Health Sciences Research Resources

SFU Library offers a new tool called LibX which makes it incredibly easy to find full text online or books at the SFU Library. It’s an add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer. This guide shows you how it works, and has a link to download it. LibX is especially helpful for accessing articles via Google Scholar or ejournals when you’re off campus. You can:

• -right-click on a title, author, keyword, or phrase and directly search the SFU Library catalogue;
• -right-click on a title (etc.) and directly search Google Scholar (which, of course, can have SFU’s “Where can I get this?” and RefWorks links embedded in it);
• -right-click on an article’s abstract at a publisher site and reload it through our proxy servers so that the publisher knows you are an SFU researcher and let’s you view it (if we subscribe).

SFU Library offers many video resources with PPR (public performance rights), which may be used in the classroom or linked to from WebCT. Sources include:

• -National Film Board of Canada – selected whole NFB films are available here, as well as many clips.
• -Films on Demand – largely social sciences content. Films are broken into brief segments for easy use.
• -The Library Catalogue indexes the DVDs the Library owns. You can change the drop-down menu to “Movies” to limit your search. Most DVDs may be booked for classroom use, placed on reserve for students to view at the Library, or checked out for personal use.

Faculty who would like to use a film in class which the Library does not own should contact their liaison librarian.

Whether you’re looking to publish a journal article, launch a new journal, or archive datasets, SFU Library offers a suite of tools that can help in our Scholarly Publishing portal:

• -The Open Access Fund can defray costs of publishing in select OA journals.
• -SFU’s Institutional Repository is an excellent place to archive data, preprints, or other research materials.
• -Funding is available each Spring for digitization of scholarly materials.
• -The Public Knowledge Project offers open source solutions including journal hosting and conference management.

You can keep up with all the latest developments on the Scholarly Publishing News blog.

SFU Library now has a subscription to Oxford Bibliographies Online. The Public Health section includes 52 peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies by experts in the field, with many more bibliographies due to appear in coming months. Sample topics include:

• Air Quality: Health Effects
• Evidence-Based Public Health Practice
• Global Health Promotion
• Mental Health
• Sex Education in HIV/AIDS Prevention

…and many more. In addition to public health, OBO features subject modules on communication, criminology, philosophy, and history.

SFU Library is running a trial through May 31, 2011 for Springer Protocols. This database is the most comprehensive source of life sciences experimental protocols, with over 18,000 included. Many come from the well-known book series Methods in Molecular Biology. Please send any feedback on this trial to Leslie Rimmer: lsrimmer@sfu.ca.