Health Library News

The Ian Smith Drug Reference Library bulletin focusing on substance misuse is now available to view by clicking here . This issue cover the latest government documents and reviews from the Cochrane Collaboration.

Mental Health and Social Care Current Awareness Bulletin No. 183 is now available for viewing here . The bulletin is designed to provide current awareness updates for mental health and social care services. Newsletter produced by Eastern Counties Library and Knowledge Services Alliance. Content covers updates from the Department of Health, national and international news and condition specific updates. Useful conferences and websites are also listed.

The Commissioner is a current awareness newsletter produced by North West Primary Care Librarians Group to support practice based commissioning. The latest issue (volume 3, issue 11)is now available from the Fade Library blog . All news items are available as text articles (blog entries) or as a 6 min audio summary (podcast).

The monthly Health E-news produced by the Halton & St Helens Health Improvement Library Service, the Primary Care Library, and St Helens Health Partnership is now available by clicking here . The update contains information which relates to the six key areas of the Department of Health’s White Paper Choosing Health: Making Healthier Choices Easier .

The latest issue of the Ian Smith Drug Reference Library update news letter is now available by clicking here . The update covers the latest articles on alcohol and the effectiveness of treatment produced by the Cochrane Collaboration, Department of Health as well articles from top peer reviewed journals like Alcohol, Behaviour Research and Therapy and Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health. Alcohol policy UK news produced by Ranzetta Consulting, public health specialists in alcohol is now also available . Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust is holding the conference Alcohol: Everyone's Problem, Alcohol Treatment in Primary Care Wednesday 10th December 2008 in Bury. Full details available here .

A new Vascular Specialist Library has now been added to the National Library for Health. It is being officially launched today to co-incide with the Vascular Society's Annual General Meeting in Bournemouth 12th - 14th November 2008. A launch editorial is available via the homepage . The first newsletter with the latest systematic reviews, guidelines, conferences and research is available online . Currently updates are only available via RSS format from this website. Please take your time to feedback on this resource and how it could be improved.

Please be advised that on Wednesday 5th November 2008 between 07:00am and 10:00am there will be essential network maintenance on the National Library for Health’s Search 2.0 databases. During the maintenance window there will be a loss of service on the saved searches feature. For this reason, please do not use Search 2.0's saved searches facility between the hours specified. Please contact the library if you experience any further problems with the service.

From 28th Nov 2008, the NHS A-Z journal list will be transferring from TDnet (MyJournals) across to the new NHS in-house service . There will be a month overlap between the two platforms, before the new A-Z list takes over the current web address (1st January 2009), so there should be no need to alter any saved book marks. Please be aware that this means the loss of the current table of contents (TOC) service provided by TDnet and linking of favourite journals in the National Library for Health's My Library pages. The British Library owned Zetoc service has been purchased as an interim measure, but will require the manual creation of new alerts. Visit the Zetoc support service for further information on creating TOC alerts. The current Zetoc licence will only valid until 31st July 2009. Zetoc alert service is also available to all Keele Athens users. For alternate methods of keeping up to date with your favourite journals or news services, please contact the Health Library or...

From November 1st, local authority social care staff in selected regions, including the West Midlands, are eligible to access electronic resources via NHS Athens accounts. Access to the Core Content collection which includes high quality journals and databases is currently operating on a 10 month trial basis. In the past, access has been restricted only to only NHS staff, however, the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and Skills for Care have successfully argued that those working in government-funded social care organisations should be given equality of access. For further information and online registration please visit the Social Care Online website .

Please click here to access the latest current awareness bulletin provide by National Primary Care Research & Development Centre. This bulletin highlights key articles in areas such as access to care, health inequalities, need and demand for care, patient and public involvement, primary secondary care interface, quality of care, research and development and self management.

NHS Connecting for Health is conducting a consultation with the public and healthcare professionals on the use of patient information for purposes such as health research and managing and planning care. Although aimed at both public and health professionals, there is particular interest in the comments from clinical research on the use of NHS data. Currently researchers only account for 2% of returns and are considered under-represented. Please take the time to complete this survey and advertise where appropriate.

From 1st January 2009 inter-library requests will be increasing to £2.00 each. There will also be an additional £2.00 charge per each loan renewal. This price increase is necessary due to the continued rise in inter-library request costs. This is the first increase in charges since the current £1 charge was introduced over a decade ago. The Health Library will continue to heavily subsidise the full cost of each request.

A new service providing free electronic access to doctoral thesis from UK based Higher Education Institutes, will be launched Tuesday 14th October. As a result of the EThOS (Electronic Thesis On Line System) service, the British Library will no longer be offering a microfilm loan service. Visit http://ethos.bl.uk/ to search the EThOS service and download one of the thousands of theses already digitised. If the document you are searching for is not available, EThOS can be requested to obtain and digitise it. The researcher will not normally be charged for this unless the institution supplying the thesis requires it. Further information is available at http://www.ethos.ac.uk/ .

Staff from the School of Nursing are hosting IT drop in sessions every Wednesday lunch time throughout October between 12.30pm and 1.30pm. So if you are have questions about WebCT (KLE) or problems with any of the Microsoft Office packages, University email or other course related computer issues, why not pop along for some assistance. Because it is a drop in session, you can visit at any time for a quick query or take the full hour to sit down and practice your skills.

A new target has been set to reduce patient waiting times to a maximum of 18 weeks by December 2008. To help achieve this, the End Waiting, Change Lives website provides a 5 step guide on how to improve waiting times. The site contains information on waiting time statistics, case studies from across England and information for patients. Additional resources can be found at the No Delay Achiever website which offers a 7 step guide to improving patient experience. Details on how to obtain your free 18 week patient pathway planning wheel can be found here .

Please be aware that it is Keele policy that all outstanding library fines are cleared prior to the start of the new academic year on 29th September. No new items can be issues or renewed until all monies owing have been paid. Note that from the week beginning 8th September if you wish to renew any items, they should be brought back to the library in person. The change over from vacation time to term time on the library issue system requires that library staff must manually return and re-issue books in order to renew them. As all books borrowed by Keele students are due either on the 29th or 30th September, it may be advisable to bring all renewals in prior to these dates to avoid lengthy queues.

The latest scheduled training timetable is now available for sessions throughout 2008. If you are looking to find the best places for health information, need help understanding the new interface used to search for journal articles or how to manage your references or information updates, then why not visit the library website and book on a course. Please remember that if the times for time-tabled sessions don't suit, you can always contact the training team on 01782 556583 to arrange training in the class, workplace or one to one session. All courses can be linked to KSF dimensions IK2 & IK3.

The Health Library will be closed on 25th August for the bank holiday. Please note that we will be open for business as usual over the Saturday and Sunday.

The British Library table of content service ZETOC is now available to NHS and Keele employees and students via their institutional Athens logins. The database can be use to subscribe to the latest table of contents from approximately 20,000 current journals, covering a wide range of subjects including science, technology, medicine, business and law, as well as a number of non-English titles from around the world. Many of the table of contents may not be directly available from the publisher's own website. The database can also be used as a citation checker, with over 20 million journals and conference records from 1993 to date. Full information on the use of ZETOC is available via the online handbook . To learn further techniques on how to keep up to date with the latest information in your field, why not book on the Health Library Current Awareness course! Please check the Health Library website for further information.

A selected number of the prestigious Oxford Handbook series are the latest to be added to the NHS national online book collection via NHS Athens. Titles include: Oxford handbook of endocrinology and diabetes Oxford handbook of general practice Oxford handbook of midwifery Oxford handbook of palliative care Oxford handbook of practical drug therapy Oxford handbook of respiratory medicine The full collection NHS subscribed e-books can be searched through a new interface via the National Library for Health . The collection predominately favours items relating to mental health and general practice. Keele staff and students from the Health Faculty can also access these national purchases. Please contact the Health Library for further details. The full list of Keele purchased e-books can be found via the main campus library website .