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Sutter library offers free classes on searching Web for medical informationJun 21, 2009 (The Sacramento Bee - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- People who want to read what their doctors read -- or at least know how to find medical research online -- soon can get free help from a little-known library tucked inside a Sacramento medical complex. Every Wednesday in July, the Sutter Resource Library will offer a free, lunchtime class on how to use a vast research database called PubMed. It's one of several free or low-cost medical information services, from health videos to medical texts, that the library provides to anyone in the Sacramento region. The PubMed class aims to help people get a basic grasp of a store of medical literature so large that computer searches easily can turn up thousands of articles, said medical librarian Theresa Johnson. Her class will offer tips for refining searches to winnow that list down to the 30 or so most appropriate articles, depending on exactly what the user wants to learn. The first class will be held at noon July 1 at the library, which is in Suite 600 on the sixth floor of the Sutter Medical Center, 2800 L St., Sacramento. The same material will be covered in each of the hourlong classes. PubMed, which is a service of the National Library of Medicine, is a database of the summaries, called abstracts, of scholarly articles that appear in more than 4,000 medical and scientific journals. "People can get a lot of information from the abstracts, and take that to their doctor to better dialogue about what their condition is," Johnson said. For those who want to read an entire article, the library can provide free or low-cost copies that would cost $30 or more directly from the publisher. "We subscribe to 200 medical journals," and anything in those journals is available free to the public, Johnson said. Articles in other journals can be provided at the library's cost, which is often about a third of what the publisher would charge over the Internet, she said. People can request articles by phone, e-mail or in person, and the library often can fill the request the same day. The nonprofit library is funded by the Sutter Medical Foundation, but it is available to everyone in the region, whether they are Sutter patients or not, Johnson said. Along with medical textbooks and journals, the resource library also has health books and DVDs geared for general audiences. The resource library is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and it accepts research requests in person, by telephone at (916) 733-3880, or by e-mail at [email protected]. Reservations are not needed for the five PubMed classes the library will offer in July. In addition to structured classes, Johnson said she also can give one-on-one search instruction, as time allows, to people who drop in during library hours or call for an appointment. ------ Call The Bee's Carrie Peyton Dahlberg, (916) 321-1086. To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |