Since its launch in April 2005, the portal Web site PsychiatryOnline.com, from American Psychiatric Publishing Inc. (APPI), has seen substantial increases in the number of subscribers, features, and content.
“The site was a hit with early subscribers,” according to Bob Pursell, APPI's director of sales and marketing. “As word of mouth spreads about the richness of the site, it's gaining momentum among a wider array of psychiatrists and mental health professionals.”
Libraries have been enthusiastic supporters from the beginning. Site licenses, which provide access for an entire institution for one fee, open the door to APA/APPI books and journals for a huge universe of users. Institutional subscribers are as wide ranging as university systems, medical schools, hospital libraries, individual medical practices, pharmaceutical companies, and state and federal government agencies.
The number of visitors to PsychiatryOnline.com has grown each month, reaching 60,000 in December 2005. And hits—the number of requests for a file—recently topped the million mark. The site has a global audience, logging visitors from North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and Africa.
Opportunities to test-drive the site will be offered in the APPI Bookstore at APA's 2006 annual meeting. And a video demonstration is available on the site itself; click “Take a Guided Tour of the Site” from the homepage at<www.psychiatryonline.com>.
A popular new feature at PsychiatryOnline.com is the Book of the Month. Subscribers are given electronic access (in pdf) to the full text of a different book each month from the APPI collection. This feature gives subscribers a peek inside popular titles so they can better evaluate whether they would like to purchase the print book.
The site currently offers access to DSM-IV-TR, differential diagnostic advice and case examples, APA's practice guidelines (including new guidelines and revisions as they are released by APA), Hales and Yudofsky's Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry (with interactive self-assessment), and the American Journal of Psychiatry and other journals published by APA and APPI.
Just how is the diverse content from these books and journals integrated within the site? “It's hard to explain just how dynamic the PsychiatryOnline.com Web site is,” said Pam Harley, APPI's director of e-publishing.“ It's something you really need to see in action. As a result of semantic tags added by indexers and the National Library of Medicine, new connections among related pieces of content are always being generated, allowing readers to discover relevant information they didn't even know existed.” ▪
