On October 11, 2007, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) released a new search engine for MedlinePlus, MedlinePlus en español and the NLM Web site. NLM selected search engine software from the Pittsburgh-based company Vivisimo®. Vivisimo is also the current search solution for the www.usa.gov site (formerly FirstGov).

The new search results feature enhanced relevance rankings and bold-face search words in context to help you select the best Web document for your query. An integrated spell checker suggests alternative search terms and spelling corrections. The new search engine also expands queries using synonyms specific to the sites and medical synonyms from the NLM Unified Medical Language System®.

MedlinePlus Searches

The default display for MedlinePlus searches is a comprehensive list of “All Results” from all areas of the site. Users can also focus their search on one part of MedlinePlus by navigating to these individual collections of results:

• Health Topics
• External Health Links
• Drugs and Supplements
• Medical Encyclopedia
• News
• Other Resources

For MedlinePlus searches that retrieve one of the 700+ English language health topics, the relevant topic is spotlighted at the top of the screen with an image, an excerpt of the health topic summary and links to the topic.

Read more about the new search engine:

*New Site Search Engine Allows Easier, More Efficient Navigation of MedlinePlus and NLM Web Site

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/searchengine_vivisimo.html

*NLM Technical Bulletin, Sep-Oct 2007, NLM Launches New Web Search Engine: NLM Web Site, MedlinePlus, MedlinePlus Español

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so07/so07_nlm_search_engine.html

A technology award has enabled the Slotkin Memorial Library at Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Cherry Hill to purchase a ScanPro 300 microfiche scanner.

We now have access to many years of journal on microfiche.  While the Slotkin Memorial Library houses a variety of medical journals, our collection is unique with much of its collection focusing on behavioral health.

This award has enabled us to provide better service to our staff, as well as share our important collection with the libary community.

Francine Silverman- Barney A. Slotkin Memorial Library- Kennedy Memorial Hospital- Cherry Hill, NJ

St. Francis Medical Library truly needed two new printers for its Consumer Health Resource Center.  In June 2007 the NN/LM MAR honored our grant request for a Technology Improvement Award.  The two printers are utilized by the patients and community members that visit the library.  Now a patron can bring home a printed copy of information accessed on the computer.

In addition, patient education information from the NLM can be printed and distributed to the patient floors and waiting rooms.  The colored brochures increase the visibility and interest in the publications.  The printers are a great asset to our Consumer Health Center; we thank the Middle Atlantic Region for awarding us this much needed equipment.

Rosemary Figorito- St. Francis Hospital- Wilmington, DE

The University of California at Berkeley has posted a number of full course lectures on YouTube. There are currently over 300 hours of lectures and special events covering topics ranging from bioengineering, physics, chemistry, peace and conflict studies, and others.

Read more about it from ArsTechnica

The RML is pleased to announce the newest addition to our website: our new AV Lending Library.

You can now borrow from our collection of videos, DVDs, and CD-ROMs in order to keep up on everything from MLA’s last webcast or to learn more from “Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians!”

Just follow this link to the online order form http://nnlm.gov/mar/services/lendrequest.html

We look forward to sharing these items with you!

A new Harris poll has found that searching the internet for health care information has become more widespread than ever.  The Harris poll refers to these health information searchers as “cyberchondriacs” and suggests that:

The huge and growing numbers of “cyberchondriacs” who use the internet to look for health information and to help them have better conversations with their doctors has surely had a big impact on the knowledge of patients, the questions they ask their doctors and is therefore changing the doctor-patient relationship and the practice of medicine. There is every reason to believe the impact of the Internet on medical practice will continue to grow.

See more of the results.

Library users will have the opportunity to print free copies of such public domain classics as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake, as well as appropriately themed in-copyright titles as Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” and Jason Epstein’s own “Book Business.” The public domain titles were provided by the Open Content Alliance (“OCA”), a non-profit organization with a database of over 200,000 titles. The OCA and ODB are working closely to offer this digital content free of charge to libraries across the country. Both organizations have received partial funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The Espresso Book Machine will be available to the public at SIBL through August, and will operate Monday- Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library is located at 188 Madison Avenue (at 34th Street).

Read more on the Press Release Newswire

ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons which is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Their mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

This is a brand new project from Creative Commons so there isn’t much there now. Keep checking back on the ccLearn site for resources as they become available, though.

Don’t know much about Creative Commons? We have an online class on it! Also be sure to check out our CC resources page.

The Wellcome Trust, an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health, has licensed their image library under the Creative Commons license. Launched on June 15, 2007, ‘Wellcome Images’ is the world’s leading source of images on the history of medicine, modern biomedical science and clinical medicine.

All content has been made available under a Creative Commons Licence, which allows users to copy, distribute and display the image, provided the source is fully attributed and it is used for non-commercial purposes.

Find out more on their site and read their press release about the licensing and images. (Site is currently undergoing heavy traffic so it may be slow to respond)

Health Care That Works has an interesting mashup using Google Maps that shows hospitals in the NYC region. Special attention is paid to hospitals that are slated for closure and downsizing in respect to the neighborhoods they are located. You can select an overlay of either the population living below the poverty level or population of people of color. Check it out!

Update: the administrator of the site contacted us to let us know that the map was created using the datat from the NY State Department of Health and their SPARCS data set, so it is as accurate as it can be according to the best available public record.