Mulford Library Blog

Vivisimo BiometaCluster searches select resources for biomedical information and summarizes the results.

Vivisimo Bio MetaCluster sends requests to PubMed, Harrison’s Online, MerckManual and TRIP (Turning Research Into Practice) Database. It then  parses and clusters the search results. The resulting left-side folders are made automatically from the returned titles and summaries.

Clustering makes use of a proprietary General-Science and Biomedical knowledge base of synonyms, acronyms, spelling variants, and other meaning associations which help to interpret the search results.

Vivisimo does not have the focused search options of PubMed or TRIP (Turning Research into Practice). Thus search results may include extaraneous material. However, it may be good for general searches and as a starting point for more refined searches elsewhere.

Other biomedical search engines & web directories of note:

• Scirus.com -  scientific search engine which mines journal content,  scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information
• HardinMD - results include lists, directories,  and information in health and medicine
• Martindale’s Health Science Guide

Please do not hestiate to contact Mulford Reference Assistance with your information and research needs.

The  National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) On-line is published by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.  It is a national probability sample of hospitals in the U.S. and its territories. Patient information is collected from each NEISS hospital for every emergency visit involving an injury associated with consumer products. From this sample, the total number of product-related injuries treated in hospital emergency rooms nationwide can be estimated. This web access to NEISS allows certain estimates to be retrieved on-line. These estimates can be focused by setting some or all of the following variables (and an example of each):

• Date (one year maximum range; e.g., how many injuries were treated in 1996)
• Product (e.g., how many bicycle injuries occurred)
• Sex (e.g., how many injuries occurred to women)
• Age (e.g., how many injuries occurred to people aged 35-55)
• Diagnosis (e.g., how many lacerations occurred)
• Disposition (e.g., how many people were admitted to the hospital)
• Locale (e.g., how many injuries occurred at a school)
• Body part (e.g., how many injuries involved the knee)

For example, the following query could be made: number of males between the ages of 50 and 70 treated in hospital emergency rooms between February 1999 and October 1999 for injuries associated with use of a ladder at home. The response would include the actual number of cases/injuries in the NEISS sample, and an estimate for the entire nation.

WISQARSTM: Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System

WISQARSTM (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) is an interactive database system that provides customized reports of injury-related data from the national Center of Health Statistics (NCHS) and the violent death data from NCIPC’s (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control) National Violent Death Reporting System.

Includes data on fatal, nonfatal, and violent injuries. Offers tutorials and frequently requested charts, tables, and reports

Please contact Mulford Reference Assistance with your informational and research needs.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is a database for journal evaluation . It uses citation datadrawn from over 5,900 journals from over 3,300 publishers worldwide. Virtually all specialties in the areas of science and technology are covered.The JCR shows the highest impact journals, most frequently used journals, “hottest journals”, and the largest journals overall.

The latest release of JCR has been revised with the goal of solving the problem of inappropriate use of Impact Factor.
According to a recent press release, the new functionalities include

• Five-Year Impact Factor – Gives a broader range of citation activity for a more informative snapshot over time. For journals in subjects where citation activity continues to rise through several years, this allows more of their total citation activity to be included in a critical performance metric.

• Eigenfactor™, also a five-year metric, is designed to reflect the prestige and citation influence of journals by considering scholarly literature as a network of journal-to-journal relationships.

• Graphic Displays of Impact Factor “Box Plots” – A graphic interpretation of how a journal ranks in different categories.

• Rank-in-Category Tables for Journals Covering Multiple Disciplines – Allows a journal to be seen in the context of multiple categories at a glance rather than only a single one.

• Journal “Self Citations” – An analysis of journal self citations and their contribution to the Journal Impact Factor calculation.

For further information, please do not hesitate to contact Mulford Reference Assistance.

RePORT: Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool was created to  provide NIH (National Institutes of Health) stakeholders with quick and easy access to basic NIH program information. RePORT is a single repository of reports, data, and analysis, along with several tools for searching this database. A common classification scheme based on the traditional NIH budget categories is used to group similar reports. Several different filters can be applied to find information specific to a particular NIH Institute or Center, funding mechanism or topic of interest.

RePORT Includes the NIH Data Book:

The NIH Data Book (NDB) provides basic summary statistics on extramural grants and contract awards, grant applications, the organizations that NIH supports, the scientific workforce, and trainees and fellows supported through NIH programs. Tables and charts are provided in a variety of formats, including PowerPoint (PPT) slides and Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

For further information and assistance, please do not hesitate to contact Mulford Reference Assistance.

Bibliographic management software programs like EndNote are databases designed specifically for bibliographic citations. Not only do they keep track of bibliographic elements of a citation, they can also be used as a searchable index for reprint files and can automatically format and reformat references in manuscripts.

EndNote is the program currently supported at the University of Toledo. To have EndNote X2 (XP SP2/Vista) installed on your office or lab computer, contact the Information Technology help desk at (419) 383-4259 or submit an online request.

EndNote X2 is available for installation on home computers and personal laptops for current University of Toledo faculty, staff members, and students. Log in to MyUT, then click on the UT Community tab. In the lower, right-hand corner of the page, there is a link to download EndNote. For more information on EndNote, see one of the help sheets listed below.

EndNote Help Sheets are now available

Using EndNote X2: Advanced Skills [PDF]
Exporting from Databases, Importing into EndNote [PDF]
Graphic relating EndNote to databases and manuscripts [PDF]
EndNote Quick Start [PDF]
Using EndNote for APA Format [PDF]. Contact Mulford Reference Assistance to obtain the updated APA filter for EndNote.

Using the EndNote Import option when importing references from OhioLINK databases can be messy. The Library has created import filters for commonly used online resources for cleaner imports:

CINAHL
PsycINFO
Biological Abstracts
EBSCOhost

Additional information about EndNote can be found here.

Concerns, questions, or suggestions?
Contact Mulford Reference Assistance at (419) 383-4218 or MulfordReference@utoledo.edu. Chat and IM reference is also available.

 ”A Brief History of African-Americans in Comic Books” is on display in Room 420, 4th Floor of the Mulford Library for the month of March. Covered is how African-Americans have been depicted in comic books, how comic books are mirrors of society, and the significance of the election of America’s first African-American president to the comics medium.

For questions or comments contact Gerald Natal at gerald.natal@utoledo.edu .