We're back!

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 49, No. 1, January February 2007, Page 16 College Library
By: Linda Clendenning Karen MacDonell, PhD, MLIS Judy Neill

Of course the College Library never went away except from the pages of the BCMJ. Since we last had a column in December 2002, we have moved back in with the College of Physicians and Surgeons and are now well established on the fourth floor at 858 Beatty Street.

Our electronic access is considerably enhanced since 2002. We have an excellent collection of electronic journals from EBSCO, Ovid, and Elsevier, numbering about 2000 titles. The most recent editions of 18 electronic books from STAT!Ref are available in full text, including Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, Griffith’s 5-Minute Clinical Consult, and Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine. MEDLINE is available through PubMed, Ovid, or EBSCO and access to full-text articles is integrated with database search results. Physicians may explore specialized resources such as PsycINFO for psychological information and CINAHL for nursing and allied health and may use STAT!Ref’s PIER as a point-of-care decision support tool.

The College Library’s web site is more sophisticated than it was in 2002. Just have a look at www.cpsbc.ca/library. Physicians must have a user name and password issued by the College to access Library electronic resources.

We’re happy to help physicians improve their searching skills. A monthly workshop is held for small groups, or a physician may schedule time with a librarian for personalized training. However, if you don’t want to “go electronic” or want to go only partially electronic, feel free to request a literature search by one of our librarians. This is your library—call us for help.

—Linda Clendenning, Karen MacDonell, Judy Neill
Librarian/Co-Managers

Linda Clendenning, Karen MacDonell, PhD, MLIS, Judy Neill. We're back!. BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 1, January, February, 2007, Page(s) 16 - College Library.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

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