The purpose of this review is to highlight GraphicMedicine.org and elucidate how this website serves as a valuable reader’s advisory tool for health science libraries.
Introduction One of the core services the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority Virtual Library (WRHAVL) provides is literature searching for healthcare staff. Librarians send reference lists to patrons with links to the results. To improve access to the library’s collection and understand patrons’ engagement, the library developed a novel process for generating trackable links. Link and click data were analyzed to assess patron engagement with the service. Methods Leveraging the link management tool Short.io and a Visual Basic for Applications macro, the library uses an automated process to generate trackable links for literature search results sent to patrons. Click and link data are automatically collected in Short.io. Data from October 19, 2022, to October 31, 2024, was cleaned and exported into Excel for analysis. Logistic regression analysis was conducted in R. Results Over the two-year study period, librarians sent 344 literature searches to patrons using this method. Patrons clicked at least one link in 194, or 56%, of reference lists. The percentage of total links clicked was higher for point of care and quick reference resources. Greater numbers of digital object identifier (DOI) and PubMed identifier (PMID) links included predicted a decrease in the odds of someone clicking at least one link. Patrons clicked more than 20 links in only 10, or just 3%, of literature searches. Discussion The data provides valuable insights into patron engagement with the WRHAVL’s literature search service. The discovery that 44% of reference lists did not have a single click warrants further investigation.
This review describes the utility of the open bibliographic database OpenAlex. In addition to providing a collaborative overview of the product, the individual authors explore OpenAlex’s use for systematic literature searching/evidence synthesis (ZP) and its value as a source of open linked bibliometric data (JY). Overall, OpenAlex is a promising option for both evidence synthesis searches and bibliometric analyses, but a more systematic test and comparison - against widely used subscription citation indexes and other openly accessible sources such as Lens.org, and Google Scholar - would be beneficial.
The purpose of this product review is to elucidate the strengths and weaknesses of DynaMed. A comparative analysis will be made between DynaMed and BMJ Best Practice to serve as a guide to help health sciences libraries decide which point-of-care tool best suits their users’ needs.
