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The Arizona Health Information Network (AZHIN) had its beginnings in 1993 when a group of librarians from the University of Arizona and its affiliated teaching hospitals got together to discuss how to make Medline available at the point of need to students and health care practitioners statewide. Today AZHIN has over 30 diverse institutional members statewide and continues to grow. End-users have access to a variety of resources (MD Consult, several Ovid products, Stat!Ref, and EBSCO) focusing primarily on full-text products, with considerable cost savings to member organizations through collaborative purchasing. AZHIN's sophisticated, database-driven portal can be easily customized by library staff at individual member institutions to reflect their local e-journal holdings and other electronic resources. An AZHIN-developed CE Calendar for Health Professionals promotes continuing education opportunities throughout the state. This poster will discuss AZHIN's growth and maturation as an organization over the last 9 years, our changing vision, the development and deployment of AZHIN's innovative portal, and our success in reaching out to health care practitioners in a variety of health care/educational settings and geographic locations around the state. Bioterrorism and Public Health Nurses
In response to the events of September 11, 2001 and the aftermath of anthrax incidents, the Arizona Health Sciences Library developed and conducted six workshops on bioterrorism and disaster preparedness for public health nurses in Pima County, Arizona. This was one of ten workshops that had been developed for a year-long project with public health nurses which was funded by a grant from the National Library of Medicine. During the planning stages of the project in early 2001, bioterrorism, as a topic, was given a relatively low priority in terms of the nurses' "need to know" and usefulness of the information, and the workshops were scheduled for spring 2002. After the events of September 11th, the priorities changed dramatically as each of the six offices had to respond to requests for information from the general public about anthrax and its treatment. The workshops were moved up to December to accommodate the nurses' need for information. It is evident that the lives of all Americans have been affected by these events and the repercussions continue to reverberate. This poster looks at the workshops, and the nurses' response to the information presented. Health Information for Pima County Public Health Nurses
The Arizona Health Sciences Library (AHSL) conducted a 6-month project working with public health officials in Pima and Cochise Counties - one urban, one rural - to better understand the information-seeking behaviors of public health professionals, to identify their information needs, and to begin to develop an infrastructure to satisfy those needs. The results of the project indicate that public health nurses in Pima County have a great need for information, but that need was not being adequately met. As a result of those findings, AHSL and the Pima County public health nurses submitted a grant proposal to the National Library of Medicine to begin to build an information infrastructure and enhance the nurses' information-seeking capability by providing the hardware, access to the Internet, and training on Web-based health information resources to bring them into the 21st century. This poster looks at these aspects of the project and what has been accomplished to date.
Student Health Services at the University of California, San Diego provides primary health care to many of the university's 20,000 students, recording 31,000 patient visits annually. Administratively, Student Health Services is a division of UCSD Student Affairs, with no formal affiliation with UCSD School of Medicine or UCSD Healthcare. This had resulted in the UCSD Biomedical Library underserving these important healthcare providers. In 2000, Mary Linn Bergstrom and Jeff Williams began to assess the information needs of the Student Health Services staff and develop a program to meet these needs. This poster will highlight some of the outreach and instruction initiatives developed by the Library to ensure that Student Health Services' healthcare providers are aware of, and skilled in using Library resources. Initiatives included the formation of the Student Health Services Library Advisory Board, the development of a targeted training program, and increased efforts to involve Student Health Services in regular Library outreach and training activities. One unexpected benefit of these efforts was a connection with Student Health Services' Student Health Advocates, a program that trains selected undergraduates to educate peers and area high school students about health and wellness issues. The Student Health Advocates were surveyed about their health information retrieval tactics, and then trained on Library resources. This poster will describe new services for Student Health Services' healthcare providers and present preliminary data about the health information-seeking behavior of the Student Health Advocates. From OPAC to WebPAC : How to find funding and support
With this poster the library staff would like to demonstrate how relatively easy it is to receive a Z39.50 grant from the Library of California, and what the different steps are to implement such a project. Many organizations face the same challenge the Milton J. Chatton Medical Library faced: that the online catalog (OPAC) was available on the Intranet, but not available remotely to outlying clinics. The second issue was that in order to make the Library of California a reality, where every citizen has access to the information in all the libraries, all library catalogs need to be accessible online. Thirdly, in order to exchange cataloging information between different library OPACs, libraries need to have Z39.50 connectivity/software. The library staff knew that outside help was needed to make the OPAC available on the Internet, and to be Z39.50 compatible. It was necessary to receive support from the administration for such a project, which is why the staff applied for a Library of California grant. During the last 2 1/2 years this project went through many ups and downs. Apart from the implementation process the library staff also wants to show the technical, organizational, and administrative challenges involved in such a project and how to overcome them.
In response to a growing interest in the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) on the Health Sciences Campus, the USC Norris Medical Library sponsored a PDA Fair. The PDA Fair was designed to familiarize people interested in purchasing PDAs (Palm, Handspring Visor, or Compaq iPAQ) with their features and uses and to introduce current users to new applications and accessories. An outdoor vendor exhibit was held in front of the Norris Medical Library while formal product demonstrations were given in the library's microcomputer classroom and conference room. The Fair was scheduled to coincide with the "back to school" season. It was promoted through announcements, newsletter articles, flyers, listservs, and a website. The Fair's website detailed the event and contained links to the participating vendors. Although much of our clientele knew about the built-in organizer applications, such as the calendar and address book, many were unaware of the other PDA applications. The Fair's software component might well have been billed "Beyond the Box: Third-Party Apps." The Fair highlighted add-on programs for PDAs including databases, infrared printing, spreadsheets, word processing, and other utilities. Accessories included chargers, portable keyboards, and pocket printers. Specialty products included GIS (Geographical Information Systems), videos, and magazines. Medical applications focused primarily on drug resources and a wireless handheld physician support system that interfaces with a hospital's existing system. The Fair was an overwhelming success with over 20 vendors, 10 formal demonstrations, and over 600 people in attendance. This poster highlights the Fair's organizational challenges and successes from inception to culmination. "Am I Allowed to Use this Library?" Helping the Public in an Academic Library
The Arizona Health Sciences Library has undertaken a multi-phased project to make print and electronic consumer health resources available to the general public. The project originated when the University Medical Center requested that the Arizona Health Sciences Library provide materials appropriate for both patients and their families. As part of this initial phase, a librarian became a member of the Patient Family Education Council in order to create a formal liaison between the hospital and the library. Criteria for selecting a physical location were designed, and the selection of books, videos and pamphlets began. Additionally, orientation brochures and a formal "Prescription for Learning" were all created to support the new initiative. In the second phase, a location for the collection was selected in the Reference Area. Furniture and videotape viewing equipment were supplied, and the collection began. The supporting brochures were distributed to departments and outlying clinics, and free parking was made available for those with a "Prescription for Learning". Targeting the special information needs of patients and health care consumers, we are working through the third phase of this project, exploring ways to make the collection more visible and accessible to this broadly defined group. The library is endeavoring to become formally recognized by the National Library of Medicine as a distinct Consumer Health resource, by following NLM consumer health library criteria. A new Consumer Health web page is under development, and other technological ideas are being reviewed. Evaluating the impact of this new print "Patient and Family Resources" collection is also ongoing. Real Time Reference: Collaborating Across Different Libraries
Digital Reference provides a new slant on offering information services via the Web. Using commercial call center software, library staff can interact with users on the Web to provide real time reference services. Librarians can chat, share Web pages, input information on a Web page, review what the caller sees, and troubleshoot. One of the strengths of the particular software used is collaborative browsing, which allows callers and librarians to interact with Web pages. For example, a caller and a librarian can work together on a PubMed search. The strength of the program itself has been the partnerships between multidisciplinary libraries that have allowed staffing and training to be shared. Some of the ways the challenges of staffing and training for real time reference services are dealt with are through weekly meetings, sharing digital resource Web pages for digital reference providers, jointly creating canned chat messages and collaborative staffing. Future enhancements of the digital reference service include voice interactions and expanding the hours. Publicity, policies, staffing and evaluation of a digital reference project will be highlighted. Types of questions received and the advantages of the digital reference service will also be covered. Nurses in Clinical Practice: Promoting the Library as a Tool for Professional Development
Like physicians, nurses in clinical practice are required to demonstrate ongoing skills development through testing on a regular basis, to maintain their licensure. While such professional development is required of them, opportunities for continuing education are often more limited for nursing staff than for physicians. In general, fewer nursing-related conferences and seminars are offered each year, and in many cases less funding is available for nurses to pursue professional development opportunities. At the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), a major academic health sciences center, the Library approached the UCSF Medical Center's Director of Education for Nursing, to discuss the possibility of providing continuing education opportunities for the clinical nursing staff. From this meeting developed Evidence-Based Practice: Research Techniques for Nurses, a three-hour hands-on seminar covering evidence-based nursing practice, literature searching, and patient education. This course was designed to teach nurses to do research, both to pursue projects of particular interest, and to enhance their professional development in general. This course is now offered quarterly to the clinical nursing staff, who receive continuing education credits for attending. Additionally, a librarian is now included in monthly new-employee orientation sessions for the Department of Nursing, to highlight library services. In addition to providing a valuable service to the clinical nursing staff at the UCSF Medical Center, this outreach effort has served to raise the profile of the Library as a tool for professional development. Moving to the Electronic Library
In common with health sciences libraries across the country, our large academic biomedical library is considering whether to retain print versions of journals it now receives in electronic format. This question is of particular importance for us because we maintain a substantial duplicate journal collection at a branch medical library, located approximately 10 miles away. Many of the core titles duplicated in print at the medical center library are now also available in electronic form. To better manage our journal expenditures, we embarked on a project to cancel the medical center's print copy of these so-called "triplicate" titles. The poster will document the procedures we used to determine which titles to cancel, the collection development policies we developed to guide us in this and future cancellation projects, and the reaction of faculty and clinicians to the changing nature of the medical center library. Our experiences and lessons learned can serve as one model for managing the transition from print to electronic in hospital and academic libraries. We plan to use this methodology for print cancellations in future steps of this transition. Promoting PubMed: Strategies that Work
Many libraries are making the transition from providing MEDLINE from the California Digital Library (CDL) MEDLINE, OVID, or another source to providing access exclusively through PubMed. For instance, the University of California health sciences librarians decided to migrate from CDL MEDLINE to PubMed in December 2001. Numerous other libraries have already switched to PubMed or are considering doing so. How are libraries that are making this transition promoting PubMed? What means are they using to notify their users about the change and to promote the value of PubMed? What types of promotion seem to work best? A survey sent to the MLGSCA listserv and the NCNMLG listserv gathered information about how PubMed is being promoted and solicited examples of brochures, posters and other promotional materials that will be displayed at the poster session. By sharing ideas about effective ways to promote PubMed we can all enhance our own promotional efforts. Database Cleanup: It's Not Just Typoes [sic]
Errors in a library's bibliographic database can affect searching for and credibility of resources. In order to reduce the incidence of errors, tracking down and fixing these inaccuracies must be given priority. In addition, a system requiring minimal effort must be put in place to maintain the catalog. This maintenance system must be simple enough and quick enough to execute so that ongoing maintenance will be performed. This poster will display data collected on the sources, types and incidences of errors found in one Health Sciences Library's bibliographic database, and by whom and by what methods these errors are discovered. Types of errors to be monitored included typographical errors, MARC format coding errors, and subject heading errors and omissions. Errors included those found in imported bibliographic records and in catalog records created or altered in-house. Some of these errors were discovered by chance by library personnel while in the process of adding to or using the catalog, by client users, by error reports, and by keyword searches on misspelled words. Based on the data collected, this poster will also present possible solutions for remedying the initial occurrence of such errors, and will suggest methods and workflows for the maintenance of a nearly error-free database. Benchmarking: What doing it can do!
The Medical Library Association Benchmarking Outcomes Team created various library scenarios based on beta test data from 73 libraries. The scenarios illustrate the value of participation in the current benchmarking Network data input. The data presented will show how benchmarking can be useful in answering library management questions such as the following: What is the organizational reporting structure of hospital libraries? Is there any relationship between library square footage and various hospital demographics? Will reducing journal back files solve the problem of a request for reduction in square footage of library space? What is the relationship between library FTEs and the hours the library is open? How many electronic journal subscriptions does a comparable hospital library purchase? What is the average expenditure on monographs for a hospital library? This poster will demonstrate the value of benchmarking participation. One Stop Shopping
As Coordinator of the UC Davis Health Sciences Libraries HouseCalls program, Judith Welsh initially developed an easy-to-use Web page of sites useful to medical and veterinary faculty, staff and students for the purpose of publicizing the services of the HouseCalls program. A recent evaluation of the HouseCalls program revealed a strong interest among our clientele for Web-based instruction on library resources and services. In response, Ms. Welsh developed a series of brief tutorials, handouts and guides for the HouseCalls Web page gathered under the heading Searching & Managing the Literature. Originally designed for faculty, staff and students too pressed for time to either attend scheduled library classes or meet with librarians for individualized HouseCall consultations, the PubMed Tutorials, Databases of Special Interest to Medical & Veterinary Researchers, and Bibliographic Management Software Tutorials have become especially useful as both teaching aids and post-instruction refreshers.
Email us at: jtmtg2002@yahoo.com |
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