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Registering an account

You can register an account with HealthLibrary.ca by following this link: register. All of the contact information fields are required in order for your account to be created. Should you forget your password at anytime, HealthLibrary has password retrieval, and will email you your new password. If you have any difficulty registering your account, please do not hesitate to contact Nancy Posel.

Searching the Library

To enter a query into the Library, simply type in a few descriptive words and click the Search button. All of the metadata for assets contained within the Library will be searched for your keywords. Your search results will be comprised of all the assets that have the keywords you searched for associated with them in their metadata.

Choosing Keywords

For the best results, its important to choose your keywords carefully.

  • Try the most obvious first. If you are looking for information about the left ventrical, enter "left ventrical" instead of "heart".
  • Choose words that are most likely to be associated with the assets you seek. "left ventrical anatomy" will get better results than "heart pictures".
  • Make the keywords as specific as possible. Do not be afraid to try and search for medical-specific jargon. Chances are you will find what you are looking for faster. If you do not find what you are looking for using specialized terms, start using more laymen terminology

Automatic "and" Queries

There is no need to include "and" between your terms. "Ventrical heart" is sufficient, there is no need for "ventrical and heart".

Automatic Exclusion of Common Words

  • The National Digital Health Library ignores commons words and characters such as "where" and "how".
  • If a common word is necessary to yielding the results you want, you can force include it by putting a "+" in front of it. Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.
  • Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search. To do this, you simply put quotation marks around two or more words. "anatomy of the heart" for example will search the Library for that exact phrase. This is typically most useful when searching against the description metadata field of the assets, where exact phrasing is most likely to match.

Capitalization

Our searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them are understood as lower case. For example, searches on "left ventrical heart", "Left Ventrical Heart" and "LeFt VeTrIcAl HeArT" will all return the same results.

HealthLibrary.ca Collections

You can limit your searches to 'collections' with HealthLibrary.ca. A 'collection' is a set of assets within the repository that have been explicitly related to one another through metadata. If you chose a 'collection' in the dropdown menu underneath the keywords textbox, you can limit your keyword search to query assets found within that collection only. If you want to search the entire library, irregardless of collections, simply ignore the collection drop down.

Uploading to the Library

File Size

Please do not upload assets to the library that are over 5 MB in size. The chances of your asset successfully uploading to the Library dramatically decreases after 5 MBs.

Metadata

We require you to fill out a minimum set of metadata on your object before uploading it to our Library. On the upload page, these fields are marked with a red asterix.

Title
The title of your object.
Alternate Title
An alternate title for your object
Creator
Any person(s) responsible for creating the object
Contributor
Any person(s) responsible for contributing to the object.
Keywords
Keywords associated with your object. These are extremely important - please think of them carefully. For multiple keywords, simply put a space in between them.
MeSH Terms
MeSH headings associated with your object.
Description
A short description of your object.
Caption
The caption for your object (should it be an image or diagram with a caption)
Publisher
The publisher responsible for your object. Eg: McGill University.
Rights
Licensing for your object. We suggest using creative commons licensing. Simply choose your license, and paste the text into our free text field. Your licensing is saved to our database with your object.
Language
Select the language for your object.
Date Created
Use the calendar system provided to input what date your object was created.

Uploading

Once you have filled in all of your metadata, click on the browse button on the top right to browse to the file you want to upload on your local machine. Once you have found the object you wish to upload, click the ok button, and the path will be entered in the textbox beside the browse button. At this time you can click on the 'upload' link. You will either be prompted with a message indicating the success of your upload, or you will be prompted with required fields that you missed, or another error on your upload. For those of you who would like to upload large collections you may proceed entering one object at a time if you would like to do that. Alternatively, you can send us a CD or other medium containing the objects and a list of the metadata (Microsoft Excel works well for us) and we will do the inputting for you. If you intend to submit a large number of assets to our library, we have internal tools to do so which are much more feature complete and robust than the simple upload web page to the library. Please feel free to contact Sean Steacy, one of the Library's lead programmers for information on where to obtain, and how to use this tool.

Searching on your upload

Our search indexes are updated every night. Although your object exists within the Library immediately following its upload, the metadata you sent us will not be included in our search indexes untill later. Please allow 24 hours before expecting to be able to retrieve your asset from the Library via a search

Using assets from the HealthLibrary in PowerPoint

Downloading the Image from the Health Library

  • 1. You should be able (for objects described as IMG) to right click next to the object and ‘save image as’. Integration into PP is through the INSERT function.
  • 2. For Flash (FLA) you will notice that there is a ‘download flash link directly under the image (first line of the metadata). Right click on it and ‘save target as’.

Using the downloaded asset in Powerpoint

  • 1. Create a folder on your C drive labelled Flash (not absolutely necessary but useful)
  • 2. Save the flash image in the library to this file ‘save target as’
  • 3. You might want to rename to something that describes the image and remember to save it with .swf
  • 4. It should look like this: C:\Flash Images\dnas.swf
  • 5. The go into PP
  • 6. If you do not have your ‘Control Toolbox’ open click on the VIEW menus, going down to the TOOLBARS submenu and click the 'Control Toolbox' active
  • 7. There is a button on your Control Toolbox that looks like a crossed hammer and wrench. It is the bottom right button. It is the button form MORE CONTROLS. Click on it and scroll down to 'Shockwave Flash Object'. Choose that
  • 8. You will see that your cursor has become a cross. Now create a box with that cross. Keep in mind that your animation will appear where you make that box.
  • 9. Once you’ve created your box, right click in that box and go to PROPERTIES. A Properties box will open up. Make sure you are open on the 'Alphabetic' tab.
  • 10. The top row is entitled ‘Custom’. Click on it
  • 11. Once you do, “Custom” will be highlighted and a little box with three dots will appear beside it. Click on that. A window entitled 'Property Pages' will open up
  • 12. You will need to put the file address where you saved the flash file in the place where it says movie URL
  • 13. Once you have put the path in to the movie URL box on the Property Page window, look underneath to a box entitled PLAY. If this is selected, deselect it.
  • 14. Two boxes below PLAY, you will find a box entitled EMBED MOVIE
  • 15. Select this
  • 16. Click OK
  • 17. Run the PP (the animation will work)
  • 18. If you have any difficulty you can go back by finding a button in the left hand corner