Several useful and free tools have been developed that let you easily perform searches of quality databases and analyze your PubMed retrieval.

Looking Only for Quality Medical Evidence? Try SUMSearch:

SUMSearch at sumsearch.uthscsa.edu is a free, easy-to-use meta-search engine designed to teach medical students to perform evidence-based research. SUMSearch only searches databases with recognized qualified information, such as PubMed, the National Guidelines Clearinghouse, and DARE (Cochrane's Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness). The retrieval is displayed according to information type: background sources, systematic reviews, original research, etc. Developed at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio by Dr. Robert Badgett, SUMSearch assists the new searcher with educational links throughout the site and supports expert searchers with programming for refining strategies. A review appears in the Journal of the Medical Library Association 2007 95(4):471-20 October.

Retrieving Too Many PubMed Citations? Rank your Retrieval by:

• Relevance with the free and easy-to-use ReleMed at www.relemed.com/ to search PubMed by keyword or MeSH subject heading. When you enter a few word(s) in ReleMed, it searches all the data in PubMed for the best matches and displays the most relevant results first.

ReleMed was developed at the University of Virginia School of Medicine to help users do targeted and efficient searcher. More information is available at 'Help' on ReleMed and in a 2007 article in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making at www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6947/7/1.

• Impact Factor of the journals in which the retrieved citations appear, with the free and easy-to-use PubFocus at www.pubfocus.com to search PubMed by author, keyword or MeSH subject heading. You can also search by institution if you use quotes (") around the institution name. After you enter your search term(s), click 'Sorted Results' to rank your retrieval by impact factor. This ranking is based on data for each journal in Thomson/ISI's Journal Citation Reports.

• Top Ten ranked First Authors, Principal Investigators (last authors), Journals on the topic, and number of Forward Citations (times an article is cited elsewhere), also with PubFocus at www.pubfocus.com to search PubMed.

PubFocus was developed at the University of Southern California School of Medicine to help users understand research activity within a biomedical field. Further information is available at 'Help' on the PubFocus site and in a 2006 article in BMC Bioinformatics at www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/7/424.

Want to Discover Trends in Your PubMed Search Results? Use PubReMiner:

Developed at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam, PubReMiner at bioinfo.amc.uva.nl/human-genetics/pubreminer lets you see tables, in descending order, that count:

• The Years in which articles retrieved were most frequently published
• The Journals in which articles retrieved were most frequently published
• The Authors who most frequently publish the articles retrieved
• The Words most frequently used in the articles retrieved
• The MeSH terms used most frequently to index the articles retrieved

Please contact Jenny Garcia-Barcena at 305-243-6648/ygarcia6@med.miami.edu for assistance with SUMSearch, ReleMed, PubFocus or PubReMiner.

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There are new tools that help you keep pace with the literature and allow easier collaboration with colleagues anywhere in the world.

Missing New Issues, Articles, and Forward Citations? Click on the RSS Feed (Icon) in:

• Electronic journal websites to automatically receive the tables of contents of new issues as they appear on the websites. A list of health sciences e-journals with this capability was compiled by the Medical College of Wisconsin Library for their patrons and is available for reference at ebling.library.wisc.edu/bjd/journals/rss/index.cfm.

• PubMed searches for your favorite journal(s) to create a customized RSS Feed that will allow you to retrieve up to 100 of the most current citations from the journal(s). The PubMed RSS Feed can also be customized to a specific search strategy to allow you to retrieve up to 100 of the most current citations on your topic or author of interest.

While most people read RSS Feeds in feed "readers" or "aggregators" such as Google Reader (reader.google.com) or Bloglines (bloglines.com), Internet Explorer 7.0 lets you save an RSS Feed as a Favorite and read the feed directly in your web browser.

Collaborating with others at the School, University and Other Institutions? Try:

• Instant Messaging (IM) with free and easy to use tools such as Google Talk at www.google.com/talk. Google Talk lets you conduct online group conference calls from your PC to others, send and receive voicemail, transfer files and folders, and receive chat and e-mail notices.

• Jointly editing papers with free and easy to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets at www.google.com/docs. This site lets you do web-based word processing and give anyone you want secure viewing and/or editing privileges (real-time or not) from any web-accessible computer anywhere in the world.

• Sharing Collections of Citations and Search Strategies with MyNCBI in PubMed at MyNCBI, the last link under PubMed Services, at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez?db= pubmed. MyNCBI lets you create an account on the web, with a username and password that you can then share with anyone you wish to share search strategies and citations.

• Sharing a calendar with the free and easy to use Google Calendar at www.google.com/calendar. This site supports collaborators' calendars which account for time zone differences and import and export to Outlook and other systems.

The tools above have easy to find 'Help' files. Other tools include Connotea, Zotero, and Whiteboard, and collaborative evaluation and discussion of articles, such as BioWizard. Please contact John Jones at 305-243-6648/j.jones@miami.edu for assistance with RSS Feeds, MyNCBI, Google Talk, Docs and Calendar.

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Gross Lecture - The 9th Ralph H. and Ruth F. Gross Lecture, "Our Best Work", will be presented by Dr. Mary Moore, Executive Director of the Louis Calder Memorial Library, on November 28, 2007, at 5:00 p.m. in the Retter Auditorium. Please join us as we talk about the medical library of the future.

Book Sale 2007, to benefit United Way, opened October 31, 2007 and will run through November 21st. Come and find a treasure for your collection and use.

Exhibit - "Dive Into the Past", fossils and artifacts of the earliest humans in Florida and North America from the Little Salt Spring Archaeological Site, owned by the University since 1982. The exhibit is part of an ongoing collaboration between the University and Sarasota County and on display at the Calder Library from October 12 - November 21, courtesy of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and the University Libraries.

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"I want to take this opportunity to compliment Peter Raposo, Assistant Director for the Department of Biomedical Communications, for his excellent work on 16 posters we had printed this week on a rush basis. This is not the first time we have received �above and beyond� service from Peter."

Lourdes Landa, Miami Institute for Human Genomics

"We were called by a surgeon from the operating room who had a patient who was very sick. She needed an article right away. I checked to see who had the article and was relieved to see that you owned the title � The article was emailed to us within minutes and we delivered it to the surgeon almost as quickly as if we had the article here in our library. ...this was important to the life of one of our patients."

Lois Culler, Inova Fairfax Hospital, Falls Church, VA

"A few years ago your library agreed to provide the Medical Library of Latvia 30 copies of articles free. Your library has been very constant in helping us. Health professionals of Latvia appreciate this project very much."

Antra Bukava, State Agency Medical Library of Latvia, Riga

"In May of 2006 you signed a Resource Library Agreement with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern/Atlantic Region. At that time, you agreed to adhere to the Network performance standards for fill rates for interlibrary loan service. Over the ensuing years, you have far exceeded the 75% fill rate and in doing so, served your region well. In the third quarter of 2007 you were among the 13 Resources Libraries that attained fill rates between 80% and 93%. We congratulate you and your staff for a job well-done!"

Beth M. Wescott, NN/LM, Se/A Region

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