Tips, tricks & questions about biomedical infobases
Very often, figuring out how to use an online database means battling it out with the user interface mano e mano, trying the help manual or (best of all) finding somebody who knows it all already.
Even the most user friendly online tools can be tricky and off-putting for many lab works. Open Helix is one company who see commercial value in providing tutorials, and it's not an insubstantial market (they recently got $1M to develop tutorials for the NIH, for example). Some of the tutorials are even free, having been paid for by the databases owners.
Open Helix have recently started a blog which has regular features including "Tip of the Week" and "What's Your problem?" Given how much trouble lab researchers can have with online resources, blogs like this are worth watching.
Comments
Heaven forbid you just call, e-mail, IM, or visit your librarian.
Posted by: Christina Pikas | February 24, 2008 09:20 PM