MeSH® Subheading Consolidation Decision

From the Jan/Feb Technical Bulletin . . .

Last year, the National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) proposed to consolidate the 83 existing qualifiers (subheadings) in the Medical Subject Headings and create a smaller set. The goal was to make the use of qualifiers easier for the searching public. NLM distributed a background paper within the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, whose members also posted it on a number of widely seen listservs. At the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting in 2006, Dr. Stuart Nelson, Head of Medical Subject Headings, and those in attendance had a lively dialogue on the proposed changes.

Over the intervening months, NLM staff analyzed all comments, suggestions, and feedback. We considered the potential impact on the searching public, Network libraries, and the internal processes at NLM. Ultimately, in part due to budget constraints and limited resources, NLM has made the decision to retain the qualifiers in their present form. We hope to concentrate our efforts on other ways to improve searching and retrieval for all users. We greatly appreciate the many thoughtful comments received, and thank all those who provided input.

EBL Conference - Register Now!

How about a little EBL for our EBM librarians?

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN FOR THE
Evidence Based Library & Information Practice
4th International Conference
May 6-11, 2007, Chapel Hill-Durham, North Carolina, USA

The Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Conference (EBLIP4) is an exciting international event that has emerged in response to the growing interest among all types of libraries in using the best available evidence to improve information practice.

For registration, see http://www.eblip4.unc.edu/registration.html. ***Be sure to register for both the hotel and the conference as soon as possible. The Sheraton hotel is offering a special rate of US$99.00 per night for a limited period.***

The conference on May 6-9, 2007 in Chapel Hill-Durham, North Carolina will feature themed sessions on evidence-based practice in academic libraries, school library media, public libraries, health care, special libraries, and evidence-based methodology. Two days of continuing education will follow. The conference provides a forum for the presentation of high quality papers and posters as well as examples of how EBLIP is being implemented in library and information settings around the globe.

Poster abstracts are still welcome at this time. Full instructions to authors may be found at www.eblip4.unc.edu

Chapel Hill-Durham is located in the middle of the Eastern United States close to the Raleigh-Durham international airport. This central location in the Research Triangle area is only a short drive from scenic locations in North Carolina. The beaches are approximately two hours to the east and the mountains are two hours to the west. Washington DC is a 4.5 hour drive or 30 minutes by air.

Making the best use of medical librarians

A nice little piece in the September 16, 2006, issue of BMJ Career Focus on how librarians fit with EBM, what exactly they do, and how to ask for their assistance.

Research from practice

Need a little fodder for your promotion bid this year? Need to justify your budget? Always wanted to see your name in print? Evaluate your services. Measure your impact. Start planning ahead now to make a paper or poster presentation at an upcoming conference.

If you have an idea related to evidence-based practice, EBP curricula and outreach, expert searching, or other topics of interest to librarians in the FPIN community, let us help! I am personally more than happy to listen to and provide feedback about research proposals, drafts of poster/paper abstracts, or that project idea that is just now taking form. And if you're looking for a colleague with a mutual interest, draw on our community--that's the whole point of having a community!

Let me know if I can help, and in the meanwhile, here are a few dates and conference topics to get you thinking . . .

ACRL 2006
March 29 to April 1, 2007 in Baltimore, MD
Submission Deadline (for posters): October 20, 2006
"Conference programs will examine the six conference tracks: Attracting and Thriving; Collaborations; Content, Collections, and Access; The Environment for Libraries; Libraries and the Imagination; and Teaching and Learning, and conference themes" Additional information online.


MLA 2007
May 19 to 23, 2007 in Philadelphia, PA
Submission Deadline: November 6, 2006
"The [National Program Committee] encourages papers and posters that highlight the vision, the struggle, and the means by which health sciences librarians can harness today's powerful information environment to promote access to health care information." Additional information online.


4th International Conference on Evidence-Based Library and Information Practice
May 6 to 9, 2007 in Chapel Hill, NC
Submission Deadline: December 1, 2006
"EBLIP4 invites submissions for contributed papers and posters including both original research and innovative applications of EBLIP in library and information management. Papers that deal with library support of evidence-based practice in other fields such as health, social work and public policy are also welcome. Additional info may be found at www.eblip4.unc.edu."


SLA 2007
June 3 to 6, 2007 in Denver, CO
Submission Deadline: December 8, 2006
"Topics of the papers should be related to library science, information management, research or other issues related to the work of special libraries. Abstracts will be judged on substance, potential member interest, and relevance to the conference theme (Climbing to New Heights) or to the SLA tag line (Connecting People and Information)." Additional information online.

FPIN librarians at MLA Chapter meetings

Going to the annual meeting of the Midwest or Midcontinental chapters of MLA? Be sure to say hello!

I will be attending the Midwest chapter meeting in Louisville, KY, October 7-11. And attending the Midcontinental meeting (Oct. 10-13 in St. Louis) will be two more familiar FPIN librarian faces: Deb Ward, our FPIN VP for Information Resources, and Susan Meadows, member of the FPIN Librarian Team and former Team Leader, both from the University of Missouri-Columbia. In both places we'll have an encore presentation of the poster submitted by the FPIN Librarian Team at MLA '06; if you didn't have a chance to see it then, here's your chance to learn more about the FPIN search filters.

Each of us is looking forward to meeting up with colleagues new and old. We have plenty of things to discuss about our "day jobs" and . . gasp . . . our lives outside the library, but if you have questions or comments about your experience in FPIN, be sure to take advantage of this time to share those as well! If you miss me at the poster session, just look by the coffee service--I've never met a cup I didn't like :-)

Evidence-Based Practice indexed by Elsevier

Many of you may be familiar with Evidence-Based Practice (EBP), a monthly publication from the FPIN network. What you may not know is that as of this year, articles from EBP are being indexed by Elsevier and included in Scopus. For those of you who aren't familiar with the publication, EBP takes an independent look at best-available evidence for primary care practice, and also includes a patient education piece (co-authored by an FPIN librarian, Jean Blackwell) that each month translates one popular Clinical Inquiry topic into lay terms. The evidence-based patient handouts are freely available from the FPIN website. The online archive of EBP is available to subscribers.

If there are physicians at your institution who are EBP readers, please be sure to take advantage of your FPIN membership for a subscription discount! (The same holds true for PEPID PCP, a hand-held and online point-of-care resource that includes evidence-based content from FPIN).

FPIN website reorganization

In case you missed this little news item in my latest email newsletter . . .

Heather Stewart, whom many of us know and love as CI Managing Editor and website guru, has been hard at work on the FPIN website this month (an overview of changes appeared in this week’s Opportunities Newsletter from FPIN). First, a big thanks for the new section on the main FPIN homepage for the Librarian Community. You’ll now find a box with a purple header on the right side of the FPIN homepage with links to information about our community. More visibility and easier navigation!

If you’ve been to the website lately, you’ve probably noticed that two new sections have appeared as “tabs” on the FPIN site: Membership and Publications. The Membership section, like it sounds, includes many resources for departments and residency programs who are interested in joining FPIN. Librarian membership materials remain, as always, on the main librarian community homepage.

The Publication Opportunities tab replaces the old “CI” tab. Here you’ll find many of the same links to information for Clinical Inquiries authors and librarian co-authors, but now there is also information about FPIN’s other publication opportunities: Evidence Based Practice (EBP Newsletter) and PEPID (point-of-care information resource). Be sure to check out the newly revised and expanded section What are Clinical Inquiries?. There is a wealth of information here to which you can direct your clinician co-authors. Based upon experiences with snags in the librarian-clinician collaboration process over the past year, I’ve also added two sections to the Author Instructions that help explain the Librarian Recruitment Process, and the FPIN Literature Search Protocol to our clinician colleagues. Thanks also go to our librarian colleague Karen Crowell, who helped to develop a list of questions to facilitate the search negotiation process (PDF). These sample questions put the reference interview into the context of writing a CI, and hopefully will help clarify for our clinician colleagues what we librarians would like to hear from them. If you know of other information that you think would be helpful to include, let me know.

Updates to Search Filters

The FPIN Search Filters have been updated to more accurately mirror the newest version Search Summary/Report form, introduced earlier this year. Searches for all inquiry types now include search lines for meta-analyses and guidelines (both of which are listed on the report form, but were not explicitly included in the filters before this update).

PDF files have also been updated to include these changes, as well as a few minor typos and tweaks that had previously een made to the webpage versions of the filters (but not the pdfs, at that time).

Expert Searcher Wiki

Okay--I've got another little experiment going here, which allows a little more interaction on your part (as an FPIN librarian). In another of my grand experiments, I've put together a wiki for our community--or any librarian with similar interests, really.



The wiki is online at: http://expertsearcher.wetpaint.com/. I know that you all have things to share--let's hear them! You don't even have to take credit, if you don't want to!

Evidence-Based Librarianship

We are all immersed in evidence-based medicine, but what about our own practice? In 2007, the International Evidence-Based Librarianship Conference will be held in our own backyard, in Durham, North Carolina:

4th International Evidence-Based Librarianship Conference
May 4-11, 2007
http://www.eblip4.unc.edu/

McMaster EBP Workshop

This is another educational opportunity shared by Erika Sevetson during our FPIN Librarian Leadership Team Meeting yesterday. Registration is closed for this year, but there are librarians who take part--so keep in mind for next year, if you're intereseted!

EBP workshop website:
http://clarity.mcmaster.ca/

Librarians at the workshop:
http://hsl.mcmaster.ca/ebcp/librarians.htm#coord

Cochrane meeting

Something of possible interest to expert searchers in our group. The NIH librarian (Pam Sieving) who forwarded this announcement writes, "If you haven't been to a Cochrane meeting (or if you have!) I'd urge you to try to attend this one, which will draw in people from across the US working at various levels with the Cochrane Collaboration." -Kristin


The United States Cochrane Center invites you to attend the

North American Conference on Systematic Reviews:
Encompassing diversity in systematic reviews

The purpose of the Conference is to:

• Foster collaboration among systematic reviewers
• Provide an opportunity to present and discuss advances in systematic review methodology and applications

Posters will be accepted until June 11; main topic areas include:

• Defining the landscape: Who is Doing and Using Systematic Reviews?
• Education and training in systematic reviews
• Quality of systematic reviews
• Impact of systematic reviews

July 13 to 14, 2006
Radisson Lord Baltimore Hotel in downtown Baltimore

Sponsored by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality
and the Milbank Memorial Fund

The complete program and meeting registration are available at http://www.cochrane.us or email: uscc@cochrane.us or

Kelly S Manos, MAS
USCC Project Director
United States Cochrane Center
Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N Wolfe Street, Mail Room W5010
Baltimore, MD, USA 21205

Tel: 410-502-4642
Fax: 410-502-4623
email: kmanos@jhsph.edu
web: www.cochrane.us