http://oxfordmedicine.com recently held a webinar which highlighted some of the functionality available in their e-book series, and here is a handy summary of what Christie staff can do with the platform from Ingrid, our Enquiry Services Librarian.
Once on the site what you want to do is log in right away:
It will ask you to select an organisation and Christie Staff should select ‘NHS England’ – it will then take you to the OpenAthens log on page.
Once logged on, you can create a personal profile, and by doing this the website will be able to record your history, including allowing you to make annotations to texts and save searches as well as exporting and sharing content with your colleagues, read on to find out more about these.
I highly recommend setting up a personal profile right away to give you the option to save and annotate content on the site, this is a very quick process but will mean any work you do can be saved for future reference. When you have set this up, you will see your name at the top right hand corner of the site and when you click on ‘My Work’ it will give you an overview of what you have already done.
It all begins with the search functionality. You can search freely for a specific topic in the search box, or select from the headings of Speciality, Career Stage and Series. Below I have selected from the Oncology Specialty, and made sure to check the boxes in the availability to display the maximum amount of resources available to Christie Staff, including our subscription titles, as well as free and open access content.
You can refine your search further in the sidebar on the left hand side of the page if necessary, and view by Chapters or Book titles. In the image above, you can see various options in the top right hand corner if you would like to save a search for future reference, print it off or email it to a colleague.
Here I have selected the title Oxford Handbook of Oncology. You can search within the title using the search box on the bottom left, and also expand each chapter if you prefer to browse. 
A simple search for ‘breast cancer’ within the title brings up all relevant sections for me.
Then when you have chosen the section you would like to read in more depth, the functionality gets even better. Simply highlight an area to be given the option to Annotate that part of the text, similar to making handwritten notes in a hard copy, this will be saved in the personal profile you created earlier, to refer back to.
It also actually highlights the text so that if you are ever looking on the site while in your personal profile your highlighting will stay there, handy for quick reference on the go.
At the end of each chapter is a Further Reading section and you can click the plus sign next to each one to give you options to find the resource.
I have saved this search and made one annotation now, and this is reflected in the ‘My Work’ section of my Personal Profile on the site. I can export annotations or email them to a colleague or group of colleagues, providing they are set up with a personal profile on the site, this is great for study groups.
Anyway we think the interface is pretty easy to use and much more interactive, giving eBooks the same kinds of functionality that real books have.
If you have further questions about the Christie’s ebook collection please get in touch with the library.
With your OpenAthens login you can access the MARTINDALE’S pharmacology information provided by The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Look for the button on our Intranet site or click here
