Looking for the latest on best practices in health and social services? The most up-to-date scholarly research articles? Now you can access the information from the comfort of your clinic or office, with the click of a mouse.
Your CIUSSS libraries have a wealth of information and resources available to employees across the network. A new web site, launched in March, offers a single online destination for access to the libraries’ databases, e-journals, and more.
“We want to empower staff to use library tools in their daily practice,” says Kendra Johnston, a Medical Librarian based at the Health Sciences Library of the Jewish General Hospital. “This is one-stop shopping for evidence-based research.”
Too often, health professionals resort to general Internet searches for research needs, exposing them to potentially unreliable information, Ms. Johnston says. By using the CIUSSS library resources, they instead get access to an array of quality resources: Over 530 e-journals – from Canadian Nurse and Physiotherapy Canada to the Annals of Surgery, to name a few – as well as a dozen biomedical databases, including Medline.
This means staff have evidence-based scholarly tools at their fingertips regardless of where they work in the CIUSSS. And they are able to bypass paywalls because the databases and e-Journals have been acquired by the CIUSSS libraries, Ms. Johnston explained.
“You just don’t know the quality of the evidence you’re finding when you’re using Google,” said Ms. Johnston, who has spearheaded the website project. “We’re offering high quality, peer-reviewed resources.”
Library staff can arrange customized training sessions, including virtual ones; any staff member without access to a networked CIUSSS computer due to COVID-19 can contact the library to set up virtual access to some library resources. For more information, contact CIUSSS libraries at library.jgh@mail.mcgill.ca