Eric P. Delozier

MEDLINE and MeSH: challenges for end users.

Through casual observations, formal consultations, and educational sessions, the authors have identified various indexing features of the National Library of Medicines Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) that pose challenges to end users while attempting to obtain relevant retrieval when searching MEDLINE. These problematic features include the use of Explodes, Tree structures, subheadings, Text Word vs. subject heading searching, and central concept searching. End-user search software is becoming more sophisticated with an increasing number of choices offered for search strategy formulation. Methods of instruction to orient the end user to these systems will also have to become more detailed. A review of the literature, that discusses end-user problems with using MEDLINE and MeSH, is included.

Health Services Technology/Assessment Text (HSTAT)

Health Services Technology/Assessment Text (HSTAT), an online collection of documents pertaining to clinical practice guidelines, HIV/AIDS treatment information, and health care decision making, was recently introduced by the National Library of Medicine. Access to HSTAT is available through the NLM Full-Text Retrieval System (FTRS), a document search and retrieval system developed by the Information Technology Branch of NLM. Internet FTP, Gopher, and World Wide Web clients may also be used to obtain documents from the HSTAT collection.

Anonymity and authenticity in the cloud: issues and applications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe personal privacy and data authenticity problems in the cloud and provide solutions to reduce or eliminate them.Design/methodology/approach – This paper reveals issues and applications of anonymity and authenticity in the cloud. It outlines common privacy settings of five web browsers, anonymous browsing on the Tor network and standard methods for verifying the integrity of files obtained in the cloud.Findings – Cloud computing is an emerging technology for libraries which must balance the convenience of ubiquitous access against the potential risks for loss of anonymity and authenticity.Originality/value – This article contributes to the body of literature on user privacy and data preservation in the cloud and their impact on the library community.

The GNU/Linux desktop: an open access primer for libraries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the GNU/Linux operating system, with special attention to its use as a desktop computing platform in libraries.Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes the connection between libraries and the open source communities. It provides a model for an open source desktop computer that incorporates the needs of libraries. Specific topics covered include the graphical desktop, office productivity, electronic mail, web browsing and viewers, and public access computing.Findings – It is possible to model a desktop computer around open source software, however the ultimate decision on whether to proceed must be measured against potential costs, governing policies, and organizational cultures.Originality/value – This paper contributes to the improvement, growth, and development of the library and open source communities.

A free ride on the information highway: gratis software for enhancing end user productivity

ABSTRACT The concept of gratis software is anything but new. Not to be confused with free software and the efforts of the Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org, this article reviews selected productivity software for the IBM-compatible PC and Windows operating system that is both obtainable and useable without payment. Included in this selection are: operating systems, office productivity, e-mail, document viewers, compression, system, antivirus, and Web browsers. The selected titles offer the possibility for building a complete suite of productivity applications around software that is freely available for personal use.

Free and Open Source Software

The sections in this article are 1 Historical Background 2 Intellectual Property Issues 3 Licensing Software 4 Free and Open Source Distributions 5 The Free–Open-Source Debate 6 Evaluating Free and Open Source Software 7 Conclusion

Bibliography Management with Library MasterTM Version 2.0

Library MasterTM, a bibliographic and textual database management software package, is reviewed in this article. One of over fifty software packages intended to organize and track bibliographies and references, it provides a wide range of data manipulation capabilities. Some of the common capabilities supported include flexible inputting, editing, and deleting of references: sophisticated database querying capabilities; and flexible organization and output of bibliography lists. This review concentrates on the bibliography management capabilities of Version 2.0 from Balboa Software.

Bibliography Management with Pro-CiteTM Version 2.0

Pro-CiteTM, a database management system specifically designed to manage bibliographic references, is reviewed in this article. One of three bibliographic products from Personal Bibliographic Software, Pro-Cite provides a wide range of data manipulation capabilities. These include: creating, editing, and deleting database records; querying for specific recordss; organizing databases; and printing selected records to a variety of devices. This article describes Pro-Cite version 2.0., a major upgrade, and its companion program for converting data captured from MEDLARS into Pro-Cite databases, MEDLARS Biblio-LinksTM.