A survey of consumer health reference services policies of academic medical school libraries and veterinary medical school libraries

This study describes a questionnaire survey of consumer health reference services policies of the academic medical school libraries and veterinary school libraries in the United States and Canada. Library administrators and public services librarians were asked about library category and funding source, type of medical school served, policy type, reference services, and searcher response to specific medical reference questions. Survey results showed that library funding source accounted for the most difference in provision of mediated reference services to the general public; whether a library supported a medical school or veterinary medical school was not significant. Eighty percent of the libraries provided database searches for the public, but 69% performed under six such searches per week; mediated database searching fees caused many patrons to prefer to search on their own. Fifty-five percent of the libraries had a written reference services policy, 31%--most serving medical schools--used a written disclaimer

Is Open Access to One Health Equivalent Across Human, Environmental, and Animal Health?

Poste

“Veterinary Medicine: All Collections Great and Small.” In: Library Collection Development or Professional Programs: Trends and Best Practices.

The purpose of this chapter is to present the specifics of veterinary collection development within the context of general health sciences collection development. A basic understanding of the principles of collection development and its processes is assumed. The chapter provides historical background and current information on external forces that impact veterinary collections. It presents important aspects of the veterinary literature and the community of veterinary libraries and explains their impact on veterinary collection development. The chapter provides practical advice and strategies for developing and maintaining veterinary collections. It discusses important trends and future issues in veterinary collection development, including the need for an active advocacy role for veterinary collection librarians

Access to human, animal, and environmental journals is still limited for the One Health community

Objective: ‘‘One Health’’ is an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating and managing the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environments they share that relies on knowledge from the domains of human health, animal health, and the environmental sciences. The authors’ objective was to evaluate the extent of open access (OA) to journal articles in a sample of literature from these domains. We hypothesized that OA to articles in human health or environmental journals was greater than access to animal health literature. Methods: A One Health seminar series provided fifteen topics. One librarian translated each topic into a search strategy and searched four databases for articles from 2011 to 2012. Two independent investigators assigned each article to human health, the environment, animal health, all, other, or combined categories. Article and journal-level OA were determined. Each journal was also assigned a subject category and its indexing evaluated. Results: Searches retrieved 2,651 unique articles from 1,138 journals; 1,919 (72%) articles came from 406 journals that contributed more than 1 article. Seventy-seven (7%) journals dealt with all 3 One Health domains; the remaining journals represented human health 487 (43%), environment 172 (15%), animal health 141 (12%), and other/combined categories 261 (23%). The proportion of OA journals in animal health (40%) differed significantly from journals categorized as human (28%), environment (28%), and more than 1 category (29%). The proportion of OA for articles by subject categories ranged from 25%–34%; only the difference between human (34%) and environment (25%) was significant. Conclusions: OA to human health literature is more comparable to animal health than hypothesized. Environmental journals had less OA than anticipated

Erratum: Recommended Minimal Standards for Describing New Taxa of the Family Halomonadaceae

On page 2437, second paragraph, under the heading ‘Salt/temperature/pH as preliminary tests’, the name ‘Zymomonas palmae ’ should read Zymobacter palmae . In addition, in Table 1 on page 2439, the last entry should be for the genus Zymobacter with the species Zymobacter palmae and not ‘Zymomonas palmae ’