Monday 27 April 2015

May Day bank holiday closure

All the Libraries will be unstaffed on Monday the 4th of May for the bank holiday.

May Day Celebrations at Xeuilley 1624-25 www.metmuseum.org
24 hour access is available as usual to our registered members by swiping in using your library card at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries.

We reopen as normal on Tuesday the 5th at all of our sites.

Thursday 23 April 2015

Loan laptops

We are having the operating system on our loan laptops upgraded. Accordingly IT will be picking them up on the 5th of May to do the work.

They will be out of action for approximately 2 weeks, but we should have them back with us and ready to loan again by Monday the 18th of May from the Berrywood and Richmond libraries.

Apologies for the inconvenience, but the upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 is essential.

Monday 20 April 2015

Clinical Key has arrived.

We have been very lucky to secure a year's subscription to Clinical Key, thanks to generous funding from the Northamptonshire Health Charitable Fund. It is produced by Elsevier who publish the Lancet and a wealth of well known medical books such as Kumar & Clark's Clinical Medicine.

Clinical Key is a versatile search engine backed by a huge amount of full text electronic content. It can be used at the point of care for fast overviews, or for more in-depth research or study, making it a valuable resource for consultants, doctors, students, nurses and other clinicians.

www.clinicalkey.com
Unlike a normal search engine, Clinical Key's smart search is designed to find answers very quickly and to think like a clinician. When you search it recognises relevant clinical concepts, giving you a short cut to the information you need.

You can also filter your search by types of content, books, journal articles, videos etc.

Search results will often lead you to a disease topic page where you will get an overview, including definition, diagnostics, differential diagnosis, imaging and treatment.

Clinical Key contains:
  • 1,400 topic pages
  • Over 600 electronic journals 
  • Over 1000 electronic books
  • 850 First Consult monographs
  • 17,000 + medical / surgical videos
  • 300 + Procedures Consult videos
  • 15,000 patient education handouts
  • 2.2 million images
  • You can find a full content list here
As well as reading them online, individual articles (and some book chapters) can be downloaded as .PDF files 

Whilst there is no app, Clinical Key is optimised for mobile devices and will work well with the browser on your tablet or phone.

You will also be able to find the full text journal content from Clinical Key when you use HDAS to search the databases (e.g. Medline or the British Nursing Index) on the NICE Evidence Services site.

To access Clinical Key all you need is your OpenAthens password (register online here if you don't have one) to get started.

Clinical Key is a fantastic easy to use resource, full of high quality information from world recognised sources (and if you do get stuck there is a user guide here).

At the end of our subscription in March 2016 we will be evaluating how much usage Clinical Key has had and deciding whether to fund an ongoing subscription from the Library's budget, so now is your change to try it out and let us know what you think.


Northamptonshire Health Charitable Fund

Friday 17 April 2015

Disruption to OpenAthens services Saturday the 18th April

The providers of OpenAthens will be conducting some maintenance on the service between 8am and 10 am on Saturday the 18th of April.

During this time there could be some disruption and you may have problems accessing online resources.

Friday 10 April 2015

April 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 April issue
 you can find:
  • Social integration and the risk of suicide in men
  • Surgical versus non-surgical treatment for fracture of the heel
  • Improving cardiovascular disease through networks of general practices
  • Antibiotics in fetal and early life and subsequent childhood asthma
  • Detecting atrial fibrillation in people who have had a stroke
There are also new Evidence Updates highlighting new information worth considering along side current guidance:
You can find subscribe to receive the bulletin by email on the NICE Evidence Services site.

Wednesday 1 April 2015

Web site of the month: OpenLearn

OpenLearn provides access to all of the free elearning modules and material provided by the Open University.
www.open.edu/openlearn/

The site contains over 800 free courses, as well as video, audio and other learning materials. There are a large selection of health related courses with topics covered including:

  • Ageing
  • Family health
  • Mental health
  • Public health
  • Healthcare computing and data

Other relevant topics covered include:

OpenLearn also has cultural, arts, language environmental, science, politics and finance courses.

To access OpenLearn you will first need to create a free account via a simple online registration process, but once you have done that you can access all of the OU's free content. 

OpenLearn is a really useful source of free educational material, whether with a work focus or more for personal interest, the site is well worth a look.