Find Resources By Subject

Back by popular demand is a link on the library’s quick link left navigation bar that opens our “Find Resources By Subject” tool. Use this link if you are not certain which of the Lamar Soutter Library’s resources will best answer your question. Find Resources By Subject displays databases, online journals and online textbooks all on one page based on the topic of your choice – one stop shopping!

Delicious - Managing Bookmarks Online

Have you ever had difficulty keeping all of your bookmarks organized? Do you have a different list of favorites on your desktop, your laptop and on your home computer and are always at the wrong place to access what you need? If so, you need Delicious. Delicious is a web-based bookmark tool and more. Accounts are free and you can download a very simple tool that helps you capture and upload bookmarks. Then, these bookmarks are available from any Internet-connected computer you happen to be using. Plus, Delicious lets you “tag” your bookmarks for better organization and, if you choose to, allows other users to search your tags (and you can search theirs as well) to find sites that they might wish to visit. If you would like to try it out, visit www.delicious.com. If you would like further assistance in setting up a Delicious account of have questions, contact Len Levin (X6-6028 or len.levin@umassmed.edu) in the Lamar Soutter Library.

New “Ask a Librarian” Phone Number

Beginning on January 5th, the Reference Desk and Circulation Desk in the Lamar Soutter Library will combine to become a single “Library Service Point”. You can continue to visit the library with questions but if you wish to contact us by phone, please note that there is a NEW TELEPHONE NUMBER to call – 508-856-6099. Happy New Year to all.

Lab Tests Online

The library has recently made a link on our “For Patients and Consumers” site to Lab Tests Online. This site, hosted by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, provides easy to read quality information on diagnostic lab tests. The entries are written in a Q&A format and contain information on what the test attempts to diagnose and how the test is administered. A section on “How Reliable is Laboratory Testing” helps to explain in simple terms why tests do not always rule in or rule out a diagnosis 100% of the time. This is a high-quality site for you to recommend to your patients who wish to learn more about their tests.

Searching in the New Year

What do Cookbooks, Earthquakes, Nasal Lavage, Osteochondrosis and Poetry have in common? They are all new Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms that can be used in searching MEDLINE beginning in 2009. These are five of the 446 new headings available for 2009. Why is this important? If, when searching MEDLINE, you focus on using appropriate subject headings instead of keywords, you will find that your results are more specific and, hopefully, relevant. The easiest way to do this is in OVID, make certain that the “Map Term to Subject Heading” box is checked off. In PubMed, type the subject term followed by [mh]. To find a list of ALL MeSH headings, use this page on the National Library of Medicine site. If you would like a refresher on the best ways to incorporate subject searching in MEDLINE, contact Len Levin in the library (X6-6028 or len.levin@umassmed.edu).

Oxford English Dictionary

c1230 (?a1200) Ancrene Riwle (Corpus Cambr.) (1962) 92 Thu seist the nis no neod na medecine.

Did you know that it was in the early 13th century that the word "medicine" first came into use in the English language? The Oxford English Dictionary is not just a mechanism to look up spellings and pronunciations of words, it is also the premier source to trace our language back to its early roots. And the Lamar Soutter Library now has the Oxford English Dictionary available online. From the library's homepage, click "Research Tools & Resources", then "Reference Resources" and then "Oxford English Dictionary". Happy "Haruestbels" (the earliest use, from 1597, of "Harvest Festival" or "Thanksgiving") to all.

Scientific Writing Resources

For everyone interested in writing, and your focus is the Thursday Memo, a conference, or a refereed journal, there is a wealth of literature offering assistance that ranges from grammar to getting published available in the journal literature. Searching in PubMed, try the phrase: writing/standards [mh] or the phrase: authorship [mh]. Take the results and combine with a keyword to narrow your search, e.g. writing/standards [mh] AND methodology. Using the limiter [mh], retrieves articles indexed using the term writing/standards and indicates a focus of the article.

To look at writing and grammar resources, check out the library’s web site: click on Research Tools and Resources - Reference Resources - Writing and Grammer Resources (or click here)