Creating a Web-accessible, point-of-care, team-based information system (PoinTIS): the librarian as publisher*

The Internet has created new opportunities for librarians to develop information systems that are readily accessible at the point of care. This paper describes the multiyear process used to justify, fund, design, develop, promote, and evaluate a rehabilitation prototype of a point-of-care, team-based information system (PoinTIS) and train health care providers to use this prototype for their spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury patient care and education activities. PoinTIS is a successful model for librarians in the twenty-first century to serve as publishers of information created or used by their parent organizations and to respond to the opportunities for information dissemination provided by recent technological advances.

IMGT, the international ImMunoGeneTics database

IMGT, the international ImMunoGeneTics database, freely available at http://imgt.cines.fr:8104, was created in 1989 at the Université Montpellier II, CNRS, Mont­pellier, France, and is a high quality integrated information system specialising in immunoglobulins, T cell receptors and major histocompatibility complex molecules of human and other vertebrates. IMGT provides researchers and clinicians with a common access to all nucleotide, protein, genetic and structural immunogenetics data. This information is of high value for medical and veterinary research, biotechnology related to antibody and T cell receptor engineering, genome diversity and evolution studies of the immune response.