Habemus Directricem!

The Library is proud and delighted to announce that Cristina A. Pope, M.S., A.H.I.P., recent Assistant Director for Education and Public Services at the Ocasek Medical Library, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM), is our new Library Director, starting January 2, 2004.

Before NEOUCOM, Cristina served as Manager of Public Services in Academic Information Services and Resources at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. Her first library job was as media librarian and coordinator of the language lab at Simmons College in Boston. She is active in many professional organizations, including the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Current Topics Committee and the Educom College and University Systems Exchange (EDUCAUSE) Member Information Services Committee.

Cristina is absolutely committed to innovations in information technology to best serve medical library users. Among her research is a study of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and their effect on student performance in a third-year pediatrics clerkship.

Cristina writes: "I've moved around -- I've lived in northern and southern California, Connecticut, Pennsylvania (twice), New York (twice, now), London, Boston, and Cleveland. I graduated from Colgate University with honors in history, earned my M.S. in Library and Information Sciences at Simmons, and am just three classes away from completing my MBA at the University of Akron."

"I found my husband, Doug, on the Internet! He is a commercial photographer and is Director of the Silver Factory, a not-for-profit photographic arts program that provides a residency program for emerging photographic artists and a five-week photographic arts program integrated into the fifth and sixth grade curriculums of participating schools. I have a stepson, Rob, who is twelve and enjoys fencing."

"In my free time, I read (mostly science fiction), cook fabulous meals (though it's my husband who bakes), and collaborate with Doug to increase the volume of our wine cellar. I also play racquetball, squash, and bridge."

"I'm very excited about joining the Upstate community. The library staff are wonderful as are the community members I met during the interview process. I am looking forward to learning more about my new community so that my staff and I can take our services to the next level."

Welcome, Cristina!

New Online Access to Top Journals

In response to faculty requests, the Health Sciences Library will add online full text access to the following eleven journals early in 2004:

Please see the Library's Journal Web Sites page <www.upstate.edu/library/journal/journalwebs.php> in January for links to these locations. You may also link to these journals by using the "Upstate Journals" feature on the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/>.

Thank You All!

The SUNY Upstate Health Sciences Library thanks all the thoughtful and generous people and organizations who made gifts to our collections in 2003. We are especially grateful in these times of budget cuts and uncertainty:

Without such supporters our Library could not perform at its best. Gifts enlarge and enhance the services we can offer in this age of shrinking budgets. The Library deeply appreciates all sorts of donations to help its mission of supporting Upstate in teaching, research, and patient care.

• To donate recent books or journals, please contact the Collection Development Librarian, Rosemarie Bundy, 464-7109 or <bundyr@upstate.edu>.
• To donate rare, scarce, "old," or historical books, journals, instruments, or artifacts, please contact the Curator of Historical Collections, Eric Luft, 464-4585 or <lufte@upstate.edu>.
• To donate consumer health or patient education materials, including videos, handouts, newsletters, etc., please contact the Head of the Health Information Center, Jim Capodagli, 464-4410 or <hic@upstate.edu>.
• To donate money, please contact the Director of the Library, Cristina Pope, 464-4582 or <popec@upstate.edu>.

Your donation may be tax deductible. Check with your accountant or attorney.

RefWorks -- Organization at Your Fingertips

• Is compiling bibliographies painful?
• Are you overwhelmed with reprints?
• Starting a new research project?
• Or just thinking about becoming more organized?

The Health Sciences Library has acquired a site license to RefWorks, the next generation of information managers. RefWorks is a Web-based bibliography and database manager that allows you to create your own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases.

The program can be used on PC or Macintosh computers. Being Web-based, RefWorks can be accessed anywhere there is an Internet connection. Program capabilities include:

• Importing directly from many online services' databases, including Ovid MEDLINE, PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Science Direct, and Web of Science.
• Importing files from Endnote, Procite, and Reference Manager.
• Creating bibliographies using many journal styles as well as American Medical Association (AMA) and American Psychological Association (APA) formats.
• "Write-N-Cite," a feature that lets you insert references into your paper as you write.
• Identifying duplicate references.
• Organizing project folders.
• And much, much more!

Dates and times for hands-on instructional sessions in the Computer Classroom, Room 220, 2nd Floor, Media Services, Health Sciences Library, are:

Sign up by calling Bette Jean at 464-7192 or e-mail her at <inguib@upstate.edu>.

New Resource for Internists -- PIER

What is PIER?

The Physician's Information and Education Resource (PIER), a product of the American College of Physicians (ACP), is a Web-based information support tool, delivering immediate, comprehensive, up-to-date guidance to physicians. Unlike bibliographic databases such as Medline, which typically provide only citations, abstracts, and sometimes links to full text, PIER is a self-contained full text system. Its content is organized around six modules:

Searching in PIER is modeled on the way clinicians think through cases. Each module addresses a common problem in internal medicine and provides recommendations in ten subcategories for each disease:

Robert G. Badgett and Cynthia D. Mulrow gave PIER a glowing review in Annals of Internal Medicine 2002 Apr 2;136(7):553-4.

Benefits of PIER

• Easy to navigate and timesaving.
• Layered content that permits quick access to management guidelines or drilling down to pertinent research and supporting rationale.
• Recommendations with letter grades to indicate strength of supporting evidence.
• Synthesizes large amounts of data and information for busy clinicians.
• Regularly updated with new evidence and reports.

Access to PIER

PIER is part of the Library's subscription to the STAT!Ref database. STAT!Ref, described in the Spring and Summer 2000 issue of the Synapse and accessible at <online.statref.com/default.asp?grpalias=suny>, is an encyclopedic reference library for clinicians, providing online access to over thirty well known medical texts and drug manuals, including Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult, Mosby's Drug Consult, and DSM-IV.

STAT!Ref allows users to choose between searching across all titles at once (i.e., "cross-searching") or searching only under a specific title. Although PIER can be cross-searched as an integrated part of STAT!Ref, users can more easily take advantage of its structure and functionality by clicking on the PIER icon and searching it independently.

To access STAT!Ref and PIER, visit the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/>. Under Quick Links, select the second pull-down menu, called "E-Books & E-Journals," then select STAT!Ref. PIER will be your first selection on the menu of resources. It can be used off campus by first logging in to the Library's LEAP system.

Let SFX Find Full Text for You

You have located an article in one of the library databases that is exactly what you need, but you are presented with nothing more than an abstract ... Wouldn't it be great if you could just click on a button to see if it is available in full text from another database? It turns out that you can by using SFX, a new service that the Library has recently implemented.

SFX provides links from an article citation in one database to the full text of the article in another wherever possible, but unfortunately not all documents are available electronically yet. The service has been integrated into many of the databases in the Library, including Ovid, ProQuest, EbscoHost, InfoTrac (including the Heath Reference Center), and ScienceDirect.

To use SFX, begin a search as you normally would. Look for an SFX icon or text link within the search results. The SFX hyperlink will open a new window containing a menu of search results. Choosing an option from the SFX menu will open another new window offering access to the full-text article. Keep in mind that because the program is generating new windows, options that prevent pop-ups (in applications such as Netscape 7.x, Opera, and the Google Toolbar) must be disabled before using SFX.

Do you have an article citation but not know which database might provide full text? A component of SFX, Citation Linker <sfx.sunyconnect.suny.edu:4360/citation/upssfx>, will search the participating databases. If Citation Linker does not find full text, please also check "Upstate Journals" on the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/> to see if the Library has that title in print or as part of an online service that is not yet under SFX.

To learn more about this service, please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page in the Library Web site at <www.upstate.edu/library/sfx/> or e-mail <AskaLibrarian@upstate.edu>.

Library Welcomes Two New Clerks

Robert Wells joined the Library staff in May 2003 as the new Serials Clerk. Robert, who prefers to be called Bob, has resided in Auburn all his life. Bob is a transfer from the New York State DMV in Rochester and North Syracuse. He says, "After spending the last thirteen years at the DMV, the Health Sciences Library will be a welcome change of pace and hopefully much more quiet."

Welcome, Bob!

Cheryl Clancy, an Upstate employee since 1990, is the new Collection Development Clerk starting January 5, 2004. Originally from Rochester, she recently worked in Clinical Practice Analysis and before that in the Outpatient Billing Department of the Fiscal Services Division. She writes, "I am looking forward to working in the Library."

Welcome, Cheryl!

Notice

When former Director Sue Murray conceived the Synapse in 1995, she wanted primarily to herald our new state-of-the-art Library building, to publicize its facilities, innovations, and capabilities. As there was a lot of news to get out in a short time, the Synapse began as a bimonthly newsletter. After we moved into the new building in December 1995, dedicated it in April 1996, and became more familiar with it, the need for news was less frequent. Thus the Synapse appeared as a quarterly newsletter from 1996 until Spring 2003.

Even though the Synapse always had an electronic version, it began when print newsletters were still the norm. The high-speed, broadband World Wide Web with graphic user interface (GUI) was not yet commonplace. The earliest electronic versions of the Synapse appeared on the Internet as Gopher text files -- rather primitive by today's standards.

Much of the original purpose of the Synapse is now being better served by the "News & Updates" feature of the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/>. We urge you to check this site regularly for up-to-the-minute information about databases, holdings, and other Library products and services that can help you make the most of your research, teaching, studying, convalescence, or patient care, in the easiest and friendliest way. That's what modern medical libraries are all about.

From now on, the Synapse will appear twice a year, in the spring and fall, and will contain only the kind of information that does not have to appear "instantly." The new schedule for the Synapse does not mean that there is less Library news to spread. On the contrary, there is more and more, and changes in what the Library offers are ever more rapid. A print quarterly simply cannot keep up with it. By the time the news appears, it is no longer "news."

The Online Synapse Has a New URL

Starting with this issue, the home page of the electronic version of the Synapse will no longer be <www.upstate.edu/library/history/synapse.html>. Instead, go to <www.upstate.edu/library/synapse/> or follow the "Library Publications" link from the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/>.

Back issues of the Synapse are fully indexed and available at <www.upstate.edu/library/synapse/archive.php>.

For Consumers and Patients: HIC News

New Streaming Videos and Consumer Health Handouts

Streaming video has now come to the HIC Web site in the form of streaMed^tm, a product of the wired.MD^tm company. The HIC Web site will feature five different health topics each month, on a rotating basis. The first month features the following:

1. Diabetes Type 2
2. Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD)
3. Obstructive Sleep Apnea
4. Sinusitis
5. Lumbar Disk Disease

Many of these videos are available in several languages, such as Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese. They are available freely on the Web without restrictions. Users need either the Quick Time Plug-in or Windows Media Player for viewing. Visit the HIC home page each month for five new videos.

Also through wired.MD, fifty health and disease topics are available in a printer-friendly format.

Health News

A column on the lower right side of the HIC home page features links to "Health News," important developments from CNN, ABC, BBC, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, etc. updated several times a day.

New Links

Available at the Consumer Health Links Page <www.upstate.edu/library/healthinfo/hic_links.php>:

• Household Products Database <hpd.nlm.nih.gov>. From the Specialized Information Services of the National Library of Medicine. "links over 4,000 consumer brands to health effects from Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS)." The database provides information on chemical ingredients, acute/chronic effects, carcinogenicity, and proper handling and disposal. In addition to searching for a specific brand, the user may browse by household categories.
• NIH Senior Health <nihseniorhealth.gov.>. Offers great adaptability for the user with selections for enlarging text, changing the contrast, and speech. The entire Web site can be narrated for the user. Many health topics of special interest to older adults are available here.

Recent Community Outreach Events

• Participation in the 2003 annual Health and Screening Fair held at the Institute for Human Performance.
• Presentation at a session of the Breast Cancer Survivor group at HealthLink, Shoppingtown Mall.
• Presentation at the "I Can Cope" series held at HealthLink.
• Participation in OASIS Senior Celebration Day at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo.

New Eldercare and Caregiving Books

• Joan Carson Breitung, The Eldercare Sourcebook (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2002).
• The Fearless Caregiver: How to Get the Best Care for Your Loved One and Still Have a Life of Your Own, edited by Gary Barg (Sterling, Va.: Capital Books, 2003).
• Richard W. Roukema, What Every Patient, Family, Friend, and Caregiver Needs to Know About Psychiatry -- 2nd edition -- (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric, 2003).
• Frena Gray-Davidson, The Caregiver's Sourcebook (Chicago: Contemporary Books,2002).

Julia Boyd Speaks on Elizabeth Blackwell

In collaboration with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, which hosted the event, the Department of Historical Collections arranged Julia Boyd's "'Doctress' Elizabeth Blackwell: A Remarkable Transatlantic Pioneer" on June 3, 2003, as the Eighth Health Sciences Library Lecture. A packed seminar room warmly received her talk.

Julia Boyd is an English historian affiliated with the Fitzwilliam Museum and Churchill College, both at the University of Cambridge. Elizabeth Blackwell, the world's first woman to receive openly a regular M.D. degree by completing a full course of study at an accredited medical school, is Upstate's most distinguished graduate. Even though Blackwell was English and lived mostly in England, previous studies of her life and work have concentrated on what she did in America. Boyd's current project is therefore to fill a gap in the literature by writing a biography of Blackwell from a British perspective. Boyd writes that Blackwell's "relationship with the emerging women's movement is fascinatingly ambiguous, as indeed is her relationship to scientific medicine."

A Name to Know

Kathy Hughes, Reference Librarian and liaison to local hospitals, returned from a conference on hospital administration and governance very enthusiastic about a particular author, Russell C. Coile, whom a speaker had praised. She asked Collection Development to purchase some of his newer titles because they are not only well structured and thoroughly researched but also futuristic, outlining forecasts and evaluations of health trends and health care reforms. The Library already owned three of Coile's earlier works. We bought two more and a sixth is on order:

• The New Hospital: Future Strategies for a Changing Industry (1986). WX 157 C679n 1986
• The New Medicine: Reshaping Medical Practice and Health Care Management (1990). W 84 AA1 C58n 1990
• The New Governance: Strategies for an Era of Health Reform (1994). WX 150 C679n 1994
• The Five Stages of Managed Care: Strategies for Providers, HMOs, and Suppliers (1997). In process.
• New Century Healthcare: Strategies for Providers, Purchasers, and Plans (2000). In process.
• The Paperless Hospital (2002). On order.

Rosemarie Bundy
Head, Collection Development
464-7109 or <bundyr@upstate.edu>

PLoS Biology -- A New Open-Access Journal

PloS Biology is a new online journal freely available on the Internet to read, download, print, distribute, and reuse, as long as proper author attribution is made. Its publisher, the Public Library of Science (PLoS), plans to launch a series of top quality open-access science journals in order to improve access to research and speed the rate of scientific discovery.

Like traditional scientific journals with high standards, PloS Biology submits manuscripts to a thorough peer review process by recognized experts. The PloS business model, however, is new. Instead of charging subscription fees to individuals and institutions, PloS asks its authors to pay $1500.00 per article to cover the costs of peer review, editorial oversight, and production. In most cases this cost will be covered by the institutions or funding agencies sponsoring the research. Using this model, content will be available immediately and without restriction.

PLoS Biology can be accessed from the "Upstate Journals" link on the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/>. PLoS Biology and background about PLoS can also be found at http://www.plosbiology.org.

Scientific and scholarly communities are increasingly interested in regaining some control over scientific publishing, and PloS Biology is a step forward in that direction.

Track Down New Journal Issues and New Books

Is the latest issue of a journal here yet?
What are the newest books received in the Library?

You can now answer these questions instantly using advanced features of the Upstate Catalog. To find out if the current issue of a journal has been received:

1. Click the "Upstate Catalog" button in left panel of the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/>
2. Scroll down to the box labeled "Search for Journal or Serial Title"
3. Type journal name and hit "Go"
4. When correct record is found, click "Availability" button
5. Latest issue received will be at top of list

To see the latest Library book or audiovisual acquisitions:

1. Click the "Upstate Catalog" button in left panel of the Library home page <www.upstate.edu/library/>
2. Select "Advanced Search" option at top
3. Enter topic, e.g., cancer, then hit "Go"
4. Select "Filter" option at top of screen
5. Choose "Created after date"
6. Enter desired year/month/day as indicated
7. Catalog records created since that date will display

Questions? Please visit or call the Library Reference Desk at 464-4581.