The MCH Library released a new knowledge path edition that offers a selection of current, high-quality resources about caring for children and adolescents with special health care needs. This knowledge path for health professionals, policymakers, program administrators, and families includes information on (and links to) Web sites, electronic and print publications, databases, and online discussion groups. Separate sections list resources on specific aspects of care and development such as adolescent transition, advocacy, financing, and screening. This knowledge path is available at

http://www.mchlibrary.info/KnowledgePaths/kp_CSHCN.html

Knowledge paths on other maternal and child health topics are available (See http://mchlibrary.info/KnowledgePaths/index.html).

The New York Academy of Medicine / National Library of Medicine Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness provides access to more than 1600 electronic publications related to public health preparedness.

The Current Awareness Update for March 2006, listing newly added resources to the database, is now available at: http://www.phpreparedness.info/update.php

For full database records, including annotations or to search this content by subject area, see: http://www.phpreparedness.info

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), US, has commissioned a study to ascertain the major factors contributing to journal subscription cancellations by libraries. The study is projected to provide data for a current debate on whether author self-archiving of preprint and/or postprint versions of journal articles has a significant impact on journal subscription numbers.

The study revealed that librarians do not view open access (OA) repositories as a substitute for properly managed journal holdings. A large majority of librarians do not even know whether the content of archives overlaps with their holdings, and most do not plan to introduce systems to measure this. Availability via OA archives was ranked a long way behind the needs of faculty, usage and price in determining cancellations. Three times as many respondents thought repositories would have no impact on holdings as they thought they would.

The study consisted of an online questionnaire. The report is an A4 paperback of 72 pages. In addition to the priced printed report and combined PDF, ALPSP has also made available the data from the survey, including the ‘free-text’ answers from the respondents, at http://www.surveymonkey.com/Report.asp?U=161585570142

The original press release can be found at http://www.alpsp.org/news/librarians_press.pdf