Beth McGowan

Weed, Yes! Discard, No! There May Be a Collection in That Trash!

In the course of a weeding project at a small community college library, librarians discovered an unusual nineteenth century literary collection consisting of many obscure titles written by people of color, women and ethnic minorities. Though the materials were not rare, they constituted an interesting and valuable set of materials. These materials had never circulated and would remain underutilized given the mission of a community college. The community college librarians working together determined that while the collection did not belong in their library, the collection would be appropriate in an institution with upper level undergraduates, or even better with a graduate student population doing original research. A description of the collection consisting both of a list of the materials and an overview was created. The collection was then offered on a first come, first serve basis on a local consortium listserv. Another academic library, this at a university with a graduate school, requested the collection within an hour of its being offered. Everyone was happy.

Spanish Language Children’s Books Focusing on Health Literacy: An Annotated Bibliography

ABSTRACT An efficient and economical health care system requires that patients and providers understand each other. For Latino patients, the challenges to effective communication include limited Spanish language ability of providers, limited English language ability of patients, lack of knowledge of the health system, and a generally low educational attainment resulting in general low literacy and numeracy abilities. Both literacy and public health research suggests that focusing on family systems and children is a good path to helping the entire Latino community to navigate better healthcare. This poster provides a selection of titles of readily available Spanish and bilingual (Spanish/English) children’s books that focus on health literacy as well as a series that addresses children’s health issues written for low literacy Spanish-speaking parents. The bibliography is organized into the following categories: Exercise, Healthy Habits, The Human Body, Hygiene, Nutrition, Parenting, and Understanding Difference. It is incumbent upon those in public service, including public libraries, the educational system, and literacy experts, as well as those in the medical professions to try and remedy this situation. Ideally, the titles for children should be read with parents or teachers. This bibliography should be useful for public librarians, school librarians, academic librarians collecting for education departments, literacy experts, and medical and health sciences librarians.

Comparison of core full text coverage in CINAHL Complete, ProQuest’s Nursing and Allied Health Source and Lippincott Wilkins and Wilson’s Nursing & Health Professionals Premier Collection

Purpose – This paper aims to assess relative full-text coverage of core nursing and allied health journals in three databases: CINAHL Complete, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source and Lippincott Wilkins and Wilson (LWW)’s Nursing & Health Professionals Premier Collection. Design/methodology/approach – The 2012 Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section (NAHRS) of the MLA list of 213 core nursing journals and the 1996 Brandon Hill list of 75 important allied journals were checked against full-text coverage of the three databases. Findings – CINAHL Complete provided 126 of 213 titles or 59 per cent of NAHRS titles and 31 of 75 or 41 per cent of the Brandon Hill titles; ProQuest provided 74 of 213 titles or 35 per cent of NAHRS titles and 27 of 75 or 36 per cent of the Brandon Hill titles; LWW provided 42 of 213 or 20 per cent of NAHRS titles and 5 of 75 or 6 per cent of the Brandon Hill titles. Research limitations/implications – If researchers have access to CINAHL Complete, they have access with that single database to significant coverage of quality nursing and allied health titles. The other two databases provide additional coverage and some unique title coverage, but their offerings are more limited. Originality/value – As no studies comparing full-text coverage of core nursing and allied health journals in three databases, CINAHL Complete, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source and LWW’s Nursing & Health Professionals Premier Collection, exist, this study fills that need for librarians.

Quality vs. Quantity in Versions of CINAHL

EBSCOhost sells subscriptions to five different versions of the CINAHL database. On its CINAHL web pages, EBSCOhost provides a link to a chart which shows differences among these products in terms of numbers of journals indexed and numbers of journals in full text. This chart does not, however, address the quality of journals within each of the versions of the database. This article compares indexing and full text coverage of core Nursing and Allied Health journals among the five versions of CINAHL. For core nursing journals, the most current NAHRS list was consulted. For core allied health journals, the 1996 Brandon Hill list was consulted. In addition to these resources, Web of Science titles for each field were also used. Most core nursing journals were indexed in all versions of CINAHL while full text coverage varied significantly. In contrast, core allied health journals were significantly better covered in some versions of CINAHL than in others, in both indexing and full text coverage. However, core...EBSCOhost sells subscriptions to five different versions of the CINAHL database. On its CINAHL web pages, EBSCOhost provides a link to a chart which shows differences among these products in terms of numbers of journals indexed and numbers of journals in full text. This chart does not, however, address the quality of journals within each of the versions of the database. This article compares indexing and full text coverage of core Nursing and Allied Health journals among the five versions of CINAHL. For core nursing journals, the most current NAHRS list was consulted. For core allied health journals, the 1996 Brandon Hill list was consulted. In addition to these resources, Web of Science titles for each field were also used. Most core nursing journals were indexed in all versions of CINAHL while full text coverage varied significantly. In contrast, core allied health journals were significantly better covered in some versions of CINAHL than in others, in both indexing and full text coverage. However, core allied health journals were overall less well-covered than core nursing titles.

Obesity: A Bibliographic Review

The study of obesity is a relatively new interdisciplinary academic field. The community college library shelves should contain two types of resources. First, several kinds of reference materials, and second, a host of broader materials that place the discussion of obesity within a cultural framework. This overview is divided into two major sections, the first is reference materials, the second is a list of useful and current monographs that discuss the societal implications of obesity.