Search results

The NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) was established to help provide clear summaries of research‐based knowledge on the effectiveness and cost‐effectiveness of health care interventions. This paper summarises the ways in which CRD helps produce and disseminate this research intelligence to the NHS and its customers. Systematic reviews on topics prioritised by the NHS are conducted or commissioned. Some are disseminated as Effective Health Care bulletins to a wide range of people in the NHS. Two databases are available on line which provide structured critical abstracts of reviews of research and economic evaluations have been developed. Some of the most important reviews are also disseminated as Effectiveness Matters. CRD also provides research input into a number of projects such as cancer guidance for purchasers, and consumer and professional informed choice leaflets in maternity care, cataracts and glue ear.

EVERY librarian in his inmost heart dislikes newspapers. He regards them as bad literature; attractors of undesirable readers; a drain upon the limited resources of the library; and a target against which the detractors of public libraries are constantly battering. From the standpoint of the librarian, newspapers are the most expensive and least productive articles stocked by a library, and their lavish provision is, perhaps, the most costly method of purchasing waste‐paper ever devised. Pressure of circumstances and local conditions combine, however, to muzzle the average librarian, and the consequence is that a perfectly honest and outspoken discussion of the newspaper question is very rarely seen. In these circumstances, an attempt to marshal the arguments for and against the newspaper, together with some account of a successful practical experiment at limitation, may prove interesting to readers of this magazine.