Books with New Looks: The Bookshelf Redesign

National Library of Medicine | National Institutes of Health

 

 

 

From a November 24, 2010 US National Library of Medicine (NLM) Technical Bulletin Announcement

The books in Bookshelf have been given a new look as part of a redesign that is taking place in several stages. The Bookshelf redesign goes beyond cosmetic enhancements; it includes infrastructural improvements to facilitate the discovery of information at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

The first (and completed) stage is the redesign that improves how all book pages are displayed. The table of contents page of every book now displays the book’s bibliographic data, such as the book title, author, publisher, and copyright information. A thumbnail display of the book cover shows prominently and an abstract or excerpt from the book is displayed above the table of contents. On the right side of the page, related PubMed® citations and history of recent activity may display (see Figure 1). Where available, links to other NCBI resources, such as Gene and OMIM, may also display. These new panels mark the ongoing work to create rich links between NCBI resources and to maximize discoverability of related materials.

In common with PubMed, the blue NCBI header and search bar are displayed at the top of all pages, and at the bottom of each page the standard NCBI footer links to many NCBI resources. Click on “Bookshelf” (upper left on any page) to return to the homepage.

Once inside a book, all pages have been given a more balanced and clean layout. The text of the page is more readable through improved page layout, typography, and standardized headings. Figures can be quickly previewed: a large version of the image pops up over the page when you mouseover the thumbnail (see Figure 2). Clicking on the thumbnail opens the image in a new window and allows you to see the title and caption for the figure……

 

Dartmouth study uses the patient’s tumor to form vaccin

Dendritic cell vaccine induces immune responses in patients

A new process for creating a personalized vaccine may become a crucial tool in helping patients with colorectal cancer develop an immune response against their own tumors. This dendritic cell (DC) vaccine, developed at Dartmouth and described in a research paper [Abstract is here **] published this week in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, was used after surgical resection of metastatic tumors to try to prevent the growth of additional metastases….

** Click here for suggestions to get the full text of this article at little or no cost.

 

Experts question whether patients will use performance data to choose their care

From a November 25, 2010 Eureka news alert

Analysis: How do patients use information on health providers?

Expectations are high that the public will use performance data to choose their health providers and so drive improvements in quality. But in a paper published on bmj.com [here ] today, two experts question whether this is realistic.

They think patient choice is not at present a strong lever for change, and suggest ways in which currently available information can be improved to optimise its effect.

Research conducted over the past 20 years in several countries provides little support for the belief that most patients behave in a consumerist fashion as far as their health is concerned, say Martin Marshall and Vin McLoughlin from The Health Foundation.

Although patients are clear that they want information to be made publicly available, they rarely search for it, often do not understand or trust it, and are unlikely to use it in a rational way to choose the best provider, they write….

…”In this paper, we present a significant challenge to those who believe that providing information to patients to enable them to make choices between providers will be a major driver for improvement in the near or medium term,” they write. “We suggest that, for the foreseeable future, presenting high quality information to patients should be seen as having the softer and longer term benefit of creating a new dynamic between patients and providers, rather than one with the concrete and more immediate outcome of directly driving improvements in quality of care.