Diabetes, and one brief piece about meningitis (June 2008)
Bioinformatics (March 2008)
Medicine and Conflict (December 2007)
Open Access Foot and Mouth Disease (September 2007)
Drugs and pharmacology,
and National Knowledge Weeks (June 2007)
This page includes the 'Internet sites of Interest' column written by Keith Nockels for the HLG Newsletter. The Newsletter will continue to include the column in each issue.
From HLG Newsletter June 2008
DIABETES, AND ONE BRIEF PIECE ABOUT MENINGITIS
In 2005, almost 4.67% of the population of England had diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes (Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Observatory and National Diabetes Support Team, 2006). By 2010, this could rise to 5.5%. The WHO estimates that more than 180 million people worldwide have diabetes, a number likely to double by 2030. In 2005, an estimated 1.1 million people worldwide died from diabetes, with 80% of those deaths occurring in low or middle income countries (World Health Organization, 2006).
I am grateful to my colleague Sarah Sutton, Clinical Librarian for Diabetes (and many other things) at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, for suggesting some of the sites in this article. The final selection is, of course, mine. All links were checked on 8th May 2008.
American College of Physicians Diabetes Portal
http://diabetes.acponline.org/?hp
Resources for patients and families, and for health professionals.
American Diabetes Association
http://www.diabetes.org/home.jsp
Research, information and advocacy organisation. Planet D is for kids, there are resources for schools and teenagers, and much more.
BBC Health: Diabetes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/diabetes
/index.shtml. Includes categorised links to support organisations, and recipes and dietary information
British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes
http://www.bsped.org.uk/
Patient information and information for health professionals.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Diabetes Public Health Resource
http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/
Patient information, and information for professionals including data and trends.
Children with Diabetes
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/
Online community for children and families, based in Ohio, and started in 1995.
Diabetes nursing resource (RCN)
http://www.rcn.org.uk/development/practice/diabetes Information for nurses, patients and carers.
Diabetes Round Table
http://www.diabetesroundtable.com/
Diabetes information and CME. Sponsored site, but conforming to HON Code.
Diabetes Stories
http://www.diabetes-stories.co.uk/
Oral histories from patients diagnosed with diabetes between 1927 and 1997, website based at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (http://www.ocdem.com/index.php).
Diabetes Trials Unit
http://www.dtu.ox.ac.uk/
Large clinical trials unit, also based at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism. DTU site includes details of trials conducted there, and downloadable software for calculating risk of cardiovascular disease in individuals with diabetes, and for assessing total burden of disease for populations with diabetes.
Diabetes UK
http://www.diabetes.org.uk
Major UK research and campaigning organisation.
Genetic Landscape of Diabetes
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=diabetes.TOC&depth=1
Dated 2004, ebook hosted by NCBI and containing information on genetics of diabetes, along with links to related lectures.
International Diabetes Federation
http://www.idf.org/
Worldwide alliance of organisations, site includes data from the Diabetes Atlas, and a worldwide list of events.
Joslin Diabetes Center
http://www.joslin.org/index.htm
Site includes clinical guidelines, dietary information, resources for the newly diagnosed and a lot of information specific to this centre, affiliated to Harvard.
LeicestershireDiabetes.org.uk
http://www.leicestershirediabetes.org.uk/
From the Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, which aims to be a centre of excellence in the UK. Information for patients, including information on pregnancy and diabetes, and links to websites for children.
Medical Library Association: Deciphering diabetes medspeak
http://www.mlanet.org/pdf/diabetes1.pdf
Glossary compiled by the Medical Library Association, includes list of abbreviations used on prescriptions – maybe be North American biased?
MedlinePlus: Diabetes
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/diabetes.html Related pages, on topics such as diabetes and pregnancy, diabetic eye problems, diabetic foot.
National Diabetes Education Program
http://ndep.nih.gov/
NDEP is funded by the United States federal government. Resources for health care professionals, school personnel and business and managed care, including some patient education material in Asian languages (Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese among them)
National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse
http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/
Part of the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Large range of resources, including information in Spanish.
National Diabetes Support Team
http://www.diabetes.nhs.uk/
Set up to support healthcare professionals as they implement the Diabetes National Service Framework.
National Library for Health Diabetes Specialist Library
http://www.library.nhs.uk/diabetes/
High quality information for professionals but also includes patient information. Browse by subject, or search. Includes long list of associations and information on such things as diabetes and alcohol, driving, Christmas and Ramadan.
NHS Scotland e-library: diabetes
http://www.elib.scot.nhs.uk/portal/diabetes/
pages/index.aspx
UK Diabetes Research Network
http://www.ukdrn.org/
Clinical research.
World Health Organization: Diabetes
http://www.who.int/diabetes/en/
For diabetes patient information in languages other than English, you could try:
The 24 Languages Project (Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah)
http://library.med.utah.edu/24languages/
Ethnomed
http://ethnomed.org/ethnomed/patient_ed/
index.html#diabetes
Health Information Translations
http://www.healthinfotranslations.com/
Ohio State University Medical Center, and other bodies.
New South Wales Multicultural Health Communication Service
http://www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au/mhcs/
topics/Diabetes.html
New York Online Access to Health (NOAH)
http://www.noah-health.org/
Spanish only.
NHS Direct
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/
See “Health information in other languages” in left hand column of homepage
SPIRAL: Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages
http://spiral.tufts.edu/topic.html#diabetes
“Asian” = Cambodian (Khmer), Chinese, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Thai, Vietnamese. An initiative of South Cove Community Health Center, and Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library, both in Boston, Massachusetts.
Meningitis
On another note, the recent coverage in the education press about meningitis among higher education students made me compile a resources list that you can find via http://www2.le.ac.uk/Members/khn5, and as a collection of links at http://del.icio.us/csllibrarians/meningitis.
References
World Health Organisation (2006). Diabetes (Fact sheet no. 312). Available from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/
fs312/en/index.html
Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Observatory and National Diabetes Support Team (2006). Diabetes key facts. Available from http://www.yhpho.org.uk/Download/Public/356/1/
Diabetes_key_facts.pdf
Keith Nockels, Information Librarian, University of Leicester
Contributions should be sent to khn5@le.ac.uk
*****
From HLG Newsletter March 2008
BIOINFORMATICS (updated)
This updates my first Internet Sites of Interest column, which appeared in March 2005. The subject has continued to develop, and an update seemed timely.
I have checked the items in the original column, updating where necessary. I have added some new items, and rearranged the article somewhat. I have used a number of sources in compiling this column, and they are listed as “further reading” at the end.
All links were checked on 13th February 2008.
What is bioinformatics?
The Online Medical Dictionary defines bioinformatics as:
'The use of computers in solving information problems in the life sciences, mainly, it involves the creation of extensive electronic databases on genomes, protein sequences, etc. Secondarily, it involves techniques such as the three-dimensional modeling of biomolecules and biologic systems.' http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=bioinformatics,
Cellular function depends on proteins. Proteins consist of chains of amino acids. Cells produce proteins, and the information that determines which proteins are produced is contained in DNA.
A molecule of DNA is made up of thousands of nucleotides. Each nucleotide is made up of a 'base', plus a phosphate plus a sugar. The sequence of the bases specifies the order of the amino acids in a protein. A segment of DNA carrying information to encode (produce) an amino acid is a gene. The complete set of genetic information relating to an organism is its genome.
Information about the sequence of amino acids in a protein or the bases in nucleotides, or genes, is available in those 'extensive databases'. Because the information is stored digitally, it can be manipulated and compared with other data.
The column includes sites about bioinformatics, as well as some of those “extensive databases”, tools for searching them and working with the data, and other related resources.
Information about bioinformatics
Bioinformatics
http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=bioinformatics
Peer reviewed journal published by Oxford University Press. Abstracts are available free of charge, but you will need a subscription to read full text, unless the article has been published under an open access model. Such papers are clearly indicated.
BMC Bioinformatics
http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=bioinformatics
An open access journal publishing peer reviewed papers.
European Bioinformatics Institute
http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=bioinformatics
The institute manages databases of biological data, and conducts research.
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
NCBI manages databases of biological data. NCBI resources are listed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/gquery, and the NCBI Handbook provides a guide to each one, at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=handbook. The annual Database Issue of Nucleic Acids Research (see below) includes an update on NCBI resources (Wheeler et al., 2008).
Nucleic Acids Research
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/
This has recently become an open access journal and is available via the publisher website and also through PubMed Central. The annual Database Issue contains articles about factual biological databases, and the annual Web Server Issue articles about web based software tools for analysing data.
Online Lectures on Bioinformatics
http://lectures.molgen.mpg.de/online_lectures.html Web based tutorial, from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.
Protein Sequence Analysis: A Practical Guide http://www.bioinf.manchester.ac.uk/dbbrowser/bioactivity/ Bioinformatics web practical, from the University of Manchester. It introduces a range of tools and databases.
Bioinformatics databases
Following Xiong (Xiong, 2006), I have divided databases into primary, secondary, and specialized. Primary databases contain biological data, secondary databases add some processing to that data, and specialized databases contain data relevant to a particular research interest.
The Molecular Biology Database Collection is a list maintained by Nucleic Acids Research. It can be sorted by name of database, or by category, and there are links to each database, a summary about each, and a link to any article in NAR itself. Access the collection at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/nar/database/a. The annual Database Issue of NAR includes an update paper on this collection (Galperin, 2008), as well as papers on individual databases.
Primary databases
The three listed here work in close collaboration with each other.
DNA Databank of Japan (DDBJ)
http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/
EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/index.html
GenBank
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/
GenBank is a database of genetic sequence data. It can be accessed through several routes, outlined on this page.
Secondary databases
Gene
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene
Gene is a searchable database of genes, including information about their chromosomal location and their function.
OMIM, the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene
Catalogue of human genes and associated diseases, edited by Victor McKusick and colleagues.
PROSITE: database of protein domains, families and functional sites
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene
PROSITE is a secondary database, which analyses sequence data from primary databases.
Protein Information Resource (PIR): integrated protein informatics resource for genomic and proteomic research
http://pir.georgetown.edu/
Access to various primary databases of protein information.
Swiss-Prot
http://us.expasy.org/sprot/
A composite database, amalgamating data from various sources. TrEMBL, its computer annotated supplement, is also accessible from this site. (The site is about to be replaced with http://beta.uniprot.org/)
TIGR Genome Projects (J. Craig Venter Institute)
http://www.tigr.org/db.shtml
Suite of databases of DNA and protein sequences, gene expression, and other information, for humans and other organisms.
UniProt (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/uniprot/) combines Swiss-Prot, PIR, and TrEMBL.
Specialized databases
These include, among many others:
AceDB
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/uniprot/
Genome database for Caenorhabditis elegans (a nematode worm, used in genetics research).
FlyBase
http://flybase.bio.indiana.edu
A database of the genome of Drosophila – a fruit fly used in genetics research.
HIV Databases
http://www.hiv.lanl.gov/content/
Information on genetic sequences, immunological epitopes, drug-resistance associated mutations, and vaccine trials. Databases hosted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, funded by the NIH.
TAIR
http://www.arabidopsis.org
Genetic and molecular biology information for Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the mustard family used in genetics research.
Related resources
The annual Web Server issue of Nucleic Acids Research (see above) includes papers on individual search tools and software packages.
BLAST (Basic local search alignment tool)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/Blast.cgi
BLAST compares local nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases, to look for similarities.
Ensembl
http://www.ensembl.org/
Software system for searching information on the genomes of various organisms including humans, rats and mosquitoes.
Entrez
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/gquery
The NCBI’s life sciences search engine. This page links to a range of databases of biological data, and also to PubMed, PubMed Central, MeSH and other familiar things!
HAPMAP
http://www.hapmap.org/
A public resource to help researchers to find human genes associated with disease.
PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/
Bibliographic references in PubMed will link to related information in other NCBI resources. PubMed, as Claverie and Notredame point out (Claverie and Notredame, 2003), is an important way to locate published information on sequences.
References
Claverie, J.-M. and Notredame, C. (2003) Bioinformatics for dummies, Indianapolis, Wiley.
Galperin, M. Y. (2008) The Molecular Biology Database Collection: 2008 update. Nucl. Acids Res., 36, D2-4.
Wheeler, D. L., et al. (2008) Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Nucl. Acids Res., 36, D13-21.
Xiong, J. (2006) Essential bioinformatics, New York, Cambridge University Press.
Further reading
In addition to things cited above, here are some things I found useful while writing the old or new versions of this column. Some include information on the science, which I found useful as a non-biologist, and some include information on some of the databases and how to use them.
Attwood, T. K. & Parry-Smith, D. J. (1999) Introduction to bioinformatics, Harlow, Longman.
Bradley, J., Johnson, D. & Rubenstein, D. (2001) Lecture notes on molecular medicine, Oxford, Blackwell Science.
Fogel, G. B. (2003) Internet resources for bioinformatics data and tools. IN Fogel, G. B. & Corne, D. W. (Eds.) Evolutionary computation in bioinformatics. Amsterdam, Morgan Kaufmann.
Moore, J. H. (2007) Bioinformatics. J Cell Physiol, 213, 365-9. (this “minireview” discusses databases and data mining software)
Keith Nockels, Information Librarian, University of Leicester
Contributions should be sent to khn5@le.ac.uk
*****
From HLG Newsletter December 2007
MEDICINE AND CONFLICT
Remembrance Sunday, a few weeks ago, prompts a very selective list of sites relating to medicine and conflict. MedHist (http://www.intute.ac.uk/healthandlifesciences/medhist/) is a good place to look for more, or for information on conflicts not included here.
All links were checked 20 November 2007.
World War 1, 1914-1918
The Edith Cavell Website
http://www.edithcavell.org.uk/
A statue of Edith Cavell stands in Norwich (UK), bearing the words “…I realise that patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone…”. Born near Norwich, Edith Cavell served as a nurse in Belgium during World War 1. She helped stranded allied soldiers to return home, and for that was executed. This site includes a biography, a testimony from a chaplain at the time, and related material.
The Gillies Archives at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup
http://www.gilliesarchives.org.uk/
The Gillies Hospital performed plastic surgery of the face between 1917 and 1925. This website includes a vast range of information relating to the Great War (1914-1918 War), including images, and a bibliography of medicine and surgery of the Great War. The site is compiled by Dr. Andrew Bamji, consultant rheumatologist and the hospital archivist.
The World War 1 Document Archive
http://www.gwpda.org/
This is an archive of primary documents, which includes images, a biographical dictionary, personal reminiscences, and a page about the “medical front” (http://www.gwpda.org/medtitle.htm).
World War 2, 1939-1945
Caring on the Home Front
http://www.caringonthehomefront.org.uk/
A site compiled by the British Red Cross and St. John Ambulance, covering the stories of the members of those organisations who worked providing medical and other care on the home front. There are many personal stories, and there is the opportunity to add your own story or that of a family member.
The Doctors’ Trial: the medical case of the subsequent Nuremberg proceedings
http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/
Part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site, this explores the trial of Nazi doctors and administrators for their participation in crimes against humanity. The site includes excerpts from trial documents, and the text of the “Nuremberg Code”, relating to experiments on human beings.
Archibald McIndoe
Many badly burned pilots were treated by the surgeon Archibald McIndoe at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Surrey. His patients became known as the “Guinea Pig Club”, as McIndoe had very little prior research or published work to draw on. He was later instrumental in founding the UK chapter of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF, www.amref.org), and the Blond McIndoe Research Foundation (http://www.blondmcindoe.com/) researches wound care. For a list of articles about him, use this PubMed link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=PubMed&term=McIndoe%20A%5BPS%5D . The BBC broadcast a documentary about the Guinea Pig Club in 2005, with a website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/guinea-pig.shtml, which includes a photo gallery. The consultant on the programme, Dr. Emily Mayhew, researched the Guinea Pig Club for her PhD at Imperial College, London – see http://www.imperial.ac.uk/P6224.htm. I have found two links to a Guinea Pig Club website, but sadly, neither was working when I tried them.
Nowadays
The BMJ collects all its work on this sort of subject under the heading of “Medical consequences of conflict”, available at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/collection/conflict.
International Committee of the Red Cross
http://www.icrc.org/
This site links to sites in various languages, with links to resources and publications, as well as information about the work of the ICRC.
Medecins sans Frontieres
http://www.msf.org/
MSF provide medical care in places where it is needed, often in places where there is conflict, and also raise awareness of any human rights violations they encounter. This site includes information about countries where they work, and about the various national branches (“Doctors without Borders”, for example, in the USA).
All links were checked on 20th November 2007.
Season’s Greetings and could you help?
May I wish all the readers of this column a peaceful holiday season, and every good wish for 2008. I am aware that this column is very biased towards information of interest to academic librarians and thus is not of great interest to colleagues in other sectors. I would like to cover subjects like Health policy; Devolution and health; Patient information; and information for carers (on things like benefits, for examples). I don’t have the expertise for these subjects, and so if you would be interested in contributing sites, I would be very interested to hear from you. This isn’t an exhaustive list, either, so if there is anything else I ought to cover, please let me know!
My contact details:
Keith Nockels
Clinical Sciences Library, University of Leicester
RKCSB, Leicester Royal Infirmary
PO Box 65,
Leicester LE2 7LX
England
Tel: 0116 252 3101
Fax: 0116 252 3107
Email: khn5@le.ac.uk
From HLG Newsletter September 2007
OPEN ACCESS FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE < BR>I wear another hat at work (metaphorically, of course, having been brought up not to wear hats indoors), that of manager of our institutional repository, Leicester Research Archive (LRA). LRA is a database of research articles and other publications from this University, much of it available to anyone in full text. Plenty of universities, as you may know, have such a thing, and there are subject repositories as well.
Repositories will contain material of interest to many readers of this column, not just those in academic institutions. So, what are the benefits of repositories? How do you know what repositories there are, and how can you search them (without searching them one at a time!). Surely publishers don’t allow you to make their material available on open access? Or do they? How do you know what they allow? What is the difference between open access archiving and open access publishing?
Here are some websites that might help answer those questions.
General information on open access
Mark Funk: Open access – a primer
http://www.mlanet.org/pdf/resources/oa_primer_mfunk.pdf Will help unravel the various open access alternatives.
Peter Suber: A brief introduction to open access
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm
Will also help unravel the various open access alternatives.
SPARC Open Access Newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
A regular publication, produced by Peter Suber.
SHERPA
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk
SHERPA (“Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access”) started as a JISC funded project, and continues as one of the major support mechanisms for repositories, and therefore one of the major sources of information and advocacy material for open access archiving.
What repositories are there?
There are two major directories which will help to find a particular institution’s repository, and give statistics on content.
OpenDOAR
http://www.opendoar.org/
Maintained by the SHERPA Project (see above)
ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)
http://roar.eprints.org/
What do repositories contain? How can I search them?
Google indexes repositories and other open access material, and other search engines may do as well. But if you want a search targeted to open access material, so you know that the links to full text will work, here are some specialist tools:
BASE
http://www.base-search.net/index.php?i=b
BASE is produced at Bielefeld University (Germany) and indexes scholarly internet resources available at that University. Some of the material found through BASE is therefore only available to members of Bielefeld University. But, BASE indexes much open access material, available in full for free, and indexes a large number of institutional repositories.
INTUTE Repository Search
http://irs.ukoln.ac.uk/
IRS searches across 76 UK academic repositories, including The Depot (http://www.depot.edina.ac.uk/), which is a repository for use by academics whose institution does not have its own repository.
OAISter
http://www.oaister.org/
OAIster is a union catalogue of digital resources and is a major source for open access material available in full for free. It currently includes almost 13 million records from around 850 sources, including institutional and subject repositories. A list of sources is available at http://www.oaister.org/viewcolls.html.
OpenDOAR Search
http://www.opendoar.org/search.php
A trial service, using Google’s Custom Search technology, which searches repositories listed in OpenDOAR.
Scientific Commons
http://en.scientificcommons.org/
Scientific Commons currently indexes 13 million items, from open access repositories. It enables you to see who is working with who, as well as giving links to the full item in its home repository.
SHERPA UK Repositories Search
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/repositories/sherpasearchalluk.html Another trial service, using Google’s Custom Search, which searches the contents of UK repositories.
Which publishers allow archiving?
Authors often sign away a lot of rights in their work when it is accepted for publication (not everyone understands that, I fear) and publishers have rules about archiving. Most of them, as you will read in the literature, will allow archiving, but most of those do not allow you to archive their published PDF file. They might allow archiving of the final draft of the accepted article. I have met people in some disciplines who have an issue with this, as final drafts are, they say, difficult to reference properly, or because the draft may not be exactly the same as the published work of record. Also, many people do not appear to keep the final draft for long. The major source of information about who allows what is:
ROMEO
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
Originally based at Loughborough University but now maintained by SHERPA. Our first port of call when asking ourselves “will this publisher allow us to archive…?”
What do grant awarding bodies want?
Some grant awarding bodies (including the Wellcome Trust, British Heart Foundation, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and other UK research councils) now make open access publication or placing work in an open access repository a condition of receiving an award. The major source of information about who requires what is:
JULIET
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/index.php
Another SHERPA project.
Subject repositories
The arXiv e print archive (http://arxiv.org/) is a long standing subject repository covering certain areas of physics, and there are others. OpenDOAR and ROAR will help you locate them. The subject repository that will affect biomedicine is UK PubMed Central, maintained by MIMAS, the British Library, and the European Bioinformatics Institute. UKPMC is closely allied to PubMed Central.
PubMed Central
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/
PubMed Central, maintained by the National Library of Medicine, is an archive of backfiles of biomedicine journals, with full text available free. There are links to this from PubMed. But it also contains authors’ manuscripts of papers funded by bodies that mandate them to make their work available on open access, as mentioned above. See http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/authorms.html for details of this.
UK PubMed Central
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/
Contains author manuscripts of papers published by UKPMC funded researchers, who mandate deposit in UKPMC.
More information
I have a search alert running in PubMed, for “open access”, which uncovers many relevant new articles, but also (because I have not found a foolproof MeSH heading) finds papers about various surgical techniques!
A regularly updated bibliography is:
Charles Bailey’s Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/sepb.html
Section 9 includes material on repositories.
Topical footnote – foot and mouth disease
One of the benefits of online publication is that this column will reach you soon. Therefore it seems timely to include links about Foot and Mouth Disease. The easiest way to do this is to point you towards our resource list, which you can find at http://www.le.ac.uk/library/khn5/footandmouth.pdf. If you have problems accessing it there, and would like a copy via email, please contact me.
All links were checked on 16th August 2007.
My contact details:
Keith Nockels
Clinical Sciences Library
University of Leicester
RKCSB
Leicester
LE2 7LX
Tel. +44 (0)116 252 3101
Fax: +44 (0)116 252 3107
Email: khn5@le.ac.uk
Comments, links, and suggestions for future columns most welcome.
From HLG Newsletter June 2007
DRUGS AND PHARMACOLOGY, AND NATIONAL KNOWLEDGE WEEKS
I have listed some sites giving information on medicines. I have included some standard works even though access needs a subscription, as I have found myself often wondering how to access them online and thought a note of this might be helpful.
I have also included two sites that cover drugs of abuse/misuse.
All links were checked on 11th May 2007.
Medicinal drugs
British National Formulary / British National Formulary for Children
http://www.bnf.org; http://bnfc.org/bnfc/
These are also available through the National Library for Health at http://www.library.nhs.uk. Free registration is required to see full text. The BNF is published jointly by the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and the BNFC by those organisations and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Both contain key information on the selection and prescribing of medicines. Medicines generally prescribed in the UK are covered, and anything considered less suitable for prescribing is clearly identified. We have had interesting discussions with our medical students on whether the BNF is evidence based – you can read the “How the BNF is put together” section on the BNF site and decide for yourselves!
British Pharmacopoeia Commission
http://www.pharmacopoeia.org.uk/
The British Pharmacopoeia is the “authoritative, current collection of standards for UK medicinal substances and the official source of all UK quality standards”. Available only on subscription. This site includes links to information about the European, Japanese, International and United States pharmacopoeias.
European Pharmacopoeia
http://www.edqm.eu/site/page_581.php
Subscription only. The European Pharmacopoeia aims to ensure the quality of medicines used in Europe or exported from Europe, and to facilitate the free movement of medicines in Europe.
Food and Drug Administration (US)
http://www.fda.gov/
The FDA regulates human and pet food as well as drugs. Extensive site, with information on food safety as well as drug information (includes the “Orange Book” approved drug list), and medical devices. There is also information tailored to particular interest groups. Yorick the bionic skeleton (under “Kids”) looks fun, and the Kids section also includes some information on pet care.
Martindale
Martindale is prepared by staff of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and contains monographs on over 6000 drug preparations, with information on licensed and unlicensed uses of that drug. Martindale is also useful for identifying drugs and local equivalents. Martindale is available online through Medicines Complete, at http://www.medicinescomplete.com/mc/ but you need a subscription.
Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/
An executive agency of the Department of Health, which works to ensure that medicines and medical devices are safe. Site includes current safety warnings, adverse drug reaction information and drug alerts, as well as information about how the agency works.
MedlinePlus: Drugs and Supplements
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html I am a fan of this NLM consumer health information site. The Drugs and Supplements section contains information on prescription and over the counter drugs, and herbal supplements as well as FDA drug labels. I suspect that the drugs covered will be those available in the USA.
National Electronic Library for Medicines
http://www.druginfozone.nhs.uk/home/default.aspx Formerly known as DrugInfoZone, this is part of the National Library for Health, and brings together news, evidence and other information relating to medicines.
PubChem
http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
PubChem is an NCBI initiative, and provides information on the biological activities of small molecules. There are three databases: BioAssay,
Compound, Substance. PubChem can provide a diagram of the chemical structure of the compound, and links to information on its biological activity, toxicology, and more.
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain http://www.rpsgb.org.uk/
The regulatory authority for pharmacists.
United States Pharmacopeia
http://www.usp.org/
The official authority for all prescription and over the counter medicines, and dietary supplements and other healthcare products, manufactured and sold in the United States. The USP National Formulary (subscription only) is the book of standards, and product monographs are also available for purchase.
Drugs of abuse/misuse
DrugScope
http://www.drugscope.org.uk/
An independent organisation providing information on drugs, with some material only available to members. D-World is a free site aimed at 11-14 year olds. The Library produces a wealth of resources, including:
• DrugSearch, an online encyclopaedia of drugs, which includes historical and legal information, information on likely street prices, prevalence, effects, slang names, and some information in languages other than English.
• HelpFinder, a database of help and advice services.
• DrugData, a database of drug research literature.
The Library also produces lists of grey literature, and has an excellent blog, DrugScope DrugData Update, which details new publications added to the library and has weekly focus articles. The blog is at http://drugscope.blogspot.com.
National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse
http://www.nta.nhs.uk
One of my Drug and Alcohol Treatment students alerted me to this NHS agency. The site includes links to publications, and information on types of treatment available.
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National Knowledge Weeks
National Knowledge Weeks are designed to draw attention to the resources available through the National Library for Health Specialist Libraries. The Specialist Libraries (listed at http://www.library.nhs.uk/specialistlibraries/) bring together resources for patients and professionals, in a particular area.
Richard Stevens alerted me to this:
The first National Knowledge Week on 'Pain in Palliative and Supportive Care' appeared on 30th April and is accessible from the NLH Specialist Library's home page:
http://www.library.nhs.uk/palliative/
The resources will remain online until the next Annual Evidence Update appears in 12 months time. So if you would like to contribute to the 2008 update, or if you have any comments on how we went about it this time, please use the Contact Us form accessed from the Library home page or email the Information Specialist direct. All comments - positive and negative - will be warmly received.
The week will have passed by the time you read this, but the resources will be there for one year.
Ann Brocklehurst alerted me to the NKW for Rheumatoid Arthritis:
The week, beginning 7 May 2007, has been designated the Musculoskeletal Specialist Library (http://www.library.nhs.uk/musculoskeletal) National Knowledge Week and coincides with the British Society for Rheumatology Annual General Meeting. Under the leadership of Dr Robin Butler, a Consultant Rheumatologist, an Expert Panel has prepared a series of summaries which concisely set out the state of the art in relation to a variety of aspects of this disease. There will be material relating to aspects of disease management including existing, new and forthcoming drugs and also other hot topics such as identifying prognostic factors and the relationship between RA, infection and malignancy. We hope you will visit the site and give your feedback on this feature.
Thank you to Richard and to Ann for these.
The NKW for Rhinitis is 14-18 May – see http://www.library.nhs.uk/ent/ for details.
There are details of other forthcoming weeks at http://www.library.nhs.uk/rss/default.aspx and a list of all weeks at http://www.library.nhs.uk/forlibrarians/sl. But, if you would like to give your NKW a specific mention, please let me know.
My contact details:
Keith Nockels
Clinical Sciences Library, University of Leicester
RKCSB, Leicester Royal Infirmary
PO Box 65,
Leicester LE2 7LX
England
Tel: 0116 252 3101
Fax: 0116 252 3107
Email: khn5@le.ac.uk
Please contact me with suggestions for future columns or with any comments.