New books in December....

Come and see our new books

Find out what we have added to stock in the last month via our new books list.

This month we have new books on a variety of topics including:

• Anaesthesia
• Child health
• Health services management 
• MCQs and exam aids
• Research and statistics
• Urology
• ...and more

Don't forget, we also have a small collection of donated fiction titles if you would like something less work related to read.

We are always happy to have recommendations of titles to buy for the library collections. We also have the December books on approval service where you can view a selection of the latest publications on subjects across the health care spectrum at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries and recommend any you would like us to purchase.

Christmas opening at the libraries

The Berrywood and Richmond libraries will be open until Christmas Eve. They will both be staffed from Friday the 27th of December until Tuesday the 31st. They will reopen on Thursday the 2nd of January.

24 hour access will be available to registered users as normal throughout the Christmas period.

The library at Isebrook Hospital will be open until Christmas Eve and then close over the Christmas break. Please contact one of the other libraries if you require any help during this period. Isebrook will reopen on Monday the 6th of January.

We would like to wish you a very happy Christmas and hope you have a good new year. We look forward to seeing you in 2014.

December Eyes on Evidence from NICE

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly bulletin from NICE Evidence Services which reviews significant new evidence as it emerges and what this might mean for current practice.

In the December issue you can find:

• Family presence during cardiopulmonary resuscitation
• Men's health interventions in football clubs
• Corticosteroids in exacerbations of COPD 
• Sacrocolpopexy with Burch colposuspension in pelvic organ prolapse
• Women's perspectives on overdiagnosis in screening for breast cancer
• Acute cough in adults and managing patient expectations in antibiotic prescribing 
• QIPP case study - Saving money and increasing quality by improving referral practice through peer-reviewed referral management 

You can find all the previous issues of Eyes on Evidence or subscribe to receive the bulletin by email on the NICE Evidence Services site.

New videos available on our YouTube channel

We've recently added two new short videos to our YouTube channel.

Creating alerts to newly published articles shows you how to use the NHS databases (HDAS) to set up an automatic alert that will email you when new articles are added on a topic of your choice. It's a really useful feature that makes it easy to keep up with new publications on almost any health related subject.

De-duplicating search results shows you how to remove duplicate articles from your search results in HDAS when using more than one database.

These new videos are in addition to the titles already available which include:

• Registering for an NHS Athens password
• Logging in and selecting a database
• Doing a simple search
• Saving your search results
• Using the clipboard to bring together results from different databases into a single document

You can even  follow the whole literature searching process from start to finish by using our play list.

Website of the month: the National Elf Service

Produced by Minervation, the National Elf Service is a collection of web sites aimed at health professionals and is a really useful resource for keeping up to date with the latest evidence and what it might mean for practice.

The elves (who are subject experts), find the latest high quality research, critically appraise it and then summarise the evidence in short, easy to read, blog style entries across a range of topics.

The current elf service is made up of:

The elves hard a work appraising evidence

• Commissioning Elf
• Dental Elf
• Diabetes Elf
• Education Elf
• Learning Disabilities
• Lifestyle Elf
• Mental Elf
• Musculoskeletal Elf

You can sign up to receive email alerts for new content. You can follow all of the elves by RSS feed or FaceBook and they are also very active on Twitter.

The National Elf Service is a great site for keeping up to date with the latest high quality research evidence, which has already been appraised for quality and summarised into "bite size" pieces. Highly recommended.

Large new collection of electronic journals added to the Library's electronic resources

The Library Service has just invested in a subscription to Medline Full Text from EBSCO. This has given you access to an additional 1,470 electronic journal titles.

The titles cover the whole range of medical, nursing and health care disciplines (if you want to see the full list you can find it here) and include both UK and international publications.

You can access all these titles (and all of our other ejournals) in two different ways:

• If you know the journal title you are interested in, go to the NICE Evidence Services Journals page. You can browse or search for the title you are interested in and access the full text content from there.
• If you want to search by subject, you can do so on the NICE Evidence Services Databases page. All of our e-journals are linked into the databases so whenever your search bring up an article we hold electronically, a simple click should take you through to the full text. 

If you need help with database searching we offer training courses and also have a selection of short videos on YouTube to guide you through the process. We can also undertake a search on your behalf.

To access either of these resources you will need to have an Athens password. NHFT and NGH users can obtain one by registering online here. If you need help with registering see our brief YouTube video.

We hope you find this excellent new resource useful.

Go Christmas book shopping with our money

We have taken delivery of our Christmas selection of books on approval. Our on approvals scheme gives you the chance to come into the Berrywood or Richmond libraries and browse through a selection of brand new titles and recommend any you would like us to buy and add to our stock.

What could be better than Christmas shopping without any credit card hangovers (even if it is work related)?

What do you want to read in 2014?

Our current selection will be available until the 3rd of January and includes titles on:

• Cardiovascular medicine
• CBT
• Communication skills
• Leadership and management
• Nursing - adult and psychiatric
• Paediatrics 
• Pharmacology
• Psychiatry and psychology
• Public health
• Surgery

Of course we are always happy to have recommendations for other items of stock on any health related topic.

You can also find a list of titles we have recently purchased (including previous on approval items) on our web site, and all of our stock via our catalogue.

November Eyes on Evidence from NICE

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly bulletin from NICE Evidence Services  which reviews significant new evidence as it emerges and what this may mean for current practice.

In the November issue you can find:

• Bias reporting of randomised controlled trials in breast cancer
• Prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers
• Intermittent pneumatic compression for deep vein thrombosis in patients with stroke
• Passive smoking and meningococcal disease in children and young people
• Minimally invasive surgery for gastro-oesophogeal reflux disease 
• Evidence update on urinary tract infections in children 

You can find all the previous issues of Eyes on Evidence and subscribe by email on the NICE Evidence Services site.

Find more information on our upgraded catalogue

More detail now available

We have just upgraded the our catalogue to give you more information when you search.

As well as finding the usual bibliographic details of all of our book stock (author, title etc.), you will now find an image of the book's cover (which is handy when looking for it on the shelves).

In addition to the covers, most titles now have a descriptive summary included which will give you a good idea of the book's content. Some records also include details of the author(s) and tables of contents too. Just click on "A Look Inside" to see all the details.

We hope it will make finding the information you need a little easier.

Library information skills programme for 2014

"If only I'd done the library training..."

Need to find some information to inform your practice? Need to make a decision but can't find the evidence? Found the evidence but not sure of it's validity? We can help.

All of our training programme dates for 2014 are now available on the Library's web site.

Our courses are free to access for staff and attached students from Northamptonshire Healthcare and Northampton General Hospital.

Our courses are aimed at both clinicians and managers who want to be able to find and use the best possible evidence to support their decision making.

The courses run at a variety of locations including the Berrywood and Northampton General hospitals, as well as Bevan House in Kettering.

Evidence for Health is a great introduction to finding high quality health information on the Internet. The course is totally hands on and takes in sites such as NICE Evidence Services and TRIP, as well as looking at more advanced searching options in Google.

If you need to find journal articles our Literature Searching course can help. This will enable you to effectively search healthcare databases such as Medline, the British Nursing Index and HMIC (healthcare management) to find the information you need and even retrieve full text electronic journal articles.

"The confidence interval you say?"

Of course, once you have found the information you need to know how to assess it and our Critical Appraisal skills workshops can help.

Our Introduction to Critical Appraisal will give you a basic understanding of the terminology and process, whilst our highly interactive Critical Appraisal in Action session gives you the opportunity to appraise a piece of research in a group facilitated by a librarian. 

It doesn't end with our published programme though. We can also create a tailored session for your department and can also do one to one sessions if you can't make any of our dates, and we can even come to you. Please contact us if you would like to arrange a session.

Problem with the thesaurus in the CINAHL and Health Business Elite databases

Users of the CINAHL (nursing) and Health Business Elite databases on the NICE Evidence Services HDAS platform may have noticed a problem with using the thesaurus.

Currently if you click on a subject heading it may tell you that it could not be mapped. Free text searching is still working correctly.

The database supplier (EBSCO) are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it as soon as possible.

Web site of the month: Our YouTube Channel!

We know it's hard to find the time to come on a workshop (but if you can we run a programme of different information skills training workshops) or you may only need a refresher on how to do something specific.

We have created our own YouTube channel and have developed some very short training videos to help get you through the process of searching the healthcare databases to find information.

Our current videos cover:

• Registering for an Athens account
• How to log in to HDAS and select the right database
• Conducting a simple search
• Saving your search results
• Using the clipboard to save search results from multiple databases

Each video if fully illustrated with screen recordings and step-by-step instructions. They are also "bite sized", mainly between 2 and 3 minutes long and are even suitable for use while you are trying to search.

We will be developing more videos over time, and would love to have your feedback on what we have done so far and if there are any other topics you would like to see us cover.

European Antibiotic Awareness Day resources

18th of November

The European Antibiotic Awareness Day is an annual event, running on the 18th of November, designed to raise awareness of the threat of antibiotic resistance and to encourage best practice in antibiotic use (you can find the Department of Health's Antimicrobial Strategy 2013-2018 here).

The Department of Health has produced a number of resources for use in conjunction with European Antibiotic Day for both primary and secondary care.

Among the general items available are:

• A briefing with key messages
• Posters aimed at patients
• A leaflet
• Quizzes and crosswords
• Case studies in antimicrobal stewardship

There are also:

• Resources specific to secondary care including a prescribers check list and posters
• Resources specific to primary care including a web banner and the target antibiotics tool kit

You can also find a number of short videos on YouTube that could be used in waiting rooms and other public areas to deliver the message (the audio from these is also available for download as an MP3 file).

October Eyes on Evidence from NICE

 Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly bulletin from NICE Evidence Services  which reviews significant new evidence as it emerges and what this may mean for current practice.

In the October issue you can find:

Training in patient-centred clinical consultations
A Cochrane review notes that training in patient-centred approaches for healthcare professionals may have positive effects on patients' experiences of consultation processes.

Increased risk of venous thromboembolism with glucocorticoid use
A Danish case-control study finds that use of glucocorticoids is associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism.

Weight in pregnancy and risk of operative delivery
A cohort study shows that women who gain large amounts of weight during pregnancy are at increased risk of needing operative delivery.

Advanced airway management after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest
A prospective population study suggests that, compared with bag-valve-mask ventilation, advanced airway management is associated with lower rates of favourable neurological outcomes after out-of hospital cardiac arrest.

Physical activity and behaviour during school break times in British white and Pakistani girls aged 9–11 years
A study suggests that British Pakistani girls may be less active than British white girls during school break times.

Evidence Updates
NICE has recently published Evidence Updates on:

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Local health profiles for 2013 published

Public Health England have published details of the local health profiles for England. The profiles give a snapshot of health related issues for each county and local authority area.

There are also interactive maps on the site that show a number of different indicators, down to district level (and a guide is available to help you get the most from them).

Within each profile you can find information on:

• Social issues, including deprivation, crime education levels
• Children & young people's health, including alcohol, obesity and teenage pregnancy
• Adult health and lifestyle
• Disease and poor health
• Life expectancy and causes of death

You can find all the profiles for the different areas of Northamptonshire here.

Web site of the month: Scirus

www.scirus.com

Scirus is a search engine that is purely focused on scientific information. It filters out non-scientific information, allowing you to conduct a much more focused search than you could on a general search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo.

With an index covering over 575 million items it allows users to search for journal content, but also the wider internet including web sites, course information, institutions and more.

Scirus also has a number of really useful search tools, particularly in the advanced search option, including:

• Search by subject areas, including medicine, psychology and life sciences
• Search for authors, journals or articles or other types of information
• Search by date range
• Boolean search (AND, OR, ANDNOT)
• Wildcard searching
• Automatic spellchecking of search terms
• Refine and even save your searches
• Display results by relevance or date
• Email or export your results

If you are looking on the Internet for science based information, Scirus is a great starting point...

Withdrawal of funding for Library Services for primary care & commissioning staff

Following the closure of the PCT, the successor commissioning organisations have decided not to continue to fund the Library Service for staff in primary care/general practice, commissioning or public health, given the financial constraints they are under.   We understand this decision has already been communicated to commissioning staff, and it was approved by the LMC on behalf of GP Practices.

Given the decision to cease funding the service, sadly we are unable to continue to provide it at no cost.

The service will cease to be available for new requests from the 1st of October.  GP or Commissioning staff who have items on loan from us will be able to keep them until the due date (even if this is after the 1st of October). Likewise we will honour any requests for information or training already received, but will not be able to take on new work after the end of this month.

We will also be withdrawing access to all locally funded electronic resources that we previously provided via Athens. GP and Commissioning staff will still be able to access some material (including databases) through the national core content list which is purchased for all NHS staff in England, but the majority of resources will no longer be available after the service is withdrawn.

If you have any queries about, or wish to discuss this decision, please contact the LMC in the first instance (enquiries@northantslmc.co.uk).

NHS England in their CCG Bulletin on the 11th of July  stated that Libraries “are an integral part of the core business of the NHS” (see item 16), so we would be willing to discuss arrangements for individual organisations within the county who were interested in preserving access to the Library Service for their staff.

New books for you to try before we buy

This one is rather jolly splendid...

We are very keen to ensure that the books we buy are the books you want to read. We review catalogues, look at publicity from publishers, scan reading lists and peruse different web sites to try and find titles we think you might need.

What we like best though, is recommendations from our users.  Our Books on Approval scheme means we have a collection of new publications sent directly from our supplier which are available for you to review.

The current selection includes subjects such as:

• Anaesthetics 
• Counselling and psychotherapy
• Diabetes
• Eating disorders
• Healthcare law
• Nursing management
• Oncology
• Psychiatry and psychology
• and many more...

You can find the current on approval books at both the Berrywood and Richmond Libraries and we would be happy to buy any of the titles you think we should have in stock.

You can also find a list of titles we have recently purchased (including previous on approval items) on our web site, and all of our stock via our catalogue.

Stoptober 2013

Following on from the success of last year (where 160,000 people completed the challenge), the 2013 Stoptober campaign was launched on the 9th of September.

The campaign aims to persuade people to quit smoking for 28 days, starting on the 1st of October. Smokers who succeed for 28 days are five times as likely to stay smoke free after, and Stoptober has a step-by-step programme to achieve this.

Health professionals can find lots of resources in support of the campaign on the NHS Smokefree Resource Centre including, posters, leaflets, email signature banners and more.

Smokers themselves can find lots of useful things on the Stoptober site including a free support pack. You can also get daily text support or download the interactive Stoptober mobile app. You can even sign up to get daily emails full of useful tips and advice.

You can also find Stoptober on Twitter.

September Eyes on Evidence from NICE

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly bulletin from NICE Evidence Services  which reviews significant new evidence as it emerges and what this may mean for current practice.

In the September issue you can find:

Effects of human papillomavirus vaccination
Surveillance data from Australia suggests a reduced incidence of genital warts following the introduction of vaccination against human papillomavirus for girls and young women.

Drug treatments for restless legs syndrome
A meta-analysis shows that, compared with placebo, pramipexole, ropinirole, rotigotine, gabapentin  enacarbil and pregabalin improve symptoms in people with long-term moderate to severe primary restless legs syndrome.

Effects of loneliness and social isolation on mortality in older people
A longitudinal study finds that social isolation and loneliness in older people may be associated with increased all-cause mortality.

Thromboembolism during pregnancy after in vitro fertilisation
An observational study suggests that the risk of thromboembolism after in vitro fertilisation is low but persists into the first trimester of pregnancy.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: new information and warnings about cardiovascular risk
A meta-analysis notes that COX-2 inhibitors and diclofenac are associated with increased incidence of  major vascular events.

Acupuncture for seasonal allergic rhinitis
A randomised controlled trial suggests that acupuncture for seasonal allergic rhinitis may improve disease-specific quality of life and reduce use of antihistamines.

Case study from the Quality, Improvement, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) collection

• Safety Express – a national pilot to deliver harm-free care

Need something new to read?

Find out what we've added to stock in the last month via our new books list.

This month the topics covered include:

• Anatomy and physiology
• Cardiology
• Community care
• Management
• Mental health
• Nursing
• Research
• Speech therapy
• ...and many more

You can even find a small collection of fiction titles that have been recently donated to the library if you like your reading to be less work related.

Don't forget we are always pleased to have recommendations for titles to buy for the library's collections, and you still have time to peruse our books on approval selection and let us know if we should purchase any of those...

New dates available on our course for staff who are studying

We've added three new dates to our Pre-course Course programme, aimed at NHS Staff who are about to start (or may have already started) new studies.

You may already be confident in using the library and finding the information you need, but if not this course will help you get ahead of the information skills game.

There will also be an opportunity to join the library and apply for an Athens account to access online journals and databases if you haven't already.

The new dates are:

• Tuesday the 15th October, 9.3- 12.30, Northampton General Hospital
• Monday the 11th November, 1.30 - 4.30, Berrywood Hospital
• Monday the 2nd December, 1.30 - 4.30, Northampton General Hospital

For more information see the course page on our web site.

Upgrade to Healthcare Databases Advanced Search on the 3rd of September

Following a number of performance issues with the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) on the NICE Evidence Search site, there will be a new release, scheduled for Tuesday the 3rd of September.

There is liable to be some disruption to the service between 5 and 6 pm while this rolled out and users may want to avoid using HDAS during this time.

After the upgrade you will notice a number of small changes to the way HDAS works, all of which are aimed at improving it's performance and reliability.

Web site of the month: University of Northampton Skills Hub

The Skills Hub is produced by the University of Northampton's Library and Learning Services. It aims to provide support to anyone undertaking further study by helping the development of academic skills.

http://skillshub.northampton.ac.uk/

On the Skills Hub you will find lots of useful material including:

• Interactive guides to Harvard referencing, including quizzes to test your knowledge
• Video tutorials on using the statistics package SPSS 
• Video guides on academic writing
• Interactive tutorials on critical thinking
• Guide and video to reflecting writing
• Time management and note taking tips, and more.
• Guides for UoN students on using the Library (including a virtual tour), using TurnItIn and more

You can also follow the latest developments on the site via the Skills Hub Twitter feed.

Most of the material on the Skills Hub is open access and we highly recommend it for anyone undertaking a course of further study, whether at the University of Northampton or beyond (and don't forget, if you are about to start a course of study we can help too).

Grab yourself a bargain! Book sale starts 2nd of September

We are having a sale of recently withdrawn stock at the Richmond and Berrywood libraries starting on Monday the 2nd of September.

On offer will be a variety of titles including previous editions of current text books and other items covering lots of different topics and disciplines.

Costing just £1 or £2 each, you could find some real bargains. Everything must go!

DuckDuckGo - a great alternative to Google

When people think of Internet searching they often just think of Google, but there are some alternatives that offer their own advantages.

DuckDuckGo (DDG) is just as easy to use as Google, but does a number of things in quite different ways that make it worth considering as an alternative.

• Anonymity DDG does not track your searches (in the way some other search engines do) or store any personal information about you, so you won't find adverts following you around from site to site based on your previous searches.

• Avoid the filter bubble Many search engines give you search results based on your previous search history, FaceBook likes, etc. You'll see more of the things you have shown an interest in and less of things you haven't (see here for a fuller explanation). This level of personalisation can be useful, but can also get in the way of finding the information you need. DDG does not collect your preferences and therefore gives you results that are just based on your search terms.

• Customisable You can change a lot of the setting in DDG to suit you. From the font and colour, layout, through to the regions it searches, safe searching, and even opening your results in a new tab. These settings can be saved anonymously in the cloud.

• Search functionality DDG works as you would expect, you put in the search terms and it ranks them by relevance. You can also do phrase searching, use operators like AND or OR and sort your results by date, or limit to a country. DDG will also give you links to perform the same search on other sites.

• Advance searching DDG has a feature called !bang syntax. Just type in your search term, then a ! followed by the site you want to search (e.g. depression !nhs.uk) and it will only return results from that site. You can also use brackets to group your terms together for more sophisticated searches e.g. (policy OR guideline).

To find out more about DDG there is a short video on their site, or you could have a go at using it! It is a strong contender as an alternative to Google, Yahoo or Bing and well worth a look.

August bank holiday closure

All of the libraries will be closed on Monday the 26th of August for the bank holiday.

24 hour access is available as usual to registered members by swiping in using your library card at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries.

We reopen as normal at all of our sites on Tuesday the 27th.

August Eyes on Evidence from NICE

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly bulletin from NICE Evidence Services  which reviews significant new evidence as it emerges and what this may mean for current practice.

In the August issue you can find:

Improvements in outcomes for extremely preterm babies
Cohort studies suggest that outcomes after extremely preterm birth have improved in the UK between 1995 and 2006.

Screening for type 2 diabetes
A cluster randomised controlled trial assessing screening for type 2 diabetes in general practices finds no benefit on all-cause mortality.

Deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease with early motor complications
A randomised controlled trial suggests that deep brain stimulation may improve quality of life in patients with Parkinson's disease and recent onset of motor complications.

The effects of printed computerised reminders in clinical practice
A Cochrane review suggests that computerised reminders printed out and delivered on paper may result in improvements to processes of care.

Fever in patients with cancer and low-risk neutropenia – oral antibiotic monotherapy versus dual therapy
A randomised controlled trial suggests equivalence of the oral antibiotic regimens of once daily moxifloxacin or twice daily ciprofloxacin plus co-amoxiclav for treating febrile neutropenia in patients with cancer who are at low risk of sepsis.

Use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) on discharge from hospital and 1-year mortality in older patients
An observational study notes that prescription of high-dose PPIs in older patients discharged from acute care hospitals may be associated with increased 1-year mortality.

Case studies from the Quality, Improvement, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) collection

• ThinkGlucose programme for diabetes inpatient care

Latest titles in stock

You can now see the list of titles we have added to our stock in the last month. The lists from the previous six months are also on the same page.

The topics covered in our latest set of acquisitions include:

• Accident and emergency
• Anatomy
• Training
• Health promotion
• Mental heath, psychology and psychiatry
• Surgery
• Nursing
• ...and many more

You can also help us to develop our collections by reviewing our Books on Approval selection, and we are always happy to have recommendations for things you think we should have...

PEDro - the physiotherapy database

PEDro is a free to access database covering physiotherapy. It is produced by the Centre for Evidence-Based Physiotherapy at the George Institute for Global health in Australia.

The database contains over 24,000 randomised controlled trials, systematic review and clinical practice guidelines, all relating to physiotherapy.

Each record contains a full reference and abstract, as well as a link to the full text where this is available. Each trial is quality assessed and rated to give users an indication of it's validity and usefulness in clinical practice.

PEDro offers a simple search option with a single search box, as well as an advanced search option with drop down menus to specify different search elements, such as type of therapy or body part, as well as the ability to limit by date or search particular fields (e.g. title or author).

PEDro advanced search

Also on PEDro are explanations on how the site works, how each item is quality assessed and tutorials on trial validity and clinical usefulness to help you get the most from the database.

Web site of the month: NIHR Journals Library

The National Institute for Health Research has launched its own collection of peer reviewed open access journals.

NIHR Journals Library

There are five titles which reflect five programmes of research currently being carried out by the NIHR.

The journals all provide free full text access and are fully searchable.

The titles currently available in the NHIR Journals Library are:

• Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation which publishes science driven studies which are expected to provide a substantial health or patient care gain
• Health Services and Delivery Research which focuses on evidence to improve the quality and organisation of health services.
• Health Technology Assessment publishes research information on the effectiveness, costs and broader impact of health technologies.
• Programme Grants for Applied Research publishes evidence aimed at improving health outcomes in England with practical application for the benefit of patients and the NHS in the relatively near future.
• Public Health Research features research on non-NHS interventions to improve public health and reduce health inequalities

The Journals Library also has a set of collections which focus on evidence on particular topics:

• Dementia
• Diabetes
• H1N1 pandemic flu research
• Obesity

You can also sign up to receive email notification of the latest publications, subscribe to an RSS feed or follow the NIHR on Twitter. 

NICE are also planning to link the titles from the collection into the NICE Evidence Search, the healthcare databases and the journals service in the future.