Reference Sources
Books and Journals in Schaffer Library
Browsing Books: LC Class Number Guide
Government Information

Reference Collection Sources

AHA Guide to the Health Care Field--Ref RA 977 .A1 A46 (annual)

AIDS Sourcebook--Ref RC 607 .A26 A3573 2003

Alternative Medicine Sourcebook--Ref R 733 .A475 2002

Black's Medical Dictionary--Ref R121 .B598 2004

Cancer Sourcebook--Ref RC 263 .C294 2003

Cecil Textbook of Medicine--Ref RC 46 .C423 2004

Diabetes Sourcebook--Ref RC 660.4 .D56 2003

Encyclopedia of Bioethics-- Ref QH332 .E52 2004

Encyclopedia of Diabetes--Ref RC 660 ,O424 2002

Encyclopedia of Health Care Management--Ref RA 971 .E52 2004

Encyclopedia of Public Health--Ref RA423 .E53 2002 

Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine--Ref R733 .G34 2001

Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer

Gale Encyclopedia of Genetic Disorders

Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine

Gale Encyclopedia of Nursing and Allied Health

Merck Manual--Ref RC 55  .M420 (updated)

Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine--Ref R 121 .O884  2001

Physician's Desk Reference: PDR--Ref RS 91 .P45 (updated annually)

Plunkett's Health Care Industry Almanac--Ref RA 410.53 .P56 2003

Sexually Transmitted Diseases Sourcebook--Ref RC 200.2 .S387 2001

Stedman's Medical Dictionary--Ref R 121 .S8 2000

Useful statistical sources include, for example:

American Health: Demographics and Spending of Health Care Consumers--
Ref RA 445 .A447 2005

AHA Hospital Statistics--Ref RA 981 .A2 (annual)

Health, United States--HE 20.6223: (in Government Documents, but current year's edition kept at Reference Desk)

Health Care State Rankings--Ref RA 407.3 .H423

Statistical Abstract of the United States--Ref HA202 .S680 (in Reference, but current year's edition kept at Reference Desk)

The Statistical portion of Lexis-Nexis is a significant online source of statistical data in the Reference Collection.  It cites data and in some cases provides full-text; for the rest, it is backed up by microfiche, as follows:

The microfiche collections filed as ASI, IIS, and SRI (titles spelled out below) are on the main floor. Equipment to read, copy, and scan microfiche is provided nearby, and assistance is available at the Reference Desk.  Besides access through the Statistical portion of Lexis-Nexis, one may also consult

• American Statistics Index (paper volumes at Ref Bibliog Z 7554 .U5 A46)
• Index to International Statistics (paper volumes at Ref Bibliog Z 7552 I53), and
• Statistical Reference Index (paper volumes at Ref Bibliog Z 7554 .U5 S79)

Schaffer Library provides databases that offer access to articles in scholarly and other fields.  The following databases sometimes lead to full-text articles, sometimes are designed to tell you which journals are held here in Schaffer Library, and sometimes do both.

Databases & Indexes > MBA Health

Give highest priority to using

Health Reference Center Academic,
Health Source,
Pub Med,
and Pub Med Central

Give highest priority to using

ABI/Inform Global,
Business Source Elite,
and Wilson Select Plus

Click Library Web Catalog to reach the Library's computer catalog.  Search examples are given at each search type --  e.g., author, title, subject, and keyword.

Book locations: Click on the red hyperlinked word in the box below "Location", and a map showing the book's location by floor and specific area will pop up.

Please note: For books that Schaffer Library does not own, or are checked out, please try ConnectNY, a service offered jointly by the libraries of Union, Vassar, St. Lawrence, Siena, RIT, RPI, and others in NYS to provide their borrowers with delivery in a few days of any books available in their combined collections. CaDiLaC Online and Other individual libraries' catalogs are links providing further access to libraries beyond Union.

Journal holdings: Use the Find Journal Titles link (on the Library's main webpage) to find if particular journals are present in any format.

Hardin MD
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/
The University of Iowa's Hardin Library for the Health Sciences is responsible for this portal site to many public and commercial medical sites.  It emphasizes medical illustrations online.

Healthfinder
http://www.healthfinder.gov
Numerous links to selected clearinghouses, professional associations, support and self-help groups, etc. 

HIV Insite
http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu
Sponsored by the University of California -- San Francisco, San Francisco Veterans Administration Hospital, and San Francisco General Hospital, this HIV/AIDS web site features substantial articles on many dimensions of HIV/AIDS written by highly qualified health professionals and academics.  Look for the link to "Knowledge Base" for the articles, and use the "Table of Contents" link to explore topics.  In the articles' reference lists, all citations are linked to abstracts in PubMed.

Medicine and Health
http://vlib.org/Medicine.html
The WWW-Virtual Library series of Web-site listings is almost without exception the most reliable suite of subject-related Web-pages.  They stem from professional and academic volunteer compilers.

MEDLINEplus 
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
The National Library of Medicine's Web-site conveying health and medical information for public consumption.

Merck Manual
http://www.merck.com/pubs/
Several of the Merck manuals of medical information are available free at the Merck Corporation's website.

National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse Reference Collections
http://catalog.niddk.nih.gov/resources/
This site is a portion of the federal agency that funds research on diabetes and related disorders and represents a database of diabetes education materials.

NOAH
http://www.noah-health.org/index.html
New York's Online Access to Health database of full-text, bilingual health information for citizens, students, and consumers.

PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=PubMed
PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, provides access to over 12 million MEDLINE citations back to the mid-1960's and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.

WebMD
http://www.webmd.com/
One example of a commercial medical information Web-site, with banner ads, a search engine... and clearly stated objectives and credentials.  Other examples include DrKoop.com, Intelihealth, and Allhealth.

While not every citation is available in full text for free, you can open up some either directly through Google or via Schaffer Library through the link "Full text @ My Library".  Another important functionality is the "cited by" link that leads from any citation to other (newer) ones that have cited it.

Please always consider the authority behind any source obtained through the Internet.

Thomas
Internet access to bills, reports, and documents from relatively recent Congresses; however, the committee hearings are an important element of Congressional information not thoroughly provided here. Better access to hearings is provided by GPO Access and Lexis-Nexis Congressional below.

Hearings via GPO Access
Full text hearings after (and including) the 104th Congress, 1995-96, are found at this link.

Through the full GPO Access link to the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C., is provided a great number of online government publications from all three branches--e.g., the federal budget, Congressional bills, directory, and Record, the Federal Register, the U.S. Code, laws enacted, Supreme Court decisions, the federal government's organization manual, the Economic Report of the President, and many more.

Lexis-Nexis Congressional
In this "Congressional" portion of Lexis-Nexis, one can search online by subject the Congressional committee hearings for decades as well as access the legislative histories of bills through Congress. 

Click above to enter, then choose "Advanced Search."  There find search options for Congressional hearings, documents, reports, prints, and legislative histories, mostly from 1970 to present.

Some hearings, etc., are provided in full text through this Lexis-Nexis Congressional database.  Others can be found through Hearings via GPO Access (above).  Otherwise, please ask at the Reference Desk for assistance with finding them in the Library's Government Documents Collection.

Government Information via the WWW
At this link is an overview of online government document resources, created by Union's Government Documents Librarian, and it provides portal access to each.

U.S. Government Web sites
Especially relevant is government-generated data.   Some may be found by consulting the print sources below, or by going to the Web-pages of key agencies, where links to statistics and data are usually quite visible.   Some are:

Department of Health and Human Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Institutes of Health
Surgeon General of the U.S.

Other agencies can be reached by using the gateway site Federal Web Locator. (http://www.lib.auburn.edu/madd/docs/fedloc.html)

Selected examples, subscribed to by Schaffer Library, include the following. Please check the Find Journal Titles link for holdings:

Addictive Behaviors
AIDS Treatment News
American Family Physician
American Journal of Human Genetics
American Journal of Psychiatry
Bioethics
British Medical Journal
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics
Family Planning Perspectives
International Family Planning Perspectives
International Journal of Eating Disorders
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
Journal of Health Economics
Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
Journal of the History of Medicine
Journal of Medical Ethics
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
Lancet Interactive
Medical Care Research and Review
U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  FDA Consumer

Please note: Other titles, the New England Journal of Medicine for one example, are held in paper format and in electronic format through subscriptions where the title is packaged in with many others.  Please check at the Find Journal Titles link for holdings of such titles.

Books in Schaffer Library are arranged by Library of Congress Class number. Class numbers are searchable in the Web Catalog and may be browsed in the Stacks and Reference Collection.

RA 1-1270	Public aspects of Medicine
RA 1 - 418.5	Medicine and the state
RA 10 - 388.2	Government Health agencies (General)
RA 11	Federal Health agencies
RA 11.B15-B19	Public Health Services
RC	Internal Medicine

Tools for tracking recently published articles.

The New York Times:  Health > Health Care Policy  The New York Times. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/policy/index.html/
Provides full text access to recent articles of interest in the area of Health Care Policy (& Health) from The New York Times.

PLEASE NOTE: You are reminded that it is required to check the Online Catalog (for books) or the list found at Find Journal Titles (for articles you need) before ordering on Interlibrary Loan. It will save you considerable time for every reference that you find available here on the shelves or in electronic format.

For books that Schaffer Library does not own, or are checked out, always try ConnectNY before using Interlibrary Loan.  ConnectNY is a service offered jointly by the libraries of Union, Vassar, St. Lawrence, Siena, RIT, RPI, and others in NYS to provide their borrowers with delivery in a few days of any books available in their combined collections.

Hours, Directions, and Maps to Local Libraries 
From the above site through the Library's home page, one can conveniently learn the way to travel to nearby libraries, if necessary.

Schaffer Library's hours, procedures, and services 
(and anything else about the Library you need to know...)

Off-campus access
Access to the paid-subscription sources listed is limited to workstations with Union College IP addresses. Therefore, a student wishing to use all the links on this page from off-campus will need to apply at Information Technology Services for a Virtual Private Network ("VPN") account.  Such an account enables off-campus users to have full access, even to the paid subscriptions.

Style Manuals--The following are shelved at the Reference Desk.  Please ask a reference librarian for location:

• The American Psychological Association (APA) Publication Manual
• Chicago Manual of Style
• The Columbia Guide to Online Style
• Electronic Styles: a Handbook for Citing Electronic Information
• Turabian's Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations

Further: Bucknell University's Citation Guides Web-page is a very straightforward, useful source that lists examples of how to use all the major citing patterns (APA, ASA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.) 
Also, Online! Citation Styles is a very handy and concise help for citing Web-pages, emails,
postings from newsgroups, listservs, discussion forums, etc. 

More full-text style guides for both print and electronic citing are found at Writing Resources, posted at the Library's electronic Reference Room page.

Departmental Liaison: Mary Cahill
For information on resources, services, collections, and book ordering for your department

Bibliographic Instruction Contact
For information on scheduling course related instruction session or faculty training session

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