Wednesday, December 16, 2009

HEATH AND MEDICAL RESOURCES IN ELM




This webinar focused on the five new health databases available from ELM. Health Source: Consumer Edition and Alt Health Watch are designed for the general public. Health Source includes full-text of popular health periodicals like Prevention and Men's Health, pamphlets, reference books, and Merriam-Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary. Also, the Lexi-Pal Drug Guide, which contains information such as side-effects and contraindications for generic and brand name drugs, including over-the counter. Alt Health Watch is a database of academic and popular periodicals and reports on complementary and alternative medicine.


The Consumer Health Complete database combines the previous two databases to make a good starting point for the patron. In addition, it offers 2000 medical images and 800 videos. Its evidence-based reports are 2-page overviews of health topics which are fact-heavy and easily digestible. Medical terms are hyperlinked to the medical dictionary. The Blausen Human Atlas offers animations of human anatomy. For the most part, these databases offer the usual EBSCO options for saving, emailing, and printing entries. The two exceptions are the medical images, which can only be saved by right-clicking on them with the mouse, and the videos and animations, which cannot be saved, but can be accessed later by copying the permalink.


The other two databases, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition and Medline, are geared to an academic/professional audience. Medline has citations and abstracts only, not full-text.