by Stephen Kiyoi, Second Year NLM Associate Fellow
NN/LM Pacific Southwest Region
UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library

During the month of April, 2012, the RML offered a newly developed training series targeting community college librarians. The series, entitled Navigating the Health Information Maze, was offered in a set of four, one-hour webcasts every Tuesday during the month. Twenty-nine librarians from 24 different institutions took advantage of the opportunity to gain expertise in National Library of Medicine resources; including PubMed, MedlinePlus, the NLM Gallery of Mobile Apps and Sites, and Health Information for Special Populations. Additional information about the series and archived training sessions are available from the preceding series website. Outreach to community colleges is a major NN/LM initiative for the coming year. (more…)

The NN/LM National Library of Medicine Training Center (NTC), located at the University of Utah, offers in-person and online training related to NLM products. (more…)

The National Library of Medicine® Training Center (NTC) has announced some changes to the way they teach the PubMed class. See the Technical Bulletin article for more details.

The University of Utah was awarded the NTC contract. The NTC will tour the country teaching PubMed for Trainers. The one-day PubMed class is replaced with a hybrid PubMed for Trainers class. This hands-on course consists of lectures, individual exercises, group work and discussions in four sessions, with independent work before or after each session. The course will consist of three 1½ hour online sessions and a six-hour in-person session. NLM or NTC trainers will deliver the lectures and facilitate discussions.

The objectives of the class are for current and future PubMed trainers to discover and develop:

1. functional knowledge of the MEDLINE® database,
2. understanding of the structure and use of the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH®) vocabulary in MEDLINE/PubMed,
3. expertise in the use of features and functions of the PubMed system, and
4. techniques and best practices in MEDLINE/PubMed instruction with fellow trainers.

The class is intended specifically for those who train, or will train others to use PubMed. This class could be for you if you teach PubMed to large groups, small groups, or one-on-one training. We look forward to lively discussions on PubMed instruction and adult education best practices.

NTC will continue to teach the TOXNET® and Beyond class but not the ½ day NLM Gateway & ClinicalTrials.gov class.

Web-based PubMed training is also available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmed.html.  NTC will be developing more distance training opportunities.

The NTC website and blog is at http://nnlm.gov/ntc/

by Naomi C. Broering, MLS, MA, AHIP; Gregory A. Chauncey, MBA; Stacy Gomes, PhD.
Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, San Diego, CA

The Pacific College of Oriental Medicine’s (PCOM) Library received Major Outreach Award funding from the RML in 2009, for an 18-month project that ended in April 2011. The overall project goal was to promote easy-to-use Web informatics access to NLM and NIH online health information resources for consumers and health professionals. This gargantuan, but fun task involved networking and collaborating with an eight-member team of San Diego public libraries, faith-based organizations, a community center, and affiliated clinics, to implement an instructional program with a variety of teaching alternatives targeting an ethnically diverse community. We taught hands-on workshops, developed electronic tutorials, held live web-based sessions that were videotaped, produced DVDs, and conducted a series of Webinars for health care practitioners. In addition, we made web page enhancements, such as adding an A to Z database arrangement, new online tutorials of PubMed and MedlinePlus, and implementation of Web 2.0 features used for instructional training of NLM resources. Examples of links for tutorials and databases are on the PCOM web site. It was an ambitious project, but extremely rewarding! (more…)

Recently I was searching for journal articles from a certain country. From PubMed, I accessed the NLM Catalog with the limit turned on for Journals referenced in the NCBI databases. From the Advanced Search page in the NLM Catalog, I could select Country of Publication with the Search Builder. This gave me a list of 449 journal titles. (more…)

The following are some updates from recent Technical Bulletin articles of interest to our Network members
MeSH Database updated in PubMed

The MeSH Database was redesigned to provide users with the same streamlined interface now available in PubMed® and the NLM® Catalog. These changes were implemented in PubMed on February 14, 2011.. (more…)

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is committed to improving access to relevant information for the public health community. A major focal point for initiatives in this area has been the Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce initiative (also known as “Partners”; found at http://phpartners.org/), which is a collaboration to provide the public health workforce with timely, convenient access to information resources to help them improve the health of the American public. (more…)

This summer we have two kinds of PubMed class offerings. The first one is an in class experience in Los Angeles; the other is via distance learning. (more…)

Here are some questions that came up during the Midday at the Oasis session on PubMed Changes Revisited. This session built upon the December session that was called, The “New” PubMed: Doing Fine with the Redesign! The February session highlighted the changes that took place early February. This recording is available at https://webmeeting.nih.gov/p29419799. I answered or demonstrated most of the following questions and answers. For some of the questions we put together some additional information. (more…)

The changes to PubMed have been a long time coming! We saw some highlights at MLA 2009 in Honolulu. In August we saw short presentations of mock-up pages of what the new PubMed would look like. This week the preview link was leaked on Twitter, various blogs and Facebook pages, and now has been officially released. The preview version of the redesigned PubMed is available on the PubMed homepage at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/. (more…)