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Objective

The research determined the usage and satisfaction levels with one of two point-of-care (PoC) resources among health care providers in a rural state.

Methods

In this randomized controlled trial, twenty-eight health care providers in rural areas were stratified by occupation and region, then randomized into either the DynaMed or the AccessMedicine study arm. Study participants were physicians, physician assistants, and nurses. A pre- and post-study survey measured participants'' attitudes toward different information resources and their information-seeking activities. Medical student investigators provided training and technical support for participants. Data analyses consisted of analysis of variance (ANOVA), paired t tests, and Cohen''s d statistic to compare pre- and post-study effects sizes.

Results

Participants in both the DynaMed and the AccessMedicine arms of the study reported increased satisfaction with their respective PoC resource, as expected. Participants in both arms also reported that they saved time in finding needed information. At baseline, both arms reported too little information available, which increased to “about right amounts of information” at the completion of the study. DynaMed users reported a Cohen''s d increase of +1.50 compared to AccessMedicine users'' reported use of 0.82. DynaMed users reported d2 satisfaction increases of 9.48 versus AccessMedicine satisfaction increases of 0.59 using a Cohen''s d.

Conclusion

Participants in the DynaMed arm of the study used this clinically oriented PoC more heavily than the users of the textbook-based AccessMedicine. In terms of user satisfaction, DynaMed users reported higher levels of satisfaction than the users of AccessMedicine.Keywords and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Clinical Decision Support Systems, Computer-Assisted Decision Making, Decision Making, Evidence-Based Library and Information Practice, Evidence-Based Practice, Health Status Disparities, Health Care Disparities, Information Divide, Information-Seeking Behavior, Medically Underserved Area, Nurse Practitioners, Nurses, Physician Assistants, Physicians, Public Health Nurses, Randomized Controlled Trial as Topic, Service Learning, Vulnerable PopulationsHealth care practitioners regularly seek to incorporate valid information into their evidence-based decisions. Electronic information resources now provide easy access to current health information and summarized forms of evidence to support clinical decision making.

Access effects on health care

Health care providers who are affiliated with well-funded institutions benefit from access to a variety of high-quality information resources to support their evidence-based practices. Practitioners who are not affiliated with academic health sciences centers rarely have access to these same resources due to prohibitively high licensing costs. Ely et al. report that not having access to easy-to-use, high-quality, current information can negatively affect sound clinical decision making. [1].Patients in Isaac et al.''s study who were admitted to hospitals that had access to an electronic evidence-based resource experienced reduced length of stay and lower risk-adjusted mortality rates for prespecified conditions [2]. That study was validated on a broader scale by a multicenter investigation on the utilization of information resources by practitioners [3].Primary health care practitioners who are not affiliated with academic health sciences centers, particularly those who practice in rural or remote areas, often articulate the need for increased access to health information resources. The authors'' literature search and review of 114 of the most relevant research articles about the information needs and information-seeking behavior of health care practitioners suggested that these professionals most value speed and accuracy. For example, they likely would prefer to use point-of-care (PoC) resources for quickly and accurately answering their clinical questions.

Desirability of point of care

PoC resources quickly guide physicians through the diagnosis, treatment, and management of commonly encountered clinical conditions. PoC resources can present compilations of highly authoritative, often evidence-based, information. Physicians can answer more questions and revise clinical decisions more often using these PoC resources [4]. Meanwhile, many health care practitioners still rely on textbooks familiar to them from their professional training programs, despite their potentially dated contents [514].

Limited access in rural New Mexico

A randomized controlled trial involving public health practitioners across the rural state of New Mexico reported many barriers in accessing valued information resources [15, 16]. In another study, researchers in New Mexico set out to determine and analyze information needs of health care practitioners who were not affiliated with an academic center. Fifty-one interviews of rural physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners showed both a need and desire for access to information resources [17].

Goals and hypothesis

This study sought to determine which rural health care providers found more useful in answering everyday clinical questions: electronic PoC DynaMed, which is more clinically oriented, or electronic PoC AccessMedicine, which consists primarily of a health sciences textbook collection. We hypothesized that free access to the explicitly clinical format of the PoC resource DynaMed would result in more extensive use than a baseline of zero over a six-month period than the electronic PoC textbook collection AccessMedicine. We felt this would be due to greater utility of DynaMed in clinical practice. We also predicted that clinicians using the clinically oriented PoC would express higher levels of satisfaction than those using the textbook-based PoC and that clinicians using these PoC resources would prefer using them over other information resources.  相似文献   

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The purpose of this study was to understand factors that may affect the usage of a consumer health center located in a public library. More specifically, the authors wanted to know what health resources are of interest to the community, what patrons'' perceptions of their experience at the center are, and finally, how staff can increase utilization of the center. In general, perceptions of the center were positive. The findings support that participants appreciate efforts to provide health information in the public library setting and that utilization could be improved through marketing and outreach.Problems with health literacy—one''s ability to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions 1, 2—significantly limit effective dissemination and understanding of relevant health information, especially among racial and ethnic minorities where health literacy challenges are pervasive 35. People with limited health literacy skills have higher medical costs and use an inefficient mix of medical services 3, 613. This compromises their health and is a major source of economic inefficiency in the US health care system. Efforts to address low health literacy may result in reductions of health inequities, decreased medical costs, and enhanced quality of life 14. However, efforts to promote health literacy that seek to empower individuals to understand health information and act in their own interest remain an underexplored pathway to improved health outcomes 9.The National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) encourages libraries to reach out to low literacy groups in their surrounding communities to address literacy challenges 1517. These actions have resulted in development of consumer health libraries, centers where patrons can get accurate and timely health information. Preliminary investigations of consumer health libraries have reinforced the value of these services 18, 19, but there is little information regarding the provision of similar services in other public settings.The Healthy Living and Learning Center (HLLC), located in a public library in Petersburg, Virginia, was established in 2012 to provide one-on-one assistance in accessing health information and community resources. According to 2010–2013 census data, 25% of Petersburg residents are below the poverty line 20. Localities surrounding the HLLC experience some of the most unfavorable health outcomes in Virginia 21. In addition, 16%–24% of citizens in the surrounding localities are illiterate 22.The public library setting provides an appropriate context to initiate consumer health centers outside of medical settings. Librarians are already being asked to meet consumer demands for health information 1517, and the provision of accurate health information is a natural extension of the services that public libraries provide. The American Library Association reports that 62% of libraries report that they are the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities 23. According to a recent study from Pew, 35% of Americans 16 and older say they have used free Internet access points, 47% of whom have used these services to get health information 24. For a number of minorities, the public library is the only place they have Internet access 25. Thus, libraries not only remain a critical resource among the public, but may also have unique access to populations who are more vulnerable to health inequities.  相似文献   

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Objective

“One Health” is an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating and managing the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environments they share that relies on knowledge from the domains of human health, animal health, and the environmental sciences. The authors'' objective was to evaluate the extent of open access (OA) to journal articles in a sample of literature from these domains. We hypothesized that OA to articles in human health or environmental journals was greater than access to animal health literature.

Methods

A One Health seminar series provided fifteen topics. One librarian translated each topic into a search strategy and searched four databases for articles from 2011 to 2012. Two independent investigators assigned each article to human health, the environment, animal health, all, other, or combined categories. Article and journal-level OA were determined. Each journal was also assigned a subject category and its indexing evaluated.

Results

Searches retrieved 2,651 unique articles from 1,138 journals; 1,919 (72%) articles came from 406 journals that contributed more than 1 article. Seventy-seven (7%) journals dealt with all 3 One Health domains; the remaining journals represented human health 487 (43%), environment 172 (15%), animal health 141 (12%), and other/combined categories 261 (23%). The proportion of OA journals in animal health (40%) differed significantly from journals categorized as human (28%), environment (28%), and more than 1 category (29%). The proportion of OA for articles by subject categories ranged from 25%–34%; only the difference between human (34%) and environment (25%) was significant.

Conclusions

OA to human health literature is more comparable to animal health than hypothesized. Environmental journals had less OA than anticipated.Keywords (Medical Subject Headings) Publishing, Periodicals as Topic, Access to Information, Veterinary Medicine, Environment, Environmental Health, Medicine“One Health” is an integrated, transdisciplinary approach to solve complex problems at the diverse interfaces shared by humans, animals, and the environment [1]. The One Health approach to evaluating and managing the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environments that they share relies on knowledge from the domains of human health, animal health, and the environmental sciences. Although there is a growing body of literature about the development of the One Health concept as documented by Pepper, Carrigan, Shurtz, and Foster [2], this literature is not the same as the combination of literature from the three domains that is applied in service of One Health. Every discipline related to One Health has its unique mindset and language, with corresponding lists of acronyms that are frequently an impediment to effective communication across the participating professions. Relevant papers guiding a One Health approach may never specifically use “One Health” as a term or concept.To promote better communication and collaboration among health professionals and environmental scientists, a public monthly One Health Intellectual Exchange Group (IEG) hosted by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center was launched in 2009. In 2011, faculty from the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, University of North Carolina''s Gillings School for Global Public Health, Duke Global Health Institute, and Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University expanded the IEG series into a weekly seminar course with eight One Health focus areas [3]. The eight focus area modules were the following: an introduction to One Health; environmental health and ecology; the human and animal bond; zoonoses and emerging infectious diseases; food and water safety; disease surveillance, informatics, and disaster preparedness; benefits of comparative medicine; and policy and education (Appendix A, online only). Each seminar speaker recommended papers to read prior to the session to provide a foundation for the topic because student backgrounds and majors were quite diverse. Represented student majors included master''s of public health, master''s of animal science, doctor of veterinary medicine, graduate-level environmental sciences, and undergraduate-level biochemistry, engineering, and biology.Open access (OA) to relevant literature is very important to scholars and practitioners working on interdisciplinary problems. The One Health Proof of Concept Workgroup found that few studies assess outcomes in human, animal, and environmental spheres simultaneously [4], making it important to be able to access articles from each of the three domains to get a more complete picture.The objective of this study was to evaluate the extent of OA to journal articles in a sample of literature relevant to One Health from the human, animal, and environmental domains. Working in a college of veterinary medicine and supporting faculty, staff, and students addressing interdisciplinary problems under the One Health umbrella [5], the authors were familiar with the extent of OA in human biomedical and public health literature and the literature of veterinary medicine but were less familiar with environmental journals. In light of general availability of environmental information and OA to publications such as Environmental Health Perspectives, we thought it likely that environmental literature would be relatively open compared to the other subject areas. Therefore, we hypothesized OA to articles from human health or environmental journals was greater than access to animal health literature. We chose to look at article-level subject categorization and access, as well as journal-level categorization and access, because they might differ. Article-level access relates more to authors'' decisions about OA for a content domain, while journal-level access and subject categorization are driven by publishers and associations. Understanding the distinction and having data would inform our efforts to promote increased OA to this literature.  相似文献   

7.

Objectives:

The purpose of the study was to assess the impact that funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), Greater Midwest Region (GMR), has on member institutions'' ability to conduct outreach on behalf of NN/LM.

Methods:

The study employed both content analysis and survey methodologies. The final reports from select GMR-funded outreach projects (n = 20) were analyzed based on a set of evaluation criteria. Project principal investigators (n = 13) were then surveyed using the same evaluation criteria.

Results:

Results indicated that outreach projects supported by GMR funding improved access to biomedical information for professionals and the general public. Barriers to conducting outreach projects included time constraints or commitments, staffing, scheduling and absenteeism, inadequate space, and issues associated with technology (e.g., hardware and software, Internet connectivity and firewall issues, and creation and use of new technologies).

Conclusions:

The majority of project principal investigators indicated that their attempts to conduct outreach were successful. Moreover, most noted that outreach had a positive impact on professionals as well as the general public. In general, it seems that negative outcomes, as with most barriers to conducting outreach, can be mitigated by more thorough planning.

Highlights

  • The provision of funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), Greater Midwest Region (GMR), had a positive impact on an institution''s ability to conduct outreach.
  • The provision of GMR funding to conduct health information outreach yielded positive outcomes.

Implications

  • Regional offices should make efforts to accurately capture and record the impact that funding has on member institutions'' ability to conduct outreach.
  • Many barriers to conducting outreach can be mitigated by more thorough planning.
The mission of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) is to advance the progress of medicine and improve the public health by providing all US health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improving the public''s access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health [1]. The National Library of Medicine''s (NLM''s) vision statement emphasizes the elimination of health disparities. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NLM both attempt to understand and eliminate health disparities between minority and majority populations [2]. One of NLM''s goals in trying to achieve elimination of health disparities is to improve access to affordable and easy-to-use health-related information [3]. It is thought that such a dissemination of knowledge will help solve health disparities [4]. Ultimately, NLM believes that improved access to health information will result in higher quality health care. This effort is served through research and community outreach. NLM supports some outreach directly through the NLM Division of Specialized Information Services (SIS), Office of Health Information Program Development (OHIPD), and extramural programs. In addition, NN/LM, which NLM administers, provides and supports outreach as part of NLM''s overall mission [5]. NN/LM places a primary emphasis on rural, minority, and other underserved populations [6].NLM was interested in evaluating NN/LM programs, and one of the key programs of the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) is its funding to support outreach in the region. NLM was also interested in promoting awareness among library school students about NLM and NN/LM and about the value of libraries doing outreach to underserved populations with the community. In September 2009, NN/LM GMR announced the availability of funds for a subcontract to a library school located in the region to assist with evaluating network programs. The GMR operates under a contract from NLM, providing network services to approximately 1,100 libraries and information centers in a 10-state region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin). One of 8 regions in the NN/LM, the GMR conducts much of its outreach by offering subcontracts and awards to network members.Funding was offered to engage a group of students, under faculty guidance, to plan and implement a study that would determine the impact that GMR funding has on the ability of network members to perform outreach on behalf of NN/LM. The study was intended to be conducted in two phases: a planning phase, in which students were to develop an impact study proposal, and an implementation phase, in which students were to implement the study outlined in the proposal. The desired outcomes of the impact study included:
  • What did the institutions accomplish with the NN/LM funding?
  • What outcomes did the institutions report from their NN/LM-funded outreach projects?
  • What changes have been made in their institutional programs as a result of the funding they received?
  • What lessons did the institutions learn through implementation of their NN/LM-funded outreach projects
  • What changes would the institutions recommend to NN/LM about their funding programs?
The School of Library and Information Science (LIS) at the University of Kentucky received an outreach impact study award from NN/LM GMR in the fall of 2009 for its project, “Learning By Doing: Engaging LIS Students in an Outreach Impact Study.” Project funds were used to provide scholarships to support student participation.  相似文献   

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Objective:

This Association of Vision Science Librarians revision of the “Standards for Vision Science Libraries” aspires to provide benchmarks to address the needs for the services and resources of modern vision science libraries (academic, medical or hospital, pharmaceutical, and so on), which share a core mission, are varied by type, and are located throughout the world.

Methods:

Through multiple meeting discussions, member surveys, and a collaborative revision process, the standards have been updated for the first time in over a decade.

Results:

While the range of types of libraries supporting vision science services, education, and research is wide, all libraries, regardless of type, share core attributes, which the standards address.

Conclusions:

The current standards can and should be used to help develop new vision science libraries or to expand the growth of existing libraries, as well as to support vision science librarians in their work to better provide services and resources to their respective users.The Association of Vision Science Librarians (AVSL)—whose more than 150 members represent ophthalmology, optometry, and industry libraries throughout the world—has defined standards for its libraries since 1976 13. AVSL recommends that vision science libraries (VSLs) have at least one active member in AVSL. Standards for this very specialized area of library service have evolved owing to the work of librarians who, since 1937, have been developing and refining standards for their libraries 4. The standards reported here reflect the changes that have taken place during the decade and a half since the last edition of these standards were published. Changes include recommended staffing and technology, and the addition of a section addressing online access to information.AVSL convened a task force to first evaluate whether a standards revision was needed. Once it was agreed to do so, the task force guided the process of the revision, which included member surveys and discussions at meetings over the span of two years.The standards are intended to provide qualitative information such as appropriate staffing levels and collection scope, which can be used to evaluate existing vision science libraries or to develop new vision science libraries. In addition, these libraries should reflect the purpose and mission of the institution to which each belongs, and each library should have policies in place that outline the various areas to support the education, research, and patient care information needs of their institutions.  相似文献   

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Scite     
Scite. Scite Inc., 334 Leonard St., Brooklyn, NY 11211; https://scite.ai/; tiered pricing model with free, basic ($7.99/month), premium ($19.99/month or $100/year), premium+ ($59.99/month), and enterprise plans.

Scite (https://scite.ai/) was founded by Josh Nicholson and Yuri Lazebnik and previously funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) [1, 2, 3]. The Scite database contains over 800 million citation statements [4] tagged by a machine learning algorithm as supporting, mentioning, or contrasting the findings of cited articles [5] and by their locations in the citing articles (introduction, results, methods, discussion, or other). Scite also provides a count of editorial notices for each article. Users can search the website and install plug-ins for browsers Chrome and Firefox and reference management tools such as Zotero. Additional tools include reports and dashboards, badges, and automated reference checks. Scite can be used by researchers to locate evidence and evaluate references; librarians to enhance research impact projects; publishers and editors to check reference lists of submissions [6, 7]; and journals, publishers, and databases to create context and showcase impact [4, 8, 9].  相似文献   

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Quality of health information on the Internet has been a concern since health information first began appearing on the Web. Evidence-based medicine tools, traditionally intended for physicians, may benefit consumers as they participate in making health care desisions. This article describes a rationale for Cochrane reviews as an evidence-based medicine tool for consumers. The Cochrane Collaboration, a global force for systematic literature reviews, has strict procedures for developing literature reviews. Criteria for Cochrane reviews are compared with critical evaluation skills commonly taught to consumers regarding the use of Websites. The Cochrane Collaboration''s Consumer Network has established a separate Website, with review synopses written for an audience of consumers. Suggestions for further research into consumer use of the Cochrane Library and consumer involvement with the Cochrane Collaboration are discussed.People who access health information are likely to play an active role in their health care [1]. Access to health information empowers consumers by enabling them to (1) make more knowledgeable choices in self-care, (2) more intelligently discuss medical conditions and treatments with their doctors, (3) educate themselves regarding good health practices, and (4) learn about the health care system. If access to information is to help consumers achieve better health, quality of accessible information must be considered by information producers and consumers. This paper identifies a rationale for evidence-based medicine for consumers, introduces the quality-control work of the Cochrane Collaboration, and explores consumer involvement in the Cochrane Library, relative to critical evaluation models.  相似文献   

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During the last phase of life, a person may need a variety of information to help her or him cope with dying and death. This article describes the nature of information needed during this stage. A content analysis was done of a book of conversations between a husband who was dying and his wife who is a grief counselor to determine his information needs. Four categories of needs were proposed, including physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial. Information needs germane to each category were identified. More research needs to be done by library and information science professionals to determine the information needs of people who are dying, as well as those of their families and the health professionals who care for them.Death happens in one of four ways. For some people, it arrives suddenly, thus robbing them of the luxury of preparing themselves or their families for this event. For other people, death comes from frailty (e.g., old age, dementia); terminal illness (e.g., cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis); or organ system failure (e.g., chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) [1]. This slower entrance into the end-of-life phase allows people time to seek information. However, library and information science (LIS) professionals have done very little research on the information needs and information-seeking behavior of people at the end of life. In this article, the author describes a process used to determine the information needs of one person as he passed through the final phase of his life.  相似文献   

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Erika Love, MLA president and early advocate for research in libraries, died October 8, 2020. Erika held many leadership positions in the profession and received several MLA awards recognizing her contributions. She has been called “the midwife” of MLA''s early research initiatives [1].

Erika Love, Medical Library Association (MLA) president and early advocate for research in libraries, died October 8, 2020, at the age of 95. Born in Germany, Erika grew up in an educated and culturally rich environment. Her family did not support the National Socialism regime and suffered political persecution and economic hardship. After World War II, she matriculated at the University of Heidelberg. She worked as a library assistant at Amerika Haus in Darmstadt, a postwar organization fostering cultural interchange. In 1948, Erika married Victor Lamar Love; they moved to Indiana, his home state [2].  相似文献   

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Purpose:

This lecture explores changes in the medical library profession over the last fifty years, as revealed by individual word usage in a body of literature.

Methods:

I downloaded articles published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association and Journal of the Medical Library Association between 1961 and 2000 to create an electronic corpus and tracked annual frequency of individual word usage. I used frequency sparklines of words, matching one of four archetypal shapes (level, rise, fall, and rise-and-fall) to identify significant words.

Results:

Most significant words fell into the categories of environment, management, technology, and research. Based on word usage changes, the following trends are revealed: Compared to 1961, today''s medical librarians are more concerned with digital information, not physical packages. We prefer information to be evidence-based. We focus more on health than medicine. We are reaching out to new constituents, sometimes leaving our building to do so. Teaching has become important for us. We run our libraries more like businesses, using constantly changing technology. We are publishing more research articles.

Conclusions:

Although these words were chosen by individual authors to tell their particular stories, in the aggregate, our words reveal our story of change in our profession.The Janet Doe Lecture on the history or philosophy of medical librarianship: I will warn you right now that you will get very little philosophy out of me today, for two reasons. First, my predecessor T. Scott Plutchak, AHIP, was a philosophy major, and I knew that a zoology major like myself could not compete with that. Second, “philosophy” in many Janet Doe lectures is actually a strong personal viewpoint of medical librarianship—what it is or what it should be. I do collection development, where things change so much and so rapidly that I have not had time to develop a strong viewpoint like many of my Doe predecessors. Like most of my collection development colleagues, I''m just trying to survive day to day. That tends to create a very pragmatic attitude. If I believe in anything strongly, it is that I believe I''ll have another cookie.Without philosophy, I am left with history. And here I will echo the complaint of many Doe lecturers by stating that I have a severe lack of historical research skills. I became painfully aware of this lack as I read previous Doe Lectures, such as David Kronick''s 1980 lecture 1. Kronick was a true scholar, with a doctorate in librarianship. We honor him to this day with the Medical Library Association''s (MLA''s) David A. Kronick Traveling Fellowship. In his Doe Lecture, Kronick quoted H. Curtis Wright''s “The Oral Antecedents of Greek Librarianship,” Francis Bacon, and the fifteenth-century Abbot Johannes Trimethius. In contrast, later in this speech, I will quote the Talking Heads.While I am totally unqualified for traditional historical research, that still leaves informal, or personal, history. Although I am old enough to be in my anecdotage, I just do not have many interesting stories to tell. And as Thomas Basler, FMLA, told us in his 2008 Doe Lecture, there are no more giants. While I met some of those giants, I did not know them, and I certainly do not have any stories to tell about them. I suppose I could tell stories about some of the taller than average individuals I have met in my career, but that does not sound very exciting.  相似文献   

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Objective:

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contributions of Estelle Brodman, PhD, to the early application of computing technologies in health sciences libraries.

Methods:

A review of the literature, oral histories, and materials contained in the archives of the Bernard Becker Medical Library at the Washington University School of Medicine was conducted.

Results:

While the early computing technologies were not well suited to library applications, their exciting potential was recognized by visionaries like Dr. Brodman. The effective use of these technologies was made possible by creative and innovative projects and programs. The impact of these early efforts continues to resonate through library services and operations.

Conclusions:

Computing technologies have transformed libraries. Dr. Brodman''s leadership in the early development and application of these technologies provided significant benefits to the health sciences library community.

Highlights

  • From the earliest days of computing, libraries have explored the application of computing technologies to library operations. The career of Estelle Brodman, PhD, follows the development of these technologies where her contributions have had a major impact across health sciences libraries.
  • At the beginning of the computing era, it was assumed that only the very largest libraries would be able to take advantage of these technologies. Dr. Brodman demonstrated that not only could a medium-sized medical library benefit from the technologies but could provide national leadership in their development and application.
  • In one of the earliest examples of collaborative computing, predating data networking, Dr. Brodman demonstrated the power of collaboration with projects that included one of the first integrated library systems and an interlibrary loan network that provided the foundation for DOCLINE.

Implications

  • Computing and networking technologies have clearly advanced; however, many of the challenges for libraries identified in the earliest work with these technologies remain. The collaborative strategies developed by Dr. Brodman continue to offer significant opportunities for success.
  • Research and development in libraries is exciting and rewarding, contributing to the advancement of the profession and securing the position of the library in an academic or clinical care institution.
In an undated curriculum vitae from late in the career of Estelle Brodman, PhD, she listed her present interests, with the first one being “Impacts of new technologies on methods by which scientists gather information and inspiration for research and teaching, and the relationship of the library as a communication center for this” [1]. The manual typewriter, with carbon paper for copies, the rotary-dial analog telephone, and elegant handwriting constituted state-of-the-art desktop information technology for the first two decades of Dr. Brodman''s career. As the computing era began to take shape, however, Dr. Brodman was quick to recognize its transformational potential for library operations. This paper will chronicle Dr. Brodman''s leadership in the earliest days of computing, building a foundation for automation at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and extending the technology model through the development of library applications and networks that would benefit libraries of all sizes. A comprehensive review of Dr. Brodman''s information technology efforts is beyond the reach of a single article. Selected projects are provided to illustrate the challenges, accomplishments, and impact of her distinguished career.  相似文献   

20.

Objectives:

The purposes of this study were: to determine the number of articles requested by library users that could be retrieved from the library''s collection using the library catalog and link resolver, in other words, the availability rate; and to identify the nature and frequency of problems encountered in this process, so that the problems could be addressed and access to full-text articles could be improved.

Methods:

A sample of 414 requested articles was identified via link resolver log files. Library staff attempted to retrieve these articles using the library catalog and link resolver and documented access problems.

Results:

Staff were able to retrieve electronic full text for 310 articles using the catalog. An additional 21 articles were available in print, for an overall availability rate of nearly 80%. Only 68% (280) of articles could be retrieved electronically via the link resolver. The biggest barriers to access in both instances were lack of holdings and incomplete coverage. The most common problem encountered when retrieving articles via the link resolver was incomplete or inaccurate metadata.

Conclusion:

An availability study is a useful tool for measuring the quality of electronic access provided by a library and identifying and quantifying barriers to access.

Highlights

  • Lack of holdings, including access to recent articles restricted by embargoes, was the most common barrier to locating full text, accounting for over 90% of all identified problems.
  • Availability rates for electronic articles varied by year of publication and by the database in which the OpenURL request originated.
  • Link resolver error rates varied widely based on the source of the request and frequently resulted from incomplete or inaccurate metadata.

Implications

  • An availability study is an inexpensive, practical tool for assessing the quality of electronic access to journal articles.
  • The results of an availability study can help libraries identify barriers to access and thereby allocate limited resources to areas that will provide the most benefit to users.
  • Link resolvers might be more accurate if the quality of metadata in OpenURLs was improved and the behavior of full-text targets was standardized.
A user who attempts to access an electronic article expects the process to be seamless: click a link or two, and the article appears. Unfortunately, this process is not always so simple. Many factors can prevent users from retrieving an article, including:
  • Collection and acquisition problems: The library may not subscribe to the desired journal, or the article and/or journal may be unavailable for some other reason.
  • Cataloging and holdings problems: The journal may be cataloged or indexed incorrectly, or the library''s holdings data may be wrong.
  • Technical problems: Problems may occur with the journal provider''s site or the library''s proxy server.
While many libraries use link resolvers to make it easier for users to retrieve articles, these can introduce additional points of failure. The resolver might not be configured correctly, the knowledgebase (database of library journal holdings) might include incorrect information, or article metadata from the source database might be incomplete or incorrect.At the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Library, users occasionally complained about access problems. These complaints provided anecdotal information about barriers to access, but library staff needed more solid data on which to act: How often were users able to retrieve a desired article? What problems did they encounter in the process, and how often did these problems occur? An availability study was conducted to answer those questions.First described by Kantor [1], an availability study is a method for evaluating how well a library satisfies user requests and identifying barriers to satisfying those requests. An availability study consists of the following steps:
  1. gather actual user requests (or simulate them)
  2. try to fill those requests using the same tools and methods a user would use
  3. record what happens
  4. analyze the results
  相似文献   

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