The Research Medical Library is moving to the Pickens Academic Tower on Friday, May 9, 2008. The Library will occupy the entire 21st floor and the space will take advantage of the huge expanses of windows and ceiling heights ranging from 10 to 22 feet. It promises to be a landmark facility that emphasizes the library as an active partner and leader in research, teaching, and learning activities at M. D. Anderson.

Collaborative workspaces, as well as quiet individual study areas, comfortable soft seating, and public computer workstations are strategically interspersed throughout the floor. A state-of-the-art collaborative learning classroom and a conference room, equipped for video-conferencing are also included. The new library space encourages the use of resources and services by providing areas that are conducive to research, consultation, learning, reflection, computing, and quiet study.

In order to relocate all collections, equipment, furniture, and personnel to our new home in the Pickens Academic Tower as quickly and efficiently as possible, the library will close at 5:00pm, Friday, May 9, 2008. The new library will reopen at 7:30am, Monday, May 19, 2008.

Our physical collection of books, journals, and audiovisual materials will be unavailable during the week of our move, May 10-18. Our History of Cancer Collection of rare books, archives, and special collections will be unavailable May 3–18. All print collections will be shelved and available for use on opening day, May 19, at the new location.

Our Scanning/Document Delivery Service will be suspended from May 10-18 while the physical collection is being moved and re-shelved. However, you may continue to submit new requests online via ILLiad. Requests will be filled in the order in which they are received as soon as the physical collection is re-shelved and available for use. If you have a medical emergency and need a resource from our print collection immediately, please call the library at 713-792-2282 and we will obtain it from another library as quickly as possible.

Reference librarians will be available to assist you with your reference and online searching questions during our closure (May 12-16). You may contact them by phone at 713-792-2282 or by email at RML-Help@mdanderson.org. We look forward to welcoming you to our new facility.

The National Library of Medicine released a new NLM Drug Information Portal that enables simultaneous searching for drug information from various government agencies including the NLM, FDA and CDC. More than 12,000 drugs can be searched from time they are entered into clinical trials (Clinicaltrials.gov) through their entry in the marketplace (Drugs@FDA). The search will retrieve scientific articles through PubMed, toxicology literature through TOXLINE, and chemical structure information through PubChem. Additional resources such as MedlinePlus provide easy to read patient-oriented summaries on the uses and efficacy of a drug.

You may search by a drug’s trade name or generic name. For example, the trade name “Taxol” and the generic name “Paclitaxel” will retrieve the same drug record. A spell checker gives suggestions if the name is not found. You can find embedded portions of names by using an asterisk at the beginning and/or end of a search term. Once a drug is found, a summary of the drug’s type and usage is given, as well as links leading to further information at one of the portal’s resources. Outside links open in a new window. Within a given drug record, you may click on the drug category and retrieve drugs with the same or similar uses.

JavaScript must be enabled in your browser for the NLM Drug Information Portal to work properly.

To access the NLM Drug Information Portal, visit http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov/drugportal/drugportal.jsp?APPLICATION_NAME=drugportal

For questions regarding this and other Internet resources, contact the Research Medical Library Information Desk at 713-792-2282.

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