We’ve had feedback from a number of library staff, asking how Evidence search works behind the scenes to produce the sets of results that you are presented with. We thought a set of notes for advanced searchers would give some insight to how Evidence search works, explain what happens when different search features are used, and provide some extra hints/tips for searching. The notes cover ranking of search results, word stemming (lemmatisation), synonym expansion and wildcard searching, phrase searching, Boolean operators, stop words, spelling correction and UK vs international searching.
If you haven't had a look at the HDAS preview, then do have a look. It's available here: http://alpha.hdas.nice.org.uk/
Some of the features that you can currently use on the preview site are:
Saving strategies
Browsing the thesaurus
Using thesaurus terms in a search
Using limits and fields to refine your search
Re-running searches
Editing existing search rows
Saving results
Exporting results
Access to full-text links
This article is the first in the feature to highlight the social network site Twitter as a tool for health information and it reports on a study by Emma Hughes, who completed an MSc in information and library studies at Aberystwyth University in 2014. Emma's research investigated the quality of health information available on Twitter, in particular the information available on UK alcohol consumption guidelines. Her research suggests that users searching for this information would need certain literacy skills to interpret it correctly. However, there is no doubt that Twitter is an increasingly popular resource for information dissemination and health professionals, and organisations should be encouraged to use it frequently as a tool for sharing information.
A public libraries dataset published today by the BBC has revealed the extent of losses to public library services and paid staff since 2010.
According to the data compiled from FOI requests returned by 207 authorities responsible for running libraries across the UK, almost 8,000 jobs in UK public libraries have disappeared in six years and 343 libraries have closed, with over 15,000 volunteers recruited to the library service.
In this context, I am writing to provide some details of my YouTube channel called ‘Psychiatry Lectures’ (www.youtube.com/channel/UCVZhg8unEqo0XUm8cHAIwbA/videos). This is a free-to-access educational channel featuring videos on psychiatry topics targeted at health professionals who see psychiatric patients. So far, I have uploaded 19 videos covering most of the major psychiatry topics, for example, schizophrenia, mood disorders and anxiety disorders. The average duration of the videos is 50 min and most videos end with a set of five multiple choice questions. The videos are in the form of PowerPoint presentations with my narration.
Commissioned by CILIP, the University of Salford have undertaken a piece of research to identify what evidence exists to support the employment of trained and professionally registered library, information and knowledge professionals.
This systematic review found a solid evidence base supporting the added value of trained Information Professionals in Public, Academic, School and Health settings
If you're a Twitter fan, you'll want to take a look at Social Rank. It's a very neat tool to slice and dice the followers that you've got. Simply log in with your Twitter credentials and start to have fun with all of the different filters.
Five United States senators and a group of scientists and physicians have called on the US National Library of Medicine to require journals to include information about authors’ competing interests in the abstracts of articles submitted to PubMed, the library’s online database of biomedical literature. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
The Royal College of Physicians' (RCP) new report Research for all: Building a research-active medical workforce has noted that the greatest barrier doctors face in engaging in research is a lack of time, even though they are eager to do so. Drawn from the findings of a survey of almost 2,000 doctors, the report shows that respondents cited the lack of time as having a ‘significant impact’ on their ability to engage in research.
GRADE is a method of assessing the certainty in evidence (also known as quality of evidence or confidence in effect estimates) and the strength of recommendations in health care. In the paper the authors acknowledge that trustworthy answers are required across different timeframes, sometimes in just hours.
A newly-revamped social care website has been launched today (Wednesday 8 June 2016) as part of the national Carers Week 2016.
Shropshire Choices, developed by Shropshire Council’s adult services team, is designed to ensure everyone in Shropshire has access to information at a time and in a format which suits them
book review. Login at top righthand side of page using your SSSFT NHS Athens for full text . SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you requesting.