Creation of a Library Portal

Sound Shore Health System, New Rochelle NY

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of this project is to increase the access to digital collections by the health services personnel at Sound Shore Medical Center and Mount Vernon Hospital through the purchase of four new computers, connecting these computers to the hospital's T1 line, and the creation of a library website to organize access to digital resources. There already exists potential access to a large number of digital resources at Sound Shore and Mount Vernon. Through the National Library of Medicine there is access to PubMed, Medline Plus, NLM Gateway, PubMed Central, Consumer Health, DOCLINE, and Loansome Dec; through New York State's EmpireLink there is access to Gale's Health Reference Center, a full-text collection of medical and consumer health information; through the Metropolitan New York Library Council's Hospital Library Services Program there is access to StatRef, a fult-text collection of over thirty medical textbooks, and access to Harrison's Online. In addition, the libraries provide access to OVID's LWW Collection, a full-text collection of 140 medical journals, which include access to OVID's search interface for MedLine. What is needed to maximize the usage of these resources is their organization by a professional librarian. The proposed library website will serve as that portal to guide health professionals through the maze of variagated resources by providing introductions explaining the scope of each database and their arrangement in a logical order. Finally, connecting the libraries to a high speed connection will increase the usability of the website and the databases and allow the librarian to be "online" to provide assistance to either site.