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Policies - 17.0

17.0 Library

Purpose
All new students of the School of Health Professions will participate in a Research Medical Library orientation session at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Policy Statement
During Library orientation sessions -- held at the beginning of a program year -- students register for Library privileges and remote access accounts. With a remote access account, online resources available in the Library are also available remotely to all students regardless of their geographic location.

The Library uses a remote access system called EZProxy. EZProxy is specifically designed for libraries and requires no special software on the part of the user. All that is needed is a standard web browser and a connection to the Internet.

Library orientation sessions incorporate hands-on training with the participant's ability to access resources and services without visiting the physical facility. Areas covered include:

  • An overview of using the online catalog to search the Research Medical Library's collection and the collections of major health sciences libraries in the greater Houston area

  • Use of the Library's online journal subscriptions, which total more than 4,000

  • Connecting to the approximately 100 databases the Library licenses

  • Use of the National Library of Medicine's LinkOut system
    This enables users to search PubMed MEDLINE and link to the full text of articles when the journal is among the Library's online subscriptions. Currently, almost 1.7 million articles from 1800 biomedical and scientific journals are available to M. D. Anderson employees and students through the LinkOut system.

  • A demonstration of ILLiad, the Library's free online document delivery system
    Once registered, students can use any Web browser to request items (articles, book chapters, conferences papers) that are not part of the Research Medical Library's print or online collections. With the exception of whole books, almost all items can be delivered to students electronically.

  • The online availability of instructional manuals for classes the Library teaches, including the Using the Library Remotely class

  • Websites selected by the Research Medical Library's reference librarians, based on website usefulness and the quality of the information provided

In addition to orientations, the Library also offers a variety of online searching classes. All classes are free and available to M. D. Anderson faculty, staff, students, and official visitors. Full class descriptions, class schedules, and handoutsare available on the Library's webpage.


© 2009 The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center