Medical Reference for State Legislators and Employees

Medical Reference services are available to state legislators and employees and include a variety of services such as online database searching for reference requests and access to medical resources such as books and journal articles. Medical topic requests can include medical public policy questions that may affect legislation, medical research topics for work or educational purposes, medical history questions pertaining to Iowa and the United States, and questions pertaining to personal health. We can provide bibliographies, books, web sites and journal articles on any health or medical subject of your choice.

HealthInfoIowa at www.HealthInfoIowa.org is the State Library's consumer health web site which includes reliable health information web sites as well as information on how to find good sites.

A State Library card provides direct access to our EbscoHost and FirstSearch online databases that you can search on your own from your office or at home. Or, if you prefer, we can do the searching for you and send the results by mail, fax, or email. Online reference searching services through EbscoHost and FirstSearch include:Clinical Pharmacology, Cochrane databases for evidence-based medicine, Consumer Health Complete, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Health Source Consumer, Health Source Nursing, Iowa Public Health Information, Psychological Abstracts, and PubMed(Medline).

In addition to these online sites, there are other web sites that we can recommend on medical topics that are free of charge in the areas of consumer health, public policy and professional medical literature.the National Library of Medicine provides additional specialized medical databases for consumers and professionals that can be accessed free of charge from any computer. Go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov. We can also obtain medical documents, journal articles, and books that are not available at the State Library at no cost to you. In addition, you are welcome to send your clients directly to us for additional information and assistance. Please contact us at 515-281-5772 or 800-248-4483 or email us at medref@lib.state.ia.us for more information. Our fax number is 515-281-3384