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A wonderful two days with UG students – at Quest Unplugged

A wonderful two days with UG students – at Quest Unplugged

1 - VS Shares
June 1 and 2 of 2016 were two wonderful and rewarding days I spent. Quest Medical Academy - the brainchild of Dr Sushant Shinde had organized an event - Quest Unplugged.This is an annual event (this was the second) where  small groups of students chose topics, did some research on them and then presented the topics, based mainly on one core article that they chose, but also quoted others.The topics ranged from broad ones like Nutrition in the ICU, to very specific ones like Asthma - COPD overlap syndrome! Overall eight topics were presented on each day. Majority were equivalent…
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But PubMed does not have free articles

But PubMed does not have free articles

1 - VS Shares
In a workshop on 'Literature Searching' for a group of DNB students I briefly explained the 'Filters' feature in PubMed. I gave an example of using this feature to locate 'free full text' articles. In this context a student remarked "Anyway 90% of articles in PubMed are not free, so this feature will not be of much use". I sigh again, thinking - "PubMed's role DOES NOT include providing free articles". And several students / health professionals do not know this. PubMed has been available free since 1997. That is nearly 20 years now. And yet, many health professionals (and…
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KRM 2016: Digital Contents, Copyrights and Libraries

KRM 2016: Digital Contents, Copyrights and Libraries

1 - VS Shares
In Jan 2016, I attended the event – KRM (Knowledge Resources Management) – organized by the Tata Memorial Centre’s Digital Library, with the Health Science Library Association of India.  There were interesting talks on these issues by librarians, users and lawyers. I shared my experiences with the participating librarians, telling them what they could apply in their libraries (apart from the declarations that they take while providing copies):Providing copies to users for academic / research purposes:Explain to users why you ask them to sign a declaration when they ask for copies. Tell them that once they have signed, they cannot make…
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