Professionals' Use of Toxicology and Environmental Health Databases. Dr. Fuller has also been elected to a two-year term on the Board of Directors of the American Medical Informatics Association.

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