http://getinvolved.nih.gov/newsbulletins/Rsingle.asp?id=397&issue=june2006

The June issue of NIH News in Health, the monthly newsletter brings readers practical health news and tips based on the latest NIH research, is now online at http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/ The National Institutes of Health want to know what you think of their newsletter so, if you haven’t already filled out the online survey, please take a few moments to go to http://newsinhealthsurvey.od.nih.gov and tell them. (more…)

Health Sciences Information Rx Tool Kit

In 2004, the NLM and the American College of Physicians Foundation collaborated to pilot Information Rx, a program that provides tools to assist physicians in referring their patients to MedlinePlus.gov. To date, more than 3,500 physicians have signed up to participate in Information Rx. The Information Rx Tool Kit website that was also launched in 2004 has undergone a facelift and reorganization to better assist health sciences librarians with the implementation of Information Rx within their organization. The new site serves as an online guide to assist with project-related outreach activities. The tool kit contains tested promotional materials, suggestions for a variety of activities associated with the promotion of the Information Rx Project to physicians, patients and their families, as well as to public libraries and community organizations.

Check out the new site at http://nnlm.gov/hip/infoRx/index.html and learn how your library can implement Information Rx within your organization.

Does your institution already use Information Rx? If so, then let us hear from you. We are looking to add Information Rx success stories to the website to encourage other organizations to participate in Information Rx.

Send your Information Rx success story to Rhonda Allard, Consumer Health Information Coordinator, NN/LM MAR at rallard@nyam.org or call 212-822-7353.

NLM

1.  NLM now adds NIH and Wellcome Trust GrantList data obtained from author manuscripts deposited in PubMed Central per NIH’s public access policy (see http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/authorms.html).

2.  Added Security During My NCBI RegistrationAn additional step will be added to the My NCBI registration process in order to prevent automated programs from setting up accounts. On the registration screen, five characters will be displayed as an image and registrants will be asked to type the five characters into a text box.

3.  New Animated Tutorials Available on the LinkOut for Libraries Web page

Two new animated tutorials are now available on the LinkOut for Libraries Web page. These brief, narrated demonstrations in Flash® format are on the following topics: 
 
Displaying Icons Using a Special URL
Implementing Open URL-based Services in PubMed

All tutorials are available under the Tutorials menu on the LinkOut for Libraries Web page as well as the Distance Education Program Resources page. The tutorials require Macromedia Flash® Player to view and were created using Quarbon’s ViewletBuilder®. 

Please direct questions or comments to lib-linkout@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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The National Library of Medicine and the DOCLINE Team proudly acknowledge that March 15, 2006 marks 21 years of service to the health library community for DOCLINE.

DOCLINE was initially implemented in March 1985 as a command line, character based system for placing and routing interlibrary loan requests among the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. In fiscal year 1987, borrowers entered 788,105 interlibrary loan requests into DOCLINE and there were 1,435 participating libraries.

Today, DOCLINE serves more than 3,200 libraries in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. DOCLINE libraries currently report more than 1.4 million serial holdings. DOCLINE also provides select international medical libraries the ability to serve users in their regions via Loansome Doc. International libraries can also request ILL material via DOCLINE, primarily from NLM.

In fiscal year 2005, over 2.4 million interlibrary loan requests were entered into DOCLINE. The fill rate for requests was 91.2% and the average number of libraries a request must route to before completion was just 1.2.

To celebrate DOCLINE’s birthday, libraries found a festive Tugger on the Login page (http://docline.gov) as well as a new DOCLINE 21st Birthday desktop wallpaper and updated classic blue & gold wallpaper version. Download and enjoy your favorite DOCLINE wallpaper at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/docline/docline_wallpaper.html

The DOCLINE Team and the regional coordinators thank DOCLINE users for their dedicated service to health professionals and the public in need of biomedical literature and health information. Thanks, too, for years of support of the DOCLINE system and members’ many ideas for improving DOCLINE.

Happy Birthday DOCLINE!
The DOCLINE Team (Barbara, Brent, Cheri, Deena, Karen, Maria, Sulane, Evelyn, Beth and Tugger)

DOCLINE Keeps Moving On, Version 2.7 Is Here

DOCLINE 2.7 introduces several major enhancements to our users. In order to best utilize these features, please review the following list of suggested action items for libraries now that DOCLINE 2.7 is available. Click Help in the DOCLINE menu to access the updated online manual. Click FAQ to view the updated Frequently Asked Questions.

Library Groups

If you are the contact or lead person for a library group, please consider whether your library group continues to need the serial holdings union list products. If your library group does not need union list products, please notify Beth Wescott, so that she can disable the future production of these system intensive reports.

Update Institution Record

Services & Fees (Institutions / Update / Services & Fees)

• Fills Urgent Patient Care Request - indicate whether your library will provide service for urgent patient care requests. Urgent Patient Care requests should be processed and shipped immediately. The service level is intended for emergency / urgent clinical care for patients. Lenders should have the staffing necessary to frequently monitor DOCLINE for new requests, and must process all Urgent Patient Care requests received by the end of the day to avoid rerouting by Time-Triggered Actions.
• Fills Rush Request - indicate whether your library will provide service for rush requests. Rush requests are defined as same day service. Lenders should have staffing necessary to periodically monitor DOCLINE for new requests, and must process all Rush requests received by the end of the day to avoid rerouting by Time-Triggered Actions.
• Libraries are encouraged to review the remaining elements on the Services & Fees page and update as needed. In particular, adding ILL service comments, verifying your fees, verifying your copy and loan policies, and adding any Loan comments fields that would be helpful to other libraries. For example, in Loans Services and Fees, if you loan Journals, in the Journals comments field indicate whether you loan bound volumes and/or unbound issues.

For information on recording fees, see the FAQ at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/doc_base_fee_surcharge.html

For a description of how routing works, see: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/doc_new_routing.html

Libraries are encouraged to review the remaining elements on the DOCLINE Options page and update as needed. In particular, please review your library’s “Receive by” and “Send by” delivery methods.

Routing Table (Institutions / Update / DOCLINE Options / Edit Routing Table)

Review your library’s Routing Table and update as needed. Delete libraries that may have closed or ceased DOCLINE participation since your last Routing Table update. The DOCLINE status (closed, inactive, non-DOCLINE library) is displayed next to the library name in your Routing Table.

Library Groups that your library belongs to have been added to your Workspace. These can be added to your Routing Table. Follow the SE/A region’s guidance on Routing Table maintenance or contact Beth Wescott directly for assistance and advice. If the Library Groups listed in your Workspace are incorrect, please contact you’re the SE/A office to update your membership in the appropriate library group.

Save your changes as you work on your Routing Table. Once all changes have been made, click Request Approval to notify NN/LM SE/A that your Routing table is ready for review. The message “Routing Table awaiting approval” will display on your Home page. Once the SE/A staff has approved your changes, the message on your Home page is removed

In response to feedback from users, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has added new chemical and health-related data to its interactive mapping site, TOXMAP (http://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov).

Released in September, 2004, TOXMAP helps users explore the geographic distribution of certain chemical releases, their relative amounts, and their trends over time. This release data comes from industrial facilities around the United States, as reported annually to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Now, users can also use TOXMAP to find information about Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund sites and substances. The Superfund program (http://www.epa.gov/superfund/index.htm) is part of a federal government effort to clean up land in the United States that has been contaminated by hazardous waste and identified by the EPA (http://www.epa.gov/) as a candidate for cleanup because it poses a risk to human health and/or to the environment.

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Naomi Miller, Manager
Consumer Health Information
National Library of Medicine

Colleagues–We’re pleased to announce the addition of a tutorial entitled, “Evaluating Internet Health Information” to MedlinePlus. This tutorial teaches users how to to evaluate the health information they find on the Web. It is about 16 minutes long

You need a Flash plug-in, version 6 or above, to view it. If you do not have Flash, the page helps you perform a free download of the software before you start.

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NLM

1. NLM has announced another enhancement to MedlinePlus: over 100 herbal and supplement monographs in English and Spanish from Natural Standard. Natural Standard is an evidence-based, peer-reviewed collection of information on alternative treatments. Each monograph includes a table of uses of the supplement based on scientific evidence. The herbal or supplement receives a grade ranging from A (strong scientific evidence for this use) to F (strong scientific evidence against this use) for diseases or conditions it treats. In addition, each monograph provides information on dosing, safety, interactions, and selected references. Many monographs also contain illustrations.

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The DOCLINE Team and the NN/LM DOCLINE coordinators are looking forward to bringing DOCLINE active members exciting new features in 2006. These include the long awaited:

routing by library group,
ability to specify more than one delivery method in a request,
levels of “rush” requests,
searching serial holdings by delivery method,
and additional search filters.

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by Naomi Miller, Manager, Consumer Health Information
Public Services Division, National Library of Medicine

Background

The National Library of Medicine’s (NN/LM) MedlinePlus is a high-quality gateway to consumer health information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government, professional and voluntary organizations creating authoritative health information. The core of MedlinePlus is over 700 Health Topic pages: highly selective collections of links to Web documents. Health topic pages organize the documents into categories such as overviews, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention1. (more…)