Health Information at Your Fingertips

By Morgan Sohl, Adult Services Librarian | July 2009

Health has been in the forefront of the news recently. Stories are ranging from the debate over universal healthcare to the recent pandemic of swine flu. For that reason, the public is constantly searching for reliable, trustworthy and timely health information and resources.

Rapid City Public Library is pleased to explain some of our exciting new health resources open to the community. These new sources include online databases, accessible from home and from the RCPL, as well as print resources.

Medline Plus is an online resource that brings together authoritative information from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health and other governmental agencies. Searching Medline Plus is easy. This website also has quick access to medical journal articles, extensive information about drugs, an illustrated medical encyclopedia and the latest health news. Interactive patient tutorials are extremely helpful in understanding the causes and treatments of a variety of medical conditions. Medline Plus is a goldmine of reliable and trustworthy health information from several reputable medical sources.

If you are a Nurse or Certified Nursing Assistant, in nursing school, or simply looking for additional information, Health Source–Nursing/Academic Editions is a great resource for you! This database provides scholarly full text journal article which focus on many medical disciplines. This database also features Lexi-PAL Drug Guide, a great resource which includes 1,300 generic drug patient education sheets as well as more than 4,700 brand names and it’s easy to search.

The library offers two specific consumer health databases: Health Source–Consumer Edition and Consumer Health Complete. Health Source–Consumer Edition is an amazing collection of consumer health information which provides information on many health topics including medical sciences, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, sports medicine and general health. This database also offers access to nearly 80 full text consumer health magazines. Consumer Health Complete offers reports, news, fact sheets, encyclopedias, and other reference books as well as information on alternative medicine including drug and herb information. This database also includes videos and animations.

Are you interested in alternative health information? Alt Health Watch provides different perspectives on complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness.  This database offers more than 180 journals with full text articles. In addition there are hundreds of pamphlets, reports, and other information sources available. This database provides in-depth coverage of a full spectrum of subject areas in complementary and alternative medicine.

All of the library resources listed above can be accessed from the resources page at http://www.rapidcitylibrary.org/services/resources.asp.

Also feel free to check out our del.icio.us site which has links for health related websites which may be of interest. You can access this site along with the Library’s other social networking sites on our homepage http://www.rapidcitylibrary.org under “Digital Library”.

With the unfortunate closure of the Rapid City Regional Hospital Library, the Rapid City Public Library has received over 100 consumer health titles which have been added to our collection and are available to the community to checkout. We also have thousands of medical, health and fitness books in print, CD, DVDs and downloadable books.

Visit the library’s website at www.rapidcitylibrary.org to search for titles. And remember that you can also contact us by phone (394-4171 Downtown or 716-4098 at the North library), or visit in person at either of the library locations if you have any questions.