The Journal of
Topical Formulations
(ISSN 1554-0197)
published by Scribionics
Katvah
Rosemarie
L. Coste, General Editor
Elishalom
Yechiel, Ph.D., Scientific Editor
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| March
25, 2005 Volume 1, Issue 3 online at http://www.topical-formulations.com/ |
Sponsored
by Elsom Research Innovative Biotechnologies “Where Nature, Science, and Art Combine” |
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Sites
Worth Seeing The National Library of Medicine, online at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/, bills itself as the “The World’s Largest Medical Library.” I can’t verify that claim but, having spent some time in my local medical school library, I can confirm that the online National Library of Medicine is easier to navigate, better able to provide information listed in their catalog, and, with no need to watch the clock and keep feeding quarters into a parking meter, nor to fight overcaffeinated medical students for access to a streaky photocopier, more efficient, less expensive, and less stressful than the offline alternatives available to me.
Like any good library, part of what’s interesting about the National Library of Medicine site is that it dedicates some space to projects that aren’t directly about assisting researchers; some of the information provided is just about enjoying and sharing the amazing variety of information we humans have created and collected. These are the things that might be displayed in glass cases here and there in a physical library, breaking up the monotony of row after row of tall bookshelves. For example, there is an online exhibit of “Historical Anatomies”, showing anatomical drawings from varied sources, some more than 500 years old. Because this is an online exhibit, rather than a valuable set of fragile documents locked protectively in a display case, it is much more possible to “handle” the items, copying them, printing them, enlarging them, or simply starting at them indefinitely; it’s a great demonstration of the expanded possibilities available through digital libraries. The drawings are beautiful, but there are some glitches in the collection, notably that the “zoom” option failed for all the many images I tried to view one afternoon; as it turns out, the “zoom” option requires installation of Zoomify Viewer software, not an option at some of the computers where I work but don’t have administrative privileges. I suspect the inability to install new software would also limit access by others who use computers they don’t own: patrons of public libraries and internet cafés, students in University writing labs, and employees surfing the web from work (only at lunchtime, of course) may not be able to follow the installation procedure for this or any special software requirement. The “Historical Anatomies” exhibit, while already quite large, is clearly identified as work in progress, with plans for many more titles to be scanned and added; along the way, perhaps another viewing method will be found, too.
In addition to the digital collections of visual and historic interest such as “Historical Anatomies”, the National Library of Medicine provides free access to a large collection of texts on subjects of possible interest to anyone concerned about health. The link to PubMed provides starting points for searchable databases of electronic journals and books. The bookshelf, “a growing collection of biomedical books”, provides a basic set of introductory undergraduate-level textbooks such as Biochemistry (by Berg, Tymoczko, and Stryer), Immunobiology (by Janeway, Travers, Walport, and Shlomchik), and Medical Microbiology (by Baron); it’s not an exhaustive collection, but it does provide good general background information to support the curious or perhaps those who are educating themselves. The books are designed to be searchable rather than browseable, meaning that the experience of reading them will not be sequential, like turning the pages of a book. For example, clicking on the cover image for Molecular Cell Biology lists a Table of Contents that is largely non-clickable, accompanied by a search window. Searching for “liposomes” there provides links to 7 sections discussing that subject; selecting the first of those links takes us to section 16.2 on “Electron Transport and Oxidative Phosphorylation” and allows that section to be read, but provides no means of continuing to read the remainder of Chapter 16 (on “Cellular Energetics”). The 5 sections of Chapter 16 are listed, but no method of reaching them or any other point in the book without performing another search is provided. In addition to making the selected book searchable, the search window provides an option to search “All books” rather than “This book”; with that option selected, the search for “liposomes” returns 54 hits, also similarly disconnected from each other and their larger texts. For a reader seeking one disconnected fact, perhaps a definition or illustration, this may be an effective way to learn, but it certainly doesn’t encourage inquiry beyond the concepts with which one is already familiar, and certainly isn’t as much fun as finding a cheap used textbook in a college bookstore and flipping though the pages. The Bookshelf is a limited and inflexible resource, but PubMed's journal collection is extensive and easy to use. Performing the same search, for “liposomes”, returns 27,254 journal abstracts, in a format that can display up to 500 hits at a time, sort them by date (including dates that have not occurred yet, since electronic texts are often available several months ahead of printed texts), send them to email or the clipboard, and link them to related articles. For a reader seriously interested in getting the most current and complete picture of what researchers are doing and saying, this is the part of the library to use. For a widely-discussed subject such as “liposomes”, it's essential to refine the search; searching for “topical liposomes” yields a more manageable 306 items, with 41 of them shown on a separate “Review” tab. For the non-specialist, the “Review” tab is an excellent place to begin, containing broad overviews that summarize and evaluate several examples of narrowly-focused but related work; for example, “Review of traditional and novel modalities that enhance the permeability of local therapeutics across the stratum corneum” in the July 2004 International Journal of Dermatology, discusses fundamental ideas and current developments, giving the reader some suggestions about more detailed discussions in publications by primary investigators (likely to be found on the “All” tab) rather than the summaries produced by reviewers (found on the “Review” tab). The difficulty with all these online journal articles, of course, is that depending upon the journal’s publisher, although there may be a link claiming to provide the “Full Text”, you may not be able to get the full text easily. In that case, one method is certainly to pay the publisher the asking price for the full text of the article: $26 in the case of the review article just mentioned. Fortunately, there are several other good methods. In the case of a review article, the main reason for reading the article is to seek its suggestions about other sources of information; if you are able to dispense with the author’s comments about each source and make your own assessment of what else to read based on titles, abstracts, and authors' names, clicking on the “Related Articles” link will provide a list from which you can continue to select. When you become convinced that it is necessary to read the full text of an article, rather than PubMed's abstract, you may be back at the publisher’s “Buy Now!” page, but that’s probably not the only option available to you, short of a trip to the nearest medical school library to seek a paper copy and feed coins into parking meters and photocopiers. If you are lucky enough to have access to any University library, you probably have access to the full text of many articles indexed in PubMed, but only if you reach those articles through that library’s electronic database collection pages rather than by going directly to PubMed. Similarly, if you join your local public library and use its electronic database collection links to reach the journals indexed by PubMed, you are also likely to be treated as a subscriber by the journal publishers. That takes a little planning, and perhaps one trip to a branch library to fill out a form and prove that you are a local resident, but it is easy and painless and almost certainly free. Or, rather than “free”, perhaps we should consider library access “pre-paid”: since city public libraries depend on city funding, and state University libraries depend on state funding, and the National Library of Medicine depends on federal funding, taxpayers at all levels have paid and continue to pay to make the information in PubMed generally available. That means all this data belongs to you, or could; spending some time in the online National Library of Medicine is a good way to take advantage of this excellent free/pre-paid resource. |
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