Web Magazine for Information Professionals

News from BIOME

Jenny Hall reports on recent news form BIOME, the Health and Life Sciences hub of the Resource Discovery Network.

BIOME Database Continues to Increase

The BIOME database [1] now contains over 25,000 resources and continues to grow. To see the weekly additions go to BIOME what’s new [2].

BIOME Straight to your Desktop

BIOME has been making lots of changes to its Web site. With the help of Vicky Wiseman, our Portal Development Officer, a new feature added to the site is an RSS newsfeed of the latest headlines form BIOME. RSS allows news headlines to be shared between different Web sites; they can be embedded directly into your own or you institutional Web page very simply.

The BIOME Search Box can also quickly be placed on your sites, allowing you to search across the BIOME Internet resource catalogues from within your own Web site. Details on these services can be found at BIOME about pages [3].

BIOME is committed to being a user-responsive service. We plan, therefore, to undertake an online questionnaire over the summer requesting users for their feedback. Look out for the up-coming link on our home page.

New Internet Resource Booklets

The 7th edition of the Internet Resources for Health and Medicine is now available. This is a free booklet that gives a flavour of the many resources within the OMNI (Medical and Health Sciences) and NMAP (Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions) collections. If you would like copies of the resource booklet then instructions for ordering are available from BIOME publications [4].

Resource Guide for Health and Life Sciences

It is with regret that BIOME announces that the popular Resource Guide for the Health and Life Sciences initiative will be ending on 31 July 2004.

The project has been a great success in raising the awareness of electronic resources with thousands of printed guides distributed, thousands of hits a month to the online Web site and many talks and presentations given at both national and international conferences across the country. In particular the series of Roadshows held around the UK and Scotland in spring and summer of 2004 were highly successful and produced excellent feedback.

BIOME would like to take this opportunity to thank the two Resource Guide Advisers for the Health and Life Sciences, Dr Jo Badge and Dr Rachael Stacey for all their hard work and dedication to the Initiative. We wish them all the best for the future.

There are still guides left in stock and these can be ordered online Resource Guide for the Health and Life Sciences [5]. At present there are no plans for any further editions of the Resource Guide therefore we advise you to place your order quickly! Please also note that the Web pages will no longer be updated as there will not be a Resource Guide Adviser in post to update them. JISC (The Joint Information Systems Committee) has no plans to continue the upkeep of the online resource guides.

If you have any further questions or queries on the Resource Guide initiative please contact:
Dicky Maidment-Otlet (dicky.maidment-otlet@bristol.ac.uk).

Changes at BIOME

Nicola Smart, NMAP Service Officer left the BIOME Service at the end of June 2004. She has taken up a new post at Nottingham City Hospital so we’d like to thank her for her hard work and wish her good luck in her new job. Frances Singfield returned from maternity leave in June 2004.

The BIOME Service has recently recruited a number of new Content Providers. They are subject experts from backgrounds in all fields of the health and life sciences and they work on a part time consultancy basis. They contribute records to the BIOME database and help to review existing records ensuring that our links to Internet Resources stay as up to date as possible.

Come and Talk to BIOME Staff

Members of the BIOME team will be present at the following events:

NeLH Roadshow [6]
11 August 2004

9th European Conference for Medical and Health Libraries (BIOME paper) [7]
20 - 25 September, Santander, Spain
Paper to be given by the BIOME Service Manager, Donald Mackay

References

  1. BIOME database http://biome.ac.uk/
  2. What’s new http://biome.ac.uk/whatsnew/index.html#newrecords
  3. BIOME about pages http://biome.ac.uk/about/contribute.html
  4. BIOME publications http://biome.ac.uk/about/publications.html
  5. Resource Guide for Health and Life Sciences http://www.jisc.ac.uk/resorder.html
  6. NeLH Roadshow http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/dlnet/roadshows04.asp
  7. EAHIL Conference https://ibio.humv.es/biblioteca/eahil/

Author Details

Jenny Hall
BIOME Admin Officer

Email: jh@biome.ac.uk
Web site: http://biome.ac.uk/

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