From The Library Director
continued

ARKLink is a consortium of the 47 college and university libraries in Arkansas. The member libraries have a reciprocal borrowing agreement which provides free interlibrary loans, and they have universal borrowing cards which allow faculty and students from any of the participating institutions to check out books from any of the other participating libraries (see related article in this newsletter). ARKLink has also negotiated group purchasing agreements for several online resources, including the CINAHL and PsycInfo databases and their related online journals.

The Arkansas State Library has negotiated some discounts for group purchases, and provides funding for the purchase of several online resources to which Arkansas libraries have access. The products paid for by the State Library include OCLC FirstSearch and the Health and Wellness Resource Center.

The Mullins Library at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville is a member of the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA). Because UAMS is a UofA institution, the Library has been able to participate with UAF in the GWLA purchase agreement for online journals published by Wiley. The UALR and UAMS libraries recently jointly purchased access to the SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts) database. The UAMS portion of the cost of access to SciFinder Scholar is also partially funded by the UAMS Tobacco Research Review Committee.

UAMS colleges and departments have provided partial funding for several of the online resources provided through the Library to all UAMS personnel. The Integrated Medical Curriculum, which provides educational programs and access to several hundred biomedical images, has been funded by the College of Nursing, College of Medicine and the Library. Clinical Pharmacology, a drug reference database, has been funded by the University Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Poison Control Center and the Library. Clineguide, a database of treatment pathways, drug formulary and other clinical information resources, and MedWeaver, a differential diagnosis program, have been funded by the Library, Information Technology, and the College of Medicine. The Perception software, which is widely used on campus for evaluations, surveys, self-assessments, and testing, was originally funded by all of the colleges, Human Resources, and University Hospital.

If any UAMS colleges, departments or units are considering purchasing access to online information resources which might be of use to other UAMS personnel as well, please contact the Library before purchasing such resources. Sometimes we can negotiate campus-wide online access for a price slightly higher than what would be paid for limited access within a department or college.

Mary L. Ryan,
Director