Printing Within AccessMedicine
I was so excited recently to participate with other Ohio Health Science Libraries in a consortia deal to get AccessMedicine. It was such a good deal we jumped at the chance. I had users singing my praises that I was providing them with the online version of the Lange textbooks, Harrison's Online, Schwartz Principles of Surgery, etc.
Unfortunately this otherwise great product has a major usability flaw. Printing. Printing a chapter out of one of the books is absolutely painful. You are only allowed to print one page at a time! How incredibly frustrating and annoying. There is no way to easily print off a chapter of a book. So if somebody wants to quickly read through a chapter away from the computer they have to spend a good chunk of time printing off the stupid thing page by page. What a complete waste. Obviously there is a better way around this right?!
Wrong. I called McGraw-Hill AccessMedicine technical support and customer service and both people informed me the only way to print off a chapter is page by page. When I complained they said it was due to copyright. This is probably true, but it is a poor excuse. First of all, the books are published by McGraw-Hill. Second, there are plenty of online textbook vendors (MDConsult, StatRef, Ovid) who allow users to easily print off a complete chapter in one step (not page by page). If those vendors have worked it out so that users can print off a chapter, AccessMedicine should be able to do the same.
I am disappointed, what could have been a great resource has turned into a bit of a lemon. My users simply will not use it now. Originally, I was thinking of canceling some of my Ovid texts that were duplicated in AccessMedicine. Now, I am considering not renewing AccessMedicine for next year. What is the point in paying for a product my users won't use.
5 Comments:
Amen, Krafty! That very thing about AccessMedicine has bugged me, too.
Krafty, when we went with AccessMedicine in '05, the printing (and the PDA download topic-by-topic--what is THAT?) was definitely a concern, but the value of the content in the product made it worth a try. We had a couple of complaints about printing, but a large number of rave reviews. Even in an academic setting, people apparently only wanted to search, find, and read the bit pertinent to them at that time. Best of luck with it!
PS--Any chance you want to move to Kansas City and be a consumer health librarian? :P
Whitney,
Ah KC, closer to my home only a 4 1/2 hour drive to STL instead of a 9-10 hour drive. At least I would get good barbeque once again. Tempting, but for the time being we are Clevelanders. At least my husband's family is from here.
Thank you for the note on AccessMedicine we were/are leaning that way for more PDA access. Printing Questions were not even on oury radar. StatRef never looked so good.
We value your feedback on AccessMedicine and are constantly looking for new ways to improve our users’ experience. As a result, you will be able to print complete chapters on AccessMedicine in just one click by mid-October.
Please note that AccessSurgery, our latest Access online service for surgical education, currently enables users to print the complete chapter.
We welcome your comments and suggestions. And thanks to Kraftylibrarians for providing a forum for this discussion.
Sincerely,
McGraw-Hill’s AccessMedicine Team
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