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Ebola Outbreak Response: The Role of Information Resources and the National Library of Medicine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2014

Cynthia B. Love ,
Stacey J. Arnesen  and
Steven J. Phillips
Cynthia B. Love*
Affiliation:
Disaster Information Management Research Center, Specialized Information Services Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland
Stacey J. Arnesen
Affiliation:
Disaster Information Management Research Center, Specialized Information Services Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland
Steven J. Phillips
Affiliation:
and the National Library of Medicine, Specialized Information Services, Bethesda, Maryland.
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Cynthia B. Love, Disaster Information Management Research Center, Specialized Information Services, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 510, Bethesda, MD 20892-5467 (e-mail: cindy_love@nlm.nih.gov).
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Abstract

The US National Library of Medicine (NLM) offers Internet-based, no-cost resources useful for responding to the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak. Resources for health professionals, planners, responders, and researchers include PubMed, Disaster Lit, the Web page “Ebola Outbreak 2014: Information Resources,” and the Virus Variation database of sequences for Ebolavirus. In cooperation with participating publishers, NLM offers free access to full-text articles from over 650 biomedical journals and 4000 online reference books through the Emergency Access Initiative. At the start of a prolonged disaster event or disease outbreak, the documents and information of most immediate use may not be in the peer-reviewed biomedical journal literature. To maintain current awareness may require using any of the following: news outlets; social media; preliminary online data, maps, and situation reports; and documents published by nongovernmental organizations, international associations, and government agencies. Similar to the pattern of interest shown in the news and social media, use of NLM Ebola-related resources is also increasing since the start of the outbreak was first reported in March 2014 (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2014;0:1-4)

Keywords

disease outbreakscrowdsourcingsocial mediamass mediaInternet
Type
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 82 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2014 

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References

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