FPIN Librarian Community

MeSH® Subheading Consolidation Decision

2007-01-30T13:16:00.000-06:00

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!

2007-01-24T09:29:00.000-06:00

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

2006-09-27T13:24:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-27T13:18:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-27T13:15:00.000-05:00

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

2006-08-15T14:59:00.000-05:00

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

2006-07-21T16:09:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-20T16:15:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-07T08:58:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-07T08:56:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-07T08:49:00.000-05:00

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

MeSH Subheadings, continued

2006-04-21T08:52:00.000-05:00

To follow up on an earlier post, if you'd like to submit comments regarding the proposed subheading changes, the deadline has been extended to June 16, 2006. There will also be opportunities at MLA to talk with NLM regarding the changes. Here is an excerpt from a message posted to the GMR NN/LM listserv this week:

"We'd like to thank those who have sent us their comments on the proposal to revise subheadings in MeSH. It has been suggested that additional time to consider the proposed changes and provide input would be very helpful. Therefore, we're extending the deadline for comments to June 16, 2006.

"Additional information about the proposal will be presented by Stuart Nelson, Head, MeSH Section during the NLM Online Users Meeting, which is on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 7:15 am. Dr. Nelson will also be available at the NLM booth from 10:00-11:00 am on Monday to answer questions and hear further comments.

"Due to the long lead time needed to make changes in the MeSH file, the indexing manual, the online indexing system, documentation and training materials, etc., changes to subheadings will not take place until release of the 2008 MeSH. "

toxicity, standards, utilization, diet therapy

2006-04-13T10:19:00.000-05:00

In case you've been vacationing in the Carribbean for the past few weeks, I wanted to catch you up on the fact that NLM is making some changes to MeSH subheadings (including the four listed above). Some of our favorites will be absorbed into other subheadings, although they will remain as entry terms in the database.

What will this mean for FPIN searching? Well, obviously this will mean changes in how we approach searching some topics, but relatively little will be changed in our FPIN protocol and filters. Probably the only change you will see on paper is an adjustment to the Diagnostic Testing search filter (Ovid, PubMed), which uses several of these subheadings in one of the search lines (analysis[sh] OR blood[sh] OR cerebrospinal fluid[sh] OR diagnosis[sh] OR diagnostic use[sh] OR immunology[sh] OR urine[sh]).

There has been a lot of discussion and formal statements made throughout the medical librarian community. If you’d like to catch up on some of these, I recommend that you take a look at the MLA Public Services Section list-serv (archives) or MEDLIB-L (archives). If you’d like to submit a formal comment to NLM, you can still do so through Friday, April 14 (yes, that’s tomorrow). More information is available online at the What’s New in MeSH page on the NLM website.

Questions or concerns about how these changes will affect FPIN searching may be addressed to myself or other members of the FPIN Librarian Team. If you would like to share comments or questions with other colleagues in our community, feel free to respond to the librarian community email list or post a comment here on the blog.

Search Delivery Methods

2006-03-21T10:26:00.000-06:00

I know that a lot of our community members are doing some interesting things in terms of how they deliver search results to their physician authors.

Recording our search methodology on the new Search Summary Form (pdf example form) is but one part of this delivery process for FPIN searches. This part is standardized, but what works for you and your author in terms of delivering article citations depends upon many different variables.

I'm interested to hear what you've tried that works well, or maybe not so well. Do you work with local authors, or authors at a distance? Are there restrictions based upon your library setting? (Click on the comments link below to share your experiences).

Customize the FPIN website using "My FPIN"

2006-03-20T12:53:00.000-06:00

The "My FPIN" tab allows librarians to personalize the FPIN website, and make librarian resources more easily accessible. I've put up a quick video showing how to do so. With our current website settings, you'll need Windows Media Player to view it. Questions? Don't hesitate to ask.

I'm thinking about using a similar format when I update our librarian training package, to be more engaging, and useful also for experienced FPIN librarians who need a "refresher" on particular topics. So please let me know your thoughts! (Click on the "Comments" link below to leave a message for the group, or send me an email).

New Search Summary Form

2006-03-17T15:42:00.000-06:00

The FPIN Search Summary Form has been updated, and is now available at the Librarian Community webpages.

This new form:

Allows a standardized method of reporting results to authors. Actual citations are delivered according to your own style/preference, but this way our CI physician authors know what to expect, in general.

More explicity shows results found vs. results sent to the author. There’s no need to send those results that you already know are irrelevant to your author’s needs/interests!

Better reflects the categories of studies retrieved by each FPIN search filter. For CI authors, part of the value of working with an FPIN librarian is that he or she can help sort out large numbers of MEDLINE results in a meaningful way. The categories of studies itemized in the new summary form give a great overview of the types of results that you have found in your search.

Provides more links and descriptive information to guide both librarians and physicians through the search process.

This new form must be used to report number of hits from each required database in the FPIN search protocol, the complete MEDLINE technical search strategy used (cut and paste it right from your search history), and hits from any additional databases. Actual citations/results should be collected in a separate document or other format for delivery.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments about the new form.

Welcome

2006-02-27T16:29:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the FPIN Librarian Community blog. One of my goals when I began as Librarian Coordinator and Team Leader at FPIN was to create a better sense of community and professional camaraderie within the librarian community. My hope is that this blog will give us a place to share FPIN news, EBM and expert seraching resources, and the activities and accomplishments of our members. Feel free to leave comments, or if you have something to share, send me an email to add a post. And let me know what you think!

-Kristin