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Toxicology and Environmental Health Information Resources The Role of the National Library of Medicine (1997) / Chapter Skim
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7 Program Issues and Future Directions
Pages 119-130

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From page 119...
... The committee reiterates its belief that NLM should continue to exert its role as a library and, in doing so, expand awareness of the full range of national, state, local, international, and private-sector information resources in toxicology and environmental health (see Chapter 3~. The continued challenge for the TEHIP program will be to provide easily accessible and authoritative information to an increasingly computer literate and environmentally-aware user community that includes health professionals and the general public.
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From page 120...
... . For the TEHIP program to be responsive to the changing demands of health professionals and to improve the utility of the databases, funding must be adequate to implement changes based on the results of the user profile analysis (Chapter 4)
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From page 121...
... Four of the six divisions within NLM's organizational framework have standing advisory committees made up of external scientists, librarians, and health professionals (Figure 7.1~. In some cases the committees have specific tasks; for example, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee selects journals for indexing in Index Medicus and MEDLINE, and the Biomedical Library Review Committee supports the work
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From page 123...
... , health science librarians, medical informaticians, computer scientists, environmental scientists, environmental policymakers, health care professionals (including tertiary care professionals in occupational and environmental health; primary care professionals; and emergency medicine, public health, and poison control personnel) , and interested members of the general public including community environmental activist organizations and public librarians.
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From page 124...
... Selected test sites, often NN/LM member libraries, implement the new product and collect user input. For example, the beta-test version of the LOANSOME DOC2 program, software, and documentation was sent to 57 libraries and more than 600 health professionals (Wallingford et al., 1996~.
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From page 125...
... The TEHIP program continues to make a substantial contribution to the fields of toxicology and environmental health, and the beneficial use of toxicology and environmental health information resources by health professionals arid other interested user communities can be considerably increased given the necessary resources and support. The committee recommends that the TEHIP program be given the responsibilities and resources needed to strengthen its growth and development.
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From page 126...
... Online Directory The committee believes that an online directory of toxicology and environmental health information resources would be most useful if it not only provided information about the available online resources in toxicology and environmental health but also assisted the user in locating and connecting to the most 3The committee's vision of the online directory includes simple interactive screens that walk the user through various options for reaching the appropriate information resource through hypertext links, graphical interfaces, and search engines.
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From page 127...
... The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS - one of NLM's major research initiatives-is a long-term R&D effort that aims to assist health professionals and other searchers in retrieving and integrating online biomedical information from diverse information sources. Currently, the UMLS Information Sources Map (ISM)
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From page 128...
... Although there are several toll-free telephone numbers that provide limited information related to environmental health and some poison control centers provide environmental health services, there is no single resource that health professionals or others can call with detailed questions on these topics. Many focus group participants expressed the need for a single-access point for toxicology and environmental health information, particularly clinically-pertinent information in real time.
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From page 129...
... The committee believes that poison control centers, which are already established, would make excellent resources for providing toxicology and environmental health information to health professionals. However, the committee is particularly mindfill of the budgetary considerations and of the problems that poison control centers would face if their mandate is expanded without the necessary financial resources for implementation.
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From page 130...
... 1993. Using a network menu and the UMLS Information Sources Map to facilitate access to online reference materials.
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Key Terms

  • health professionals
  • health information
  • information resources
  • poison control
  • control centers

  • online directory
  • provide health
  • information resource
  • care professionals
  • user communities

  • leadership role
  • control center
  • online information
  • information sources
  • centers provide

  • tehip databases
  • information services
  • regional poison
  • information center
  • appropriate information

  • user profile
  • computer scientists
  • evaluation plan
  • umls information
  • care costs

  • interdisciplinary advisory
  • planning panel
  • directory information
  • sources map
  • broader nlm


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