Newfoundland and Labrador Health Bibliography

Introduction | Acknowledgements | Search Guide | Useful Links |

Introduction

The Newfoundland and Labrador Health Bibliography (ISSN 1920-8669), from now on referred to as the Health Bibliography, is an ongoing bibliography of journal articles, chapters, books and theses relating to health in Newfoundland and Labrador. A Bibliography of Health Care in Newfoundland, by Isabel Hunter and myself, published in 1986, was the basis for this project. The research, design of the database, revision of the original records in the book, and the addition of new material was done during a sabbatical leave from September 2004 - August 2005. Sirsi Corporation's "Unicorn Workflows Workstation Version 2002-G2002 Connected to Unicorn version 2003.1.4.5 ©1996-2002" software was used to create the online searchable database. At the end of the leave, the database had more than doubled in size from the 841 records in the original publication.

The main criteria for inclusion, as stated in the introduction to A Bibliography of Health Care in Newfoundland were that the item "must have been written about an institution concerned with health or health education or illness in Newfoundland or Labrador; or that the writing must be about a disease or condition occurring in or peculiar to Newfoundland or Labrador; or, if research material, that it must involve residents of the province; and the material must have been published".

The Health Bibliography includes a range of material including anecdotal pieces, case reports, and scholarly research. Most of the items in the Health Bibliography are available in the Health Sciences Library.

The bulk of the material added during my sabbatical leave was from the journal literature. PubMed, Cinahl, Embase, and IPA were searched for relevant material. A number of Canadian journals were hand searched. As well, the bibliographies of the articles retrieved provided additional items. Due to time restraints, archival material, with a few exceptions, has not been included. Grey literature, for the most part, has also not been included. As time permits, this material will be added. The term "health" is used in the broadest sense. In Dorland's illustrated medical dictionary 2003, it is defined as "a state of optimal physical, mental and social well-being".

The original records were all revised and a number of additional fields were added. These additional fields include:

Article ID	doi information if it was indicated when the article was entered
Availability	links to the MUN Libraries' Catalogue records and full-text links
Copy Note	indicates that a print copy is on file by record number in the Health Sciences Library
General Note
ISBN
ISSN	print and electronic versions
Journal Name	full journal title
Other Title	translated and variant titles
Unique ID	PubMed unique identifier if available when the article was entered If the article was not in PubMed, another database number was entered if available. The number is preceded by a letter to indicate the database where the information was found, e.g. C for Cinahl and E for Embase and I for International Pharmaceutical Abstracts.

The Subject field includes Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and the General Subject field includes the broad subject categories used in the the Bibliography of Health Care in Newfoundland. These are based on the National Library of Medicine classification system.

The Vancouver style, named because it was first published by the Vancouver Group, which evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and also known as the Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals, was chosen. These uniform requirements, adapted by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), are used in Medline. They are used, with slight modification, in the Health Bibliography. Samples of NLM's citation formats

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank George Beckett, Associate University Librarian (Health Sciences) for his support in this project, Dr. M. Ian Bowmer, Dean of Medicine and Richard H. Ellis, University Librarian for approving my sabbatical leave and Lisa Goddard, Emerging Services Librarian/ Division Head for Systems, Queen Elizabeth II Library for all the work involved in converting and uploading the files and mounting the database on the Web. In addition, I would like to thank my colleages in the Health Sciences Library, Linda Barnett, Head of Public Services, and Pamela Morgan, Head of Information Resources Management for their encouragement and assistance. Linda shared her knowledge of Workflows, especially the generation of reports, and Pamela assisted with the many cataloguing issues. Special thanks are also extended to the staff of Document Delivery for processing numerous requests for materials not owned and to the Circulation staff for organizing the copies of the items. From the Queen Elizabeth II Library, Michael Lonardo, Social Sciences Librarian, Joan Ritcey, Head, Centre of Newfoundland Studies and Alberta Auringer Wood, Maps, Data and Media Division (now retired), all provided useful input on setting up the database. Dr. Ronald Rompkey, University Research Professor, Department of English Language and Literature provided a number of citations on Grenfell. Last, but not least I would like to thank my daughter, Sarah, for her assistance with the French titles and my husband, Michael, for his patience and encouragement.

September 26, 2008

Useful Links

Digital Archives Initiative (DAI)
Faculty of Medicine Founders'Archive
MUN Libraries Catalogue
PAB (Newfoundland Periodical Article Bibliography)

Shelagh Wotherspoon
Public Services Librarian
Health Sciences Library
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Comments or suggestions

May 23, 2011
Shelagh Wotherspoon