Wednesday 20 January 2010

New Ovid Books

We have just purchased a number of new E-Books on the Ovid platform. These include key and useful texts in Virology, Epidemiology and Public Health.

You can access these at Ovid. You can also browse all our E-book collection from the Library web page.

Tuesday 19 January 2010

Difficulties logging into Shibboleth

Some students and staff have reported not being able to access electronic resources through the Shibboleth authentication system. This is the page which asks for a username and password (your School IT username and password) when you try and access resources, such as Embase and Web of Science. When they have logged in, a message states, username not found.

If you experience this, change your School IT passsword to re-activate your Shibboleth log in. This will work within 24 hours of changing your password.

Wednesday 13 January 2010

The Grey Literature Report from the New York Academy of Medicine

Are you interested in grey literature on aspects of urban and public health? If so, you may want to check out the Grey Literature Report, published for free by the New York Academy of Medicine, online at www.nyam.org/library/greyreport.shtml.

The Grey Literature Report contains details of reports published by non-commercial organisations such as government agencies, non-profit non-governmental organizations, universities, independent research centers, and international organizations. The subject scope includes health and science policy, public health, health of minorities and special populations and those areas of general medicine and disease in which the Academy has research interests. The focus is on research material, not consumer health material. More details of the content and collection development can be found at www.nyam.org/library/greycolldev.shtml.

Grey literature was defined at the Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature (GL '99) in Washington, DC, in October 1999 as "That which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers."

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Module Reading Lists

A number of modules for this academic term have an online reading list located on Blackboard.

You can access the reading list by clicking on the Library button on the module page.

If your module does not currently have a reading list on Blackboard you can contact your module organiser or the Teaching Support Office to suggest adding one.

Wednesday 6 January 2010

Collection of the month: Prisoner of War papers from the nutrition collection

During the Second World War a number of medical officers, who had been interned in prisoner of war camps in the Far East, produced a fascinating set of records and data concerning nutrition and diet in civilian camps. They have now become available to researchers.

From 1942-1945 British medical officers who specialised in nutrition spent their time monitoring and alleviating the worsening situation in prison camps. A wealth of material was amassed and was later used in the publication 'Deficiency diseases in Japanese prison camps, MRC Special Report 274' by Dean Smith and AW Woodruff.

Woodruff was held in the notorious Changi internment camp for three years and over that time carried out medical inspections on patients suffering from malnutrition. Dean Smith, who was in the Stanley camp in Hong Kong, was chief medical officer for nutrition and brought back with him patient records, nutrition reports, rationing plans and statistics. All of this material reflects the duress under which the work was carried out since the officers only had primitive means of recording data and we are very fortunate that it has survived.

The papers are catalogued and can be searched through on the online catalogue: http://193.63.251.56/DServe/dServe.exe?dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Index.tcl

Monday 4 January 2010

Library Opening

Welcome back after the Christmas break.

This week we are still running vacation opening times, this means the Library is open 8:30 am to 8:25 pm Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 12:30 pm on Saturday and closed on Sunday.

Further details are available on the Library opening hours page.