Health information literacy: librarians’ role

Information Literacy is an important attribute in achieving life-long learning. It is a key issue in a knowledge based society, particularly in health care. The drive for health information literacy is the widespread recognition of the need for information and knowledge skill to succeed in a knowledge-based society. The health information professionals have to play an important role to promote health information services to practitioners, researchers, nurses as well as patients. This paper focuses on the important roles of health librarian on the promotion of information literacy

Digital Archiving in the Tuberculosis Research Centre: A Case Study

Increasing amounts of research outputs on tuberculosis exist in print as well as in digital form; collecting and preserving those materials serves multiple purposes; particularly the research papers on specific disease should reach at least the researchers those working on the same area to explore further; developing an Institutional Repository will remove the access barrier in future. This paper reveals the experience faced while developing an Institutional archives at the Tuberculosis Research Centre

Designing digital architecture with intelligent building for information access at the Tuberculosis Research Centre, Chennai

This paper focuses on how the digital architecture is being effectively used in the Tuberculosis Research Centre’s library for information access system making it more users friendly. More recently multi-media information retrieval systems have become vital with increased international attraction/attention. This will increase the end users and their platforms connected to the internet/intranet. Further this will explore the opportunities for research at the intersection of web and user’s information. Moreover this will bring out how simply the computational infrastructural tools are being utilized in remote access to reach publicly available information

Selenium levels in persons with HIV/tuberculosis in India, Madurai City.

BACKGROUND Selenium plays a vital role in the immune status of the individual. The prospective observational study was conducted from September 2009 to March 2010. The aim of the present study is to investigate the association between serum selenium levels and pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients with (n = 40) and without HIV (n = 40) in comparison to healthy controls (healthy family members; n = 20) who satisfied rigid selection criteria. METHODS Standard methods were adopted to collect an early morning fasting blood sample for serum selenium concentrations, determined by atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), and albumin, determined by the bro mocresol green method. RESULTS The mean +/- SD for Body Mass Index (BMI), selenium, and albumin among the controls, HIV positive, and HIV negative patients were 19.6 +/- 0.6, 18 +/- 0.4 and 18.5 +/- 0.6 kg/m2; 113.1 +/- 4.1, 27.44 +/- 8, and 65.92 +/- 9, microg/dL; and 4.1 +/- 0.6, 2.9 +/- 0.4 and 3.6 +/- 0.7 g/dL, respectively. BMI, serum selenium, and albumin levels were found to be significantly lower (p < 0.004, p < 0.0321, and p < 0.002, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Low serum selenium levels are associated with increased risk of pulmonary infection caused by mycobacteria