Author: admin

OVID & PubMed – What are the major changes? Read here.

Summary:
Clearly, OVID & PubMed are keeping an eye on the competition. (ie. Google)

OVID technologies released its new interface in early July 2005. Some
changes are welcome, particularly FIND SIMILAR and FIND CITATION.

I’m not sure I like FIND CITING ARTICLES completely, though full-text
linking options within OVID are welcome as long as users don’t mistake
this for the Web of Science.

PubMed has also made a number of structural and functional improvements to
its interface in the last few months. It’s keeping health librarians very
busy as we gear up in the hospitals for hundreds of new medical residents,
and students in July & August.

Dean Giustini
UBC Scholar Blogger

OVID announced its new generation interface this week. Early usability testing & navigation using the MEDLINE database revealed:

Mamma.com – the Mother of all search engines (out of Montreal & Toronto Canada) – has created a new, health only search engine called Mamma health – deep web health search engine.

Like Google Scholar, mammahealth.com is still “in beta” but the similiarities end there. A search on Mammahealth is more like a regular Google search; only, MH restricts itself to searching for “trusted information from top medical sites” in one-easy search tool. Its strength seems to be consumer health more than general health results.

A cursory evaluation of mammahealth.com showed that:

1. The search box copies Google’s simple, user-friendly interface (with some quasi-nurse/momma graphics which might offend some people) with their mission to “search the deep web”. Problem is it’s not obvious that MH *is* searching the deep web.

2. There is a “French version” search option/link under “Mamma en francais” from the homepage (with some nice options for searching for French language materials).

3. Mammahealth is searching a small subset of reliable consumer health web and news content, such as MEDLINEplus (US), NHSDirect (UK), eMedicine – Consumer health and several dot.com sites such as medicinenet.com, mayoclinic.com and medem.com etc. However, this is not the “deep web”. Beta, indeed.

4. Does MH offer something unique? Well, my superficial glance sideways at it suggests that it doesn’t. (For an example of results, see this search on “Common cold” AND “Vitamin c”.

5. Let’s see how Mamma develops over time. At the moment, the limited content, slowness (slower than regular Google) and the fact that there is a heavy emphasis on the dot.com content suggests that they need to broaden their perspective. It would be a good idea to develop an advanced search page, and be more upfront about what sites are being searched. Offer options and a bit more information! If you are targeting consumers, say so!

(Note: The regular mamma.com search engine was satisfactory for my search on “Vitamin C in the treatment of common cold” AND cochrane reviews).

For something new, try the “Search.com – Health & Medicine” search tool.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i39/39a02501.htm

Two librarians present opposing views: Michael Gorman and John P. Wilkin

Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, has
become a vocal critic of Google’s library project. Mr. Gorman, who is dean
of library services at California State University at Fresno, argues that
the growing popularity of Google’s search engine among scholars could harm
research because even after Google expands its collection with book
content, the search engine will have far less to offer than many
traditional libraries. And because Google will make available only short
excerpts of copyrighted works, he says the tool will be of limited value.

1. UCLA School of Medicine – Asst Professor’s Use of “Google Scholar”
http://califmedicineman.blogspot.com/2005/06/some-great-google-tips.html

2. Doctor Blogger – Kevin MD
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2005/06/how-do-i-use-google.html#comments

3. Consumer health Times article –
More people consult Google over health – By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor

“GOOGLE, the internet search engine, has now become one of the patient’s
best friends, second only to a family doctor.

A survey of 1,000 people found that 12 per cent turn first to
Google. Fewer consult family and friends, the media or medical
encyclopaedias when faced with a medical problem. ”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1642381,00.html

Though still “in beta”, Google Scholar is now available off of the Google homepage. PST, 2:39, June 16th, 2005 (DG)

The article appears in the June 7 (current) issue of CMAJ, written by former BC librarian, Jim Henderson, now director at the McGill University Medical Library. He suggests that GS’s value is limited for practising physicians. I agree with and understand some of his conclusions, but Google Scholar is still in beta and will likely grow in importance in the next while due to possible linkage with Google’s other projects. Gs is easier to use than PubMed (though still not as current) and “openly accessible” (not always the case with other tools mentioned) – which is a real bonus for a majority of health care providers in Canada.
____________________________________________

Henderson J. Google Scholar: A source for clinicians? CMAJ 2005; 172(12):1549-1550.

Library Collections Linked on Google Scholar for Free – by Barbara Quint

Google Scholar – scholar.google.com – launched in November 2004 has responded to complaints of research librarians by expanding its usefulness for campus-based users. Its new institutional access feature links Google Scholar users to electronic versions

Starting out as an April 2005 joke, Yagoohoogle is one of several meta-search tools emerging. Yagoohoogle allows you – in a familar way – to search and compare, side by side, the results from the web’s top search tools – Google & Yahoo. Handy to see how searches will run in each Web tool, showing different hits, display similarities, truncation and boolean differences, etc.

See Peter Jacso’s federated and/or polysearch tools:

Dictionaries and Ref tools and

Google Scholar vs. Publishers sites

….[then Google] created Google Scholar, a tool to quickly search databases of academic journals, and approached some leading colleges with offers to scan and index all their public domain tomes. This highlights Google’s progress in its quest to provide instant access to all recorded human knowledge, but raises questions about the future of bricks and mortar libraries and, more widely, about the library model itself and the role Google will play in such a future. (Surely not relevant ads in library books?). Read Good, God, Google in the Globe and Mail, April 19th, 2005.