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Books on the desktop: e-Books available through Health Library
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Books on the desktop:
e-Books available through Health Library
More than 500 electronic books may be browsed and then "checked out" from The Health Library at Stanford to a user's home computer, where they can be read, printed as a text document and then automatically deleted from the reader's computer after 72 hours.
The collection, started last November, consists of approximately 340 consumer health titles, 100 medical titles, and 100 health care administrative titles, said library director Barbara Ralston.
"Adding these titles enables us to further develop our virtual collection and reach a greater audience with quality health information," said Ralston.
To protect authors and copyrights, the library purchases rights to individual copies which are "loaned" online or checked out for three days, after which the book is automatically deleted from the free software viewers use to download the book. "If a book is out, it can't be loaned to someone else, so if we have a title in high demand, we buy a second copy," Ralston said.
Librarian
Howard Fuller said the Health Library serves more than 60 active users from
around the United States. Since the service was launched in November, 183
titles have been accessed 569 times. Diabetes is the most popular topic followed
in order by cancer, hypertension, repetitive strain injuries and liver disorders.
"The internet is an enormously broad tool, but books are often so much deeper and can be uniquely helpful for consumers and professionals seeking detailed health information," Ralston said.
E-books are a particularly useful way for homebound patients or persons living at a great distance from Stanford to access medical information, she added.
Titles cover a broad range of subjects, including practical guides such as The Yale University Patient's Guide to Medical Tests, or The Mayo Clinic on High Blood Pressure by Sheldon G. Sheps, M.D., as well as titles on health policy of interest to physicians and the general public.
"While we have kept the consumer in mind when we put together this collection, we believe health professionals might find much of interest, particularly if they are interested in reading about policy questions or health related topics outside their own specialty," Ralston said. "Some patients have been telling us they were referred to the Health Library and e-books by their doctors."
The collection was put together with the supervision of Fuller and library manager Nora Cain.
Ralston said that the e-book format is particularly conducive for health information, since most users search and perhaps photocopy or print specific sections rather than the whole book.
"The public may not be ready to read novels in electronic format, but it's great for browsing and searching specific topics, she said.
Nevertheles, also available at the site is the netlibrary public collection, consisting primarily of titles from the public domain, such as works by Dante, Charles Dickens and selected titles from T.S. Eliot.
E-books are available for free to the worldwide community served by Stanford's Health Library. Anyone wishing to check out an e-book will have to set up a personal account on the Internet. Look for the e-books collection at http://healthlibrary.stanford.edu. Go to "resources" and then click on "netlibrary."l
