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On the Net
New York University's Literature, Arts and Medicine Database began as a resource for medical educators, but today it also serves any reader in search of a good book. Its 41st edition features annotations for 53 artworks and 90 films, as well as 1461 literary works by 894 authors. A free-text search for "Canada" finds 63 entries, including books by authors such as Jane Urquhart, Timothy Findley, Hugh MacLennan and Janet Turner Hospital, and films such as Strangers in Good Company. The individual entry for Toronto author Donna McFarlane's 1994 Division of Surgery provides a brief summary and commentary about the work, as well as publication information and keywords. The commentaries are informative and accessible, and the indexing by keywords is one of the site's most useful features. Division of Surgery, a novel about a young woman surviving serious inflammatory bowel disease, is indexed under keywords such as doctor–patient relationships, human worth, patient experience and power relationships. Clicking on any one of these terms pulls up a list of related entries, allowing the user to search readily for works dealing with a particular theme. Certain entries are cross-linked to online texts or audio or visual presentations where the works are published, displayed, excerpted, read, performed or discussed. Links from the Medical Humanities homepage lead to the Web site for the journal Literature and Medicine and the Roster of Physician Writers. Newcastle University's Walton Library encourages students to broaden their reading by visiting their site, which is linked to, among other resources, its own compilation of literature about medicine. — Alison Sinclair, CMAJ
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