It may seem that I am investing a lot of time in the Second Life Medical Library, based on the number of posts recently. And it is true, but it is mostly personal time. I will explain about this later.
First some news from the database front. Our patrons are still using the Silverplatter interfaces Winspirs and Webspirs a lot, because they used to for a long time now, it's historical. Winspirs was the first interface that allowed Medline search within the hospital. First on a local server in the hospital, then using the University Library servers and now we are using the ERl-servers in the US. Once you are hooked on the Winspirs interface and you have invested time to learn how it works, this still is a good way to search. I must admit that the use of Winspirs falls into the category of "power-use" in my opinion.
But the number of databases available is decreasing and the Webspirs interface is not the perfect successor or Winspirs.
As of January 1st 2007 we will offer Embase via Embase.com and Cinahl via Ebsco. We still have Medline via Ebsco, but the Silverplatter Medline will stop for us.
The great advantage of Embase.com is the lift of the limited concurrent usage. Now a lot more people can use it, ánd we can search a far bigger archive.
Unfortunately our users have to learn to seach yet another interface.
The library will offer patrons help with this shift.
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