The first issue of PLoS Medicine, published by the Public Library of Science, came out about five years ago. Its aim at the time was to provide an open-access alternative to top-tier subscription medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. They have also tried to distinguish PLoS Medicine from other journals in several ways. In this regard, one distinguishing feature of PLoS Medicine is a ban on advertisements for drugs or medical devices.

Another stated aim was to be a journal that had a clear priority of publishing papers on diseases that take the greatest toll on health globally. The editiorial in the latest issue reaffirms and adds to this by stating PLoS Medicine "will take an evidence-based approach to identifying topics of global health priority, and will give highest priority to publishing studies that advance human health in these areas."

Take a read!

The latest issue (April, 2009) includes these research articles: 

Mortality of HIV-Infected Patients Starting Antiretroviral Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Comparison with HIV-Unrelated Mortality

Influence of Rapid Malaria Diagnostic Tests on Treatment and Health Outcome in Fever Patients, Zanzibar—A Crossover Validation Study

Multiple Origins and Regional Dispersal of Resistant dhps in African Plasmodium falciparum Malaria

If you are interested in publishing in PLoS Medicine, please go to their web site for information.

Links to many H1N1 ("swine flu") resources are now on the Public Health Library's home page.  In addition, we have just created a Swine Influenze web page with many more annotated information sources listed. This web page is being updated frequently, so keep coming back to see the latest!

UC Berkeley licenses the ChemKnowledge System from Thomson Micromedex, a suite of databases and resources that together, provide a huge amount of information on chemical hazards. Anyone working in toxicology, hazardous waste, or occupational health should check this out.

Databases included in our subscription are:

• HAZARDTEXT, which provides information needed for the initial response to incidents such as spills, leaks, fires, or explosions involving hazardous materials
• INFOTEXT Documents offer general health and safety data on nonchemical-specific topics such as ergonomics and human health risk assessments
• HSDB (Hazardous Substance Data Bank) addresses the impact of thousands of hazardous chemical substances on health and the environment. Specific data on health effects, environmental fate, animal studies, chemical handling and manufacturer is presented
• RTECS (Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances) offers toxicity data on more than 135,000 substances, including specifics on mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive hazards, and acute and chronic toxicity of hazardous substances
• REPRORISK® System, the single most comprehensive compilation of reproductive risks information databases available, helps evaluate reproductive risks of drugs, chemicals and physical & environmental agents on females, males and unborn children
• Dolphin MSDS Collection, a vendor-rich collection of Material Safety Data Sheets for thousands of workplace chemicals. More the 330,000 MSDS from over 19,050 vendors is presented, with 5,000 new and revised MSDS added each month

and more!

Search help is available online. Databases may be searched individually, or in any combination.

The Public Health Library's Keeping Up-to-Date on Public Health web page was recently updated to include information on using RSS to learn about grant opportunities.  Many granting entities use RSS to advertise upcoming and continuing grants, including NIH and NSF.

The UC Libraries have purchased most of the Springer ebooks published from 2005 to 2009. This purchase builds on our existing access to Springer book series to greatly expand our ebook collections.

Each book chapter is available as a PDF file without digital rights management (DRM): these files can be downloaded, printed, and even transferred to a PDA or Kindle. Eventually, these ebooks will be linked from our catalogs and UC-eLinks. In the meantime, you can search or browse all of them directly at SpringerLink, or by choosing one of the collections below.

Books are available in the following subject collections:

• Architecture and Design
• Behavioral Science
• Biomedical and Life Sciences
• Business and Economics
• Chemistry and Materials Science
• Computer Science
• Earth and Environmental Science
• Engineering
• Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• Mathematics and Statistics
• Medicine
• Physics and Astronomy
• Professional and Applied Computing

Note: A few Springer ebooks are excluded from this purchase because they have been jointly published with another publisher.

This purchase will help the libraries to study the viability of ebooks, including such factors as preferences, behaviors, and usage. We will be soliciting feedback from our users regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the electronic format for their specific disciplines.

Library users can also take advantage of Springer's MyCopy print-on-demand service.

Through the MyCopy service, you can order your own personal softcover copy of many Springer ebooks for $24.95 (including shipping & handling). To purchase a personal copy, look for the Buy a Print Copy of this Book for $24.95 Including Shipping link or the orange MyCopy box when viewing a Springer ebook.

Over 11,500 titles are available through MyCopy with more titles added all the time. Currently, only English-language titles from 2005 forward with fewer than 832 pages are eligible for this service.

If you have questions or feedback, please contact your librarian.