| OCR Text |
Show NANOS NEWS Upgrades in the Neuro-Ophthalmology Virtual Educational Library (NOVEL) The Neuro-Ophthalmology Virtual Educational Library (NOVEL, http://library.med.utah.edu/NOVEL/), NANOS' online repository of educational resources, has undergone some important upgrades within the past year. Hosting Agreement. Founded in 2002 with an Information Systems grant from the National Library of Medicine, NOVEL signed a memorandum of understand-ing with the Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah in Spring 2007. The Eccles Library will host the site and provide technical support, but the site will remain under the direction of NANOS. Nancy Lombardo acts as project director and librarian, working closely with a NOVEL Executive Committee comprising NANOS members. Website Redesign. A new look to the website appeared in July. It is more compatible with the NANOS website and should provide intuitive navigation to all the collections and services of the project. A new Advanced Searching feature is available now from the NOVEL home page. Completed, Expanded, and New Collections. Three collections have been completed: The William F. Hoyt Collection of the best examples of disorders of the optic disc contains more than 850 images with descriptive meta-data. These images have also been harvested into the larger Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) at http://www. healcentral.org/. The collection of historical lectures by J. Lawton Smith, MD, which were recorded in the 1970s, covers more than 80 topics. The AAO-NANOS collection holds more than 400 images contributed by more than 30 NANOS members. The collection is derived from the CD produced by Larry Frohman, MD and Andrew Lee, MD in the 1990s. Growing collections include the visual disorder case videos of Shirley Wray, MD, PhD which has links to pathologic and radiographic findings. Dr. Wray is collabo-rating with Nancy Lombardo and the staff in Utah to complete her case list, editing video clips, developing teaching lectures in PowerPoint, and composing the complex and comprehensive metadata that characterize her collection. The Walsh Society Meeting collection now contains the Walsh abstracts and discussions covering 1980, 1981, and 1986-2004. For the 2005-2007 meetings, complete presentations and supplemental materials are included. The Moran collection contains optic disc photos and videos of eye movements and presentations. Projects in progress include the enlarging pupil collection of Randy Kardon, MD, the eye movement collection of David Newman- Toker, MD, the pupil collection of Irene Loewenfeld, PhD, and the classic video collection of David Cogan, MD. Additions to this line-up are the recent acquisitions of 65 cases of unique orbital surgery and pathology from John S. Kennerdell, MD, now available in PowerPoint format. The collection of nearly 100 PowerPoint lectures in neuro-ophthalmology by Alfredo Sadun, MD is in development. The videos of eye movements from Robert Daroff, MD will soon be available. The collections are under peer review by a committee headed by Leah Levi, MD. Neuro-Ophthalmology Curriculum. The neuro-ophthalmology curriculum outline being developed under the leadership of Valerie Biousse, MD and Victoria Pelak, MD, will serve as the overarching organizational structure for all NOVEL collections. Eventually it will provide query links for retrieving materials from the NOVEL collections. This committee will be using an online mechanism to receive submissions and conduct reviews. Patient Portal. NOVEL has received an unrestricted grant from Pfizer to develop a patient portal to access material with the aim of educating the public. Under the direction of Luis Mejico, MD, the site is based on the patient brochures written by NANOS members. There are links to reliable and authoritative information for consum-ers though Medline PLUS and scholarly publications from PubMed. The patient portal will also link information seekers to support groups, information within the NOVEL library, and vetted information through web resources. Rare Disease Stewardship Program. Creating a rare disease stewardship program is another goal of the Pfizer-funded project. Stewards have been identified for rare diseases, and standardized data collection tools will be developed. The steward will be responsible for systemat-ically collecting and organizing this information. The objective is to allow NANOS members and other interested physicians to contribute cases to the appropriate data steward, who will analyze the data. The goal is to allow NOVEL to be a vehicle facilitating group definition of the J Neuro-Ophthalmol, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2008 253 natural history and best therapies of diseases too rare for any single institution to define. The first disorders to be catalogued are Susac syndrome (Robert. Egan, MD), autoimmune optic neurop-athy (Larry Frohman, MD), posterior cortical atrophy (Victoria Pelak, MD), Chiari malformation mimicking pseudotumor cerebri (Michael Vaphiades, MD), genetic eye movement disorders (Thomas Bosley, MD), and sarcoid optic neuropathy (Mays El Dairi, MD). Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology Archives. An effort is underway to add the entire archive of the Journal of Neuro- Ophthalmology (JNO). An agreement has been reached with Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) to transfer the complete collection of JNO archives to NOVEL. Once transferred from LWW, the articles will be catalogued as a new collection. Articles from each new JNO issue will be added as they are released from the 1-year publisher's access embargo. This effort will provide an alternative means of accessing the literature convenient to NOVEL users. All Star Grand Rounds. NANOS recently approved funding to begin the production of Neuro-Ophthalmology All Star Grand Rounds. This program will make neuro-ophthalmology education accessible to residents, fellows, and practicing neurologists and ophthalmologists world-wide. The topics will be based on the NANOS curriculum and incorporate material from NOVEL. The modules will include an audiovisual webcast lecture (showing the speakers and their PowerPoint presentation), the written material with references and weblinks (online or in printable format), and a pre/post module learning assessment that incorporates interactive case vignettes These mini-courses will be taught by renowned experts with extensive use of video. In the past year, NOVEL recorded over 2 million ‘‘hits'' and almost 700,000 page views. There were more than 10,000 unique individual users from more than 100 countries each month. Kathleen Digre, MD Nancy Lombardo, MLS Salt Lake City, Utah Larry Frohman, MD Newark, New Jersey Deborah Friedman, MD Rochester, New York 254 q 2008 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins J Neuro-Ophthalmol, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2008 NANOS News |
