DART Mobile Site for Checking on Your Bus

If you have a smart phone you can use DART's Mobile Site to tell you what time the next bus is expected. Choose the bus stop Maple @ Oak Lawn. The screen even shows a little map of the last reported location for the bus!

This site can be viewed on a regular computer, but is designed for a phone. Really handy! Thanks for sharing, KF!

Website referenced: m.dart.org

VARK - a Learning Style Questionnaire

The VARK website helps you become aware of your own learning style -- Visual, Auditory, Reading/writing, Kinesthetic by offering a free questionnaire and scoring online. That knowledge can translate to offering your patients, students and customers information in formats more appropriate to their own learning styles. The site includes tips on tools to use for each style.

This article discusses the system and other relevant topics such as literacy level and readability:
Hamilton, Sharilyn. How do we assess the learning style of our patients? Rehabilitation Nursing v.30(4):129-131, July-Aug., 2005.

Website referenced: http://www.vark-learn.com

MEDLINE Now Includes Records from 1946

MEDLINE began as a project covering medical literature citations from 1966 forward. For a number of years NLM has been expanding that backwards, adding data from earlier records along with current subject headings (MeSH) to make the information searchable. Now the OLDMEDLINE subset has expanded back through 1946, adding 20 years to the original MEDLINE database. You will encounter these older records as needed via whichever version of MEDLINE you use (PubMed, EBSCO MEDLINE, or in some cases OVID).


Resources cited:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/databases_oldmedline.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd10/nd10_oldmedline.html

Binding Wounds, Pushing Boundaries: African Americans in Civil War Medicine

Binding Wounds, Pushing Boundaries: African Americans in Civil War Medicine is a new exhibit from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. The website includes a wealth of information and educational resources and activities. Through it you can explore the contributions these nurses, surgeons, and other health care workers made during the Civil War.


Website referenced: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/bindingwounds/index.html

"Toolkit for Making Written Material Clear and Effective" Now Available

The Toolkit for Making Written Material Clear and Effective is a health literacy resource from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services . Consisting of 11 sections, and free to download, the Toolkit provides details you can use to create written material that is easier for people to read, understand, and use. It includes a brief introduction to writing for a website.

The Toolkit advises using a reader-centered approach and includes sections relevant to writing culturally appropriate documents. Although written for those who work with Medicaid services, the Toolkit is relevant to a much broader audience concerned with user literacy skills. The tips apply to a variety of written materials including letters and reminders to patients, patient education handouts, and satisfaction surveys.

Website referenced: http://www.cms.gov/WrittenMaterialsToolkit/

PICO Search Site from MEDLINE -- and Other Mobile Device-friendly NLM Resources

NLM's mobile PICO MEDLINE search page has a new location. The page offers a form that helps you clarify your thoughts and compose a workable research question using the categories of Patient, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome. Then the topics are searched in MEDLINE. The page is designed to be mobile-device friendly. More mobile friendly resources, such as MedlinePlus and a couple of disaster-related resources are also available from NLM.



Websites referenced:
http://pubmedhh.nlm.nih.gov/
http://go.usa.gov/xFb
http://pubmedhh.nlm.nih.gov/nlmd/pico/piconew.php

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mobile/

Walk Across Texas Begins

Are you ready to up your activity level and work on establishing "the habit of regular physical activity"? Join a Walk Across Texas team! The librarians will be busy earning 830 points (the number of miles from east to west across the state) with their friends and family for the next 8 weeks in support of the hospital's wellness activity. Go Team TexOrVa!

Websites referenced: http://walkacrosstexas.tamu.edu/