Rethinking Patient Education: A Sitemaker Data-access Website Helps to Streamline and Improve Patient Education at the University of Michigan Health System
3:05 PM - 3:25 PM
Objectives: Patient-education at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) is not centralized. This led to wide variations in quality, duplication of efforts, and outdated materials. The organization needed a solution to facilitate access to all patient-education materials created and used by clinicians at the UMHS. The goals were to increase resource sharing and improve the quality and currency of materials.
Methods: A web-based database called “The Patient Education Clearinghouse” was created with Sitemaker, an open source website creation and management application. Site users can choose between a simple search with a keyword or a topic, or an advanced search interface that enables more complex searching, and combining fields such as format, language, department, population, and year of publication. The system includes a submission, review, and approval process to ensure that only materials that meet specific quality guidelines are included. Dedicated sections for specific departments increase the speed of retrieving documents and can be embedded in departments’ intranet sites. The data-access site also helps managers maintain a consistent review and update schedule for their documents. The patient-education managers’ interface enables keeping track of authors and reviewers, and searching for materials by publication and revision dates.
Conclusion: The clearinghouse facilitates sharing documents between departments and ensuring that clinicians use materials that have been pre-approved by relevant committees and clinics. More than 10 sections that provide access to subsets of documents have been created. A special section for the cancer center assists in managing the update and review process of over 300 documents. Many existing documents have been improved to meet the selection criteria. Marketing the clearinghouse to patient education managers and educating staff to use it proves to be the biggest challenge.
Author: Ruti Volk, Patient Education Librarian, University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, MI
Hacking into the World of Web 3.0
3:25 PM - 3:45 PM
Objective: To provide an in-depth study of Web 3.0 technologies based on a literature review, to identify and explore existing entities that offer Web 3.0 technologies, and to present a prototype of an academic library website that incorporates Web 3.0 technologies.
Methods: A literature review from 1996 to 2010 of Web 3.0 technologies was conducted. A search using various search engines was performed to identify entities offering Web 3.0 technologies. A literature review was then carried out to pinpoint scholarly assessments of the entities. A prototype of an academic library website incorporating Web 3.0 technologies was created using web development applications.
Results and Conclusions: My results and conclusions are not complete yet.
Author: Sharon Lee, Graduate Student, Health Informatics Program, University of North Texas, Denton, TX
Rethinking Ways to Provide Library Services to Rural Clinicians
3:45 PM - 4:05 PM
Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze an ongoing project centered on satisfying basic clinical information needs of rural clinicians who work in hospitals without libraries or librarians by providing personal digital assistants (PDAs) equipped with clinical information databases augmented with full-text Loansome Doc delivery. Three projects have been instituted since 2006, in which 330 PDAs were distributed with training.
Methods: This was a qualitative study that primarily involved individual interviews of participants in one of the three projects. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and themes were analyzed. The process continued until data saturation was achieved.
Results: Much information has been discovered about the value of the services provided and what can be done to better address clinician information needs. Data collection is ongoing.
Conclusions: Medical librarians, particularly those in academic centers, must reach out and find new ways to enable rural clinicians to stay current with the explosion of new biomedical information.
Authors: Rick Wallace, AHIP, Assistant Director; Nakia Cook, AHIP, Clinical Reference Librarian; Quillen College of Medicine Library; East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN
Rethinking How Patrons Discover Information: Implementing a Discovery Tool
4:05 PM - 4:25 PM
Objective: The libraries, like most academic libraries, use various tools for searching our collections: the online public access catalog (OPAC), the institutional repository, locally developed databases, and subject-specific article indices. Each of these collections requires their own search interfaces and strategies. To better serve our patrons, the libraries wanted a way to perform a comprehensive search of these collections from one place.
Methods: The libraries formed a task force in January 2010 to explore two questions: (1) Were we ready to implement a discovery tool? (2) If so, which tool currently on the market best met our patrons’ needs? The task force demonstrated three tools to the libraries: Ex Libris’ Primo Central, the EBSCO Discovery Service, and Serials Solutions’ Summon. By May, a decision was made to move forward with Summon. The implementation process and usage statistics of the Summon tool at the university are examined in this case study.
Results: Upon review of usage statistics from the launch date, we have seen steady usage. Statistics show a trend in increased OpenURL linking since implementation of Summon. We have found the addition of a discovery tool beneficial in the exposure of our library's collections.
Authors: Elizabeth Ketterman, Collection Development and E-Resources Librarian; Megan E. Besaw, Liaison, College of Allied Health Sciences; Michael Tucker, Application Support Analyst; Laupus Health Sciences Library; East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
