Knowledge Finder at The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is an affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a Comprehensive Cancer Center designated by the National Cancer Institute. The 57-bed facility specializes in cancer and AIDS research in the areas of gynecologic and genitourinary cancers, leukemia, and neoplasms of the head and neck.

The library was founded to serve the special needs of Dana Farber's 600 researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Librarian Chris Fleuriel is often called upon to provide information on topics such as cellular and molecular biology, tumor immunology, immunopathology, cancer pharmacology, viral pathogenesis, and human retrovirology.

The Aries Systems Knowledge Finder® CD-ROM has been in use at Dana-Farber since January, 1990.

Christine Fleuriel, Librarian at Dana-Farber comments:

"It was entirely my decision to select Knowledge Finder. Previously, I did most of the literature searches online, although some of the researchers conducted their own searches via other means.

"When I took over the library in 1990, my predecessor had arranged for a trial of another CD-ROM system. I tried it for a month and was not satisfied, partly because it was not very intuitive. When I saw a demonstration of Knowledge Finder, I was very impressed and thought it would be perfect for what we wanted. It has worked out very well.

"There are those who do their own searches on the CD-ROM and there are those who have me do the searches for them. We don't charge for use of the CD-ROM, but we do charge back for online searches. What this means is that we are reaching a lot more people with this option, and while they are here using the system they find out about the other services we offer.

"Generally speaking, the grad students and younger researchers catch on very quickly, but we're seeing more principal investigators who are doing their own searches. It's a very comfortable and economical way to become adept at searching. Many of our users have been comfortable enough with the system to bring people in from their own labs and teach them, so we don't have to teach everybody how to use it.

"I do more teaching now, and because I've been freed up from doing all of the searches, I can focus more time on other aspects of the library that I didn't have time for in the past. I've really broadened my scope. I'm not doing exactly what I thought I'd do when I finished grad school, but that's fine because my job is never dull and I'm never bored.

"We've had a lot of positive feedback on Knowledge Finder. Overall, we're very pleased with the ease of use, and it has greatly increased the visibility of our library. When I took over in 1990 some of the staff here didn't even know we had a library, so it has done a lot to improve the perception of our library services around the institute. One of my focuses has been to market the library to the research staff, and Knowledge Finder has really helped on that level.

Christine Fleuriel
Librarian
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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