BIOME Evaluated Internet Resources in the Health and Life Sciences

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BIOMEEvaluated Internet Resources in the Health
and Life Sciences

• Health and Life Sciences Online

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Overview

• Development of BIOME
• Concerns about quality
• BIOME subject scope
• Searching and browsing BIOME
• Practical Session

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eLib, OMNI and the RDN

• Electronic Libraries programme (eLib) began in
  1994 http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/
• Development of a number of subject gateways
  OMNI, SOSIG, EEVL
• 1998 call for proposals to extend the work of
  the subject gateways
• Led to the development of the Resource Discovery
  Network (RDN) http//www.rdn.ac.uk/

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RDN Hubs

• The RDN comprises a number of subject Hubs
• BIOME health and life sciences
• SOSIG social sciences, law and business
• EEVL engineering, maths and computing
• HUMBUL humanities
• PSIgate physical sciences
• ALTIS sports, tourism and leisure
• GEsource geography and environment
• Artifact creative arts and industries

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Quality

• Many concerns about the quality of information on
  the Internet
• Transitory nature
• Ease of self publishing
• Lack of peer review or editorial processes

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Quality

• Concerns associated with the use of popular
  search tools
• Output lacks context
• Large numbers of hits
• No quality control
• Easy to manipulate word spamming

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BIOME

• BIOME was launched 2000
• Free access to a collection of hand selected,
  evaluated, quality Internet resources in the
  health and life sciences
• Aimed primarily at the UK HE and FE communities,
  but attracts users from other communities
  including the NHS

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BIOME Partners

• University of Nottingham (core team)
• National History Museum
• Reading University
• Oxford University
• Royal Free Hospital
• Royal Veterinary College
• Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons
• Royal College of Nursing
• Royal College of Midwives
• Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
• University of the West of England, Bristol

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BIOME Subject Scope

• BIOME comprises six subject gateways
• OMNI Health and Medicine
• NMAP Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health
• BioResearch Biological Sciences
• AgriFor Agriculture, Food and Forestry
• VetGate Animal Health
• Natural Selection the Natural World

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Searching BIOME

• Can be done at the BIOME level or at the
  individual gateway level
• Searching the title, description, and keywords
• Simple search includes phrase searching and
  Boolean searching (using AND, OR)
• Advanced search can limit by resource type,
  gateway, and choose how the results are displayed

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Searching BIOME refining your search

• If you retrieve too many results make your search
  more specific
• - search for heroin rather than drugs
• - add a second term
• - dont use very general terms (journal,
  health, Nursing)
• If you retrieve too few results make your search
  broader
• - use the term rare diseases instead of
  Gardner Syndrome

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Browsing

• Browsing is only possible at the individual
  gateway level - different thesauri and
  classification schemes are used by the different
  subject gateways
• Can browse by keyword (thesaurus term) or by
  classification scheme

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Browsing
Thesaurus Classification
OMNI MeSH NLM
NMAP MeSH NLM and RCN
BioResearch MeSH LC
AgriFor CAB DDC
VetGate CAB LC
Natural Selection DDC
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Other Features of the BIOME site

• Virtual Training Suite tutorials 8 free
  tutorials teaching Internet information seeking
  skills
• BIOME-hosted services PsiCom, MedHist, and
  Bioethics
• RGA for Health and Life Sciences

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Useful contacts and Urls

• BIOME http//biome.ac.uk and for background
  information http//biome.ac.uk/about/
• General enquiries help_at_biome.ac.uk
• Requests for leaflets and other promotional
  materials leaflets_at_biome.ac.uk
• To submit a site choose the relevant gateway
  and select the submit button from the top tool
  bar
• BIOME Service Manager - Donald MacKay
  dmm_at_biome.ac.uk