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From: Jo Anne Boorkman, U.C. Davis jaboorkman@ucdavis.edu
The Collection Development Section is looking for volunteers for 1997/98.
Please let Jo Anne Boorkman (jaboorkman@ucdavis.edu) know if you would be interested in serving as:
1) editor of Developments, the Section's
twice yearly newsletter
2) member ad Hoc bylaws committee
3) member membership committee
4) member nominating committee
5) member ad Hoc 3rd collection development symposium
6) member program committee for Philadelphia
From: Jo Anne Boorkman, U.C. Davis jaboorkman@ucdavis.edu
The Collections Development program, "Electronic Licensing Contracts: Are You Ready for the Challenge" will be held on Monday, 2:00pm-3:30pm during Program Session II. The program is sponsored by: Collection Development, Federal Libraries, Medical School Libraries, and Publishing and Information Industries Relations Committee.
The invited speakers are:
Karen Butter, Deputy Director, Library and Center for Knowledge Management, University of California--San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President, Elsevier Science, New York, NY; Ann Okerson, Associate University Librarian, Yale University, New Haven, CT; and Vicky Reich, Director's Office, Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, CA representing HighWire Press. Speakers will address how their organizations' approach negotiating licensing agreements for electronic serials and other publications.
For more information about the program, as well as links to useful related sites on the Web, please refer to the Collection Development Section Home Page at http://colldev.mlanet.org.
Jo Anne Boorkman
Chair-elect/1997 Program Chair
From: Eric Albright albri008@mc.duke.edu
I have updated the look and feel and added new information to the Collection Development Section's web page. I would encourage readers to take a look at it at http://colldev.mlanet.org and send me your comments!
From: Jon Eldredge, U. New Mexico jeldredg@biblio.unm.edu
JAMA JOURNAL REVIEWS
JAMA Journal Review Editor Jon Eldredge is accepting applications from prospective journal reviewers for JAMA;Journal of the American Medical Association. Applicants must be published authors and have at least 2 years of journals selection experience in a health sciences library. Application packets should include a brief cover letter, a current c.v., and writing samples. Applicants will be expected to work effectively with physician co-reviewers and meet deadlines. Send applications to:
Jon Eldredge, JAMA Journal Review Editor
UNM Health Sciences Center Library
Albuquerque, NM 87131-5686
Some subject areas that need additional representation among reviewers include: Allergy, Anesthesiology, Critical Care, Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, Gastroenterology, Health Psychology, Hematology, Immunology, Nephrology, Nutrition, Orthopedics, Otolaryngology, Public Health, Rheumatology, Substance Abuse, and Surgery.
From: Margaret Henderson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory henderso@cshl.org
Just a short note about Web journals.
The most frustrating thing about the migration to full-text web journals is the lack of institutional access policies. There are several journals, notably for me 'Science' and the 'Current Opinion in Biology' group on BioMedNet, that started out with full-text access free or through library registration. In January 'Science' stopped free full- text access. For $15 members could get full-text online but there was no provision for institutional access - they tell me by June there should be something. BioMedNet at least extended their full-text offer to May 1. But they still don't have institutional access available so now I have a bunch of frustrated patrons.
On the other hand, 'Journal of Biological Chemistry' is a dream. From the very beginning I only had to register our IP address and no other password or registration was needed. I don't mind paying the price because the access is so easy and the quality of the articles is great.
Maybe others have had better experiences - but I'm not ready to throw out print copies yet.
From: Carolyn Kopper, U.C. Davis cskopper@neuheim.ucdavis.edu
We just received Dictionary of Visual Science, by David Cline, 4th ed., 1997, published by Butterworth-Heinemann (ISBN 0750688950). Be forewarned that this is a reprint of Dictionary of Visual Science, by David Cline, 4th ed., c1989, published by Chilton (ISBN 0801978629). We almost bought a copy of this reprint, but upon completing some detective work, we realized is what a reprint of the 1989 4th ed. already in our library's collection.
From: Melanie Wilson, U. Iowa melanie-wilson@uiowa.edu
We just today received our 1996 Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and were very disappointed to see that for the first time the cumulative index volumes came SOFTBOUND with a vinyl cover. This softbound format may be acceptable for some small libraries in which this index is not heavily used, but in our academic setting, with 750 students and 100 faculty in the College of Nursing, these volumes just won't hold up as archival copies in the long run, despite the availability and popularity of OVID CINAHL.
I called CINAHL customer service to see if we were perhaps charged less for this softbound edition than we were in past years for the hardbound cumulatives, but that was wishful thinking. The person I spoke with at CINAHL said they had so many complaints last year about pages coming out of the cumulative volumes, that they switched to this softbound vinyl format in hopes of solving that problem. Whatever their reason, we are going to have to box up all the 1996 volumes and pay our binder to give them a hard cover which previously came with them from the publisher.
It would be interesting to hear from any BLABbers who view this new development as a positive move, since the cost of the softbound volumes is no less than the hardbound was in previous years. If you have compliments or complaints about this situation, they can be directed to CINAHL Customer Service at (818) 409-8005.
From: Melanie Wilson, U. Iowa melanie-wilson@uiowa.edu
Thought you'd be interested in this. MICROSOFT AND REED ELSEVIER STRIKE DEAL Reed Elsevier, the British and Dutch publishing company that owns the Lexis-Nexis online information service, have agreed to a $30 million deal that will allow Reed Elsevier to use Microsoft's commercial Internet-oriented system applications for future electronic offerings in the scientific, legal, business and travel information markets. (New York Times 8 May 97)
From: Danny Jones, U.Texas Health Science Center jones@uthscsa.edu
We were recently asked to purchase Med-Challenger for the physicians assistant program here. As I looked into this it turned out to be more than I expected and I thought I would share this with BLAB. I would be very interested to hear from any BLABer where the library is providing Med-Challenger for student use.
I called Med-Challenger (Challenger Corporation, Memphis, TN, 1-888-242-5536; http:www.chall.com) today about a network license for their clinical examination review product. The network version is a client server/product and there are 4 modules: Emergency Medicine, Family Practice, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics.I asked about a web version and was told one is not available.
The product is designed for physicians, but according to the person I spoke with it is very popular with physician assistants. It is priced by module and you can select one or more modules. The academic institution network license for a single user is $995 per module, so it would cost us $3980 to purchase a single user network license for all 4 modules. Additional user licenses can be purchased for $195, so a 2-user license for all modules would cost $4175. If we decided to purchase a 2-user license for only one module, it would cost $1190. The programs are updated annually and the updates cost 25-30% of the purchase price, or about $300 per module. With a network license we would be able to install the client on as many machines as we want, but we would need to limit simultaneous access to the number of licenses purchased.
This seemed much more expensive than the $395 price in the advertisement we got from a student, so I asked about purchasing an individual copy on cd-rom that we could circulate. I was told that the license does not permit this. The individual version is sold for use by one person, i.e. it is purchased for Jean Smith and only Jean Smith can useit, and that our only option is to purchase an institutional license.
Is anyone providing computer-based review and preparation programs to help students prepare for the USMLE, especially step 1, but also steps 2 and 3? We've got lots of people interested in having this and even have some funds designated to purchase it, but I haven't found anything that does the trick. We are primarily interested in software only products, not some of the books that have sample test questions on a diskette in a pocket.
A general question: Gathering pricing, networking and order option information about electronic products is time-consuming and complicated. Has anyone developed a form to use in gathering this information which helps bring order to this process? If so, perhaps you could share it with BLABers. Don't be shy. If you have something you're definitely ahead of me.
Update:
Last week I also received a flyer from CMEA MULTIMEDIA GROUP (http://www.cmea.com), a distributor of multimedia products, announcing release of Exam Master USMLE software, a "high-productivity study and testing CD-ROM that contains over 7,300 questions, answers and explanations covering 11 basic science and 8 clinical subjects and the three steps of the USMLE." I checked CMEA's web site and there was no mention of it so I sent a message and got the response that is has just been released and has not been added to their web site.
I decided to call Exam Master directly (http://www.exammaster.com) and learned that a network version is not yet available, but is being developed, perhaps later this summer. Apparently they've heard that there is a market, although there was no information about pricing. In the meantime I ordered their demonstration CD-ROM of the USMLE product which includes 400+ questions. Others interested in a network installation of a USMLE product may want to call Exam Master and register interest so they have a sense of who is interested.
56.10 NOTICE - DEALER FOR DISCOUNTED BOOKS
From: The Editor
Gull's Nest, a dealer in new & used books, holds stock of over a thousand professionallevel medical books published from 1994 through 1997. They offer a flat 30% discount (40% through June 1997) on, mostly, single unused copies obtained through various sources. In my experience, many of the books are the types of things that are just a little too expensive and a little too specialized to purchase at full price, but might be worth considering at these 'sale' prices.
Their stock can be examined at
http://www.teleport.com/~gullnest
by title keyword, LC class (not NLM yet), ISBN, author, and publisher.
This site is a partition of the Advanced Books Exchange (ABE), an OP clearinghouse, listing the stock of several hundred dealers.
| The BIOMEDICAL LIBRARY ACQUISITIONS BULLETIN (ISSN: 1064-699X) is published
by the Medical Library Association's Collection Development Section with
the cooperation of the University of Southern California Norris Medical
Library. BLAB is published more or less monthly, and includes items of
news and opinion contributed by its readers concerning biomedical library
acquisitions.
Editor: David H. Morse: dmorse@hsc.usc.edu. Paper mail: USC Norris Medical Library, 2003 Zonal Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033. Telephone: (213) 342-1134. The BULLETIN is distributed free of charge, in electronic form only. Back issues of BLAB are available at http://colldev.mlanet.org/BLAB/ Requests for subscriptions and all editorial correspondence should be sent to the editor <dmorse@hsc.usc.edu>. |