Bulletin of the Medical Library Association最新文献

The North Carolina Area Health Education Centers Library and Information Services (NC AHEC LIS) Network provides library outreach services to rural health care providers in all nine AHEC regions of North Carolina. Over the last twenty-five years, the AHEC and university-based librarians have collaborated to create a model program for support of community-based clinical education and information access for rural health care providers. Through several collaborative projects, they have supported Internet access for rural health clinics. The NC AHEC Digital Library--under development by NC AHEC, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, East Carolina University, and Wake Forest University--will further extend access to electronic biomedical information and resources to health professionals in a statewide digital library.

Both lifestyle and geography make the delivery of consumer health information in the rural setting unique. The Planetree Health Resource Center in The Dalles, Oregon, has served the public in a rural setting for the past eight years. It is a community-based consumer health library, affiliated with a small rural hospital, Mid-Columbia Medical Center. One task of providing consumer health information in rural environments is to be in relationship with individuals in the community. Integration into community life is very important for credibility and sustainability. The resource center takes a proactive approach and employs several different outreach efforts to deepen its relationship with community members. It also works hard to foster partnerships for improved health information delivery with other community organizations, including area schools. This paper describes Planetree Health Resource Center's approach to rural outreach.

In October 1998, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched a pilot project to learn about the role of public libraries in providing health information to the public and to generate information that would assist NLM and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) in learning how best to work with public libraries in the future. Three regional medical libraries (RMLs), eight resource libraries, and forty-one public libraries or library systems from nine states and the District of Columbia were selected for participation. The pilot project included an evaluation component that was carried out in parallel with project implementation. The evaluation ran through September 1999. The results of the evaluation indicated that participating public librarians were enthusiastic about the training and information materials provided as part of the project and that many public libraries used the materials and conducted their own outreach to local communities and groups. Most libraries applied the modest funds to purchase additional Internet-accessible computers and/or upgrade their health-reference materials. However, few of the participating public libraries had health information centers (although health information was perceived as a top-ten or top-five topic of interest to patrons). Also, the project generated only minimal usage of NLM's consumer health database, known as MEDLINEplus, from the premises of the monitored libraries (patron usage from home or office locations was not tracked). The evaluation results suggested a balanced follow-up by NLM and the NN/LM, with a few carefully selected national activities, complemented by a package of targeted activities that, as of January 2000, are being planned, developed, or implemented. The results also highlighted the importance of building an evaluation component into projects like this one from the outset, to assure that objectives were met and that evaluative information was available on a timely basis, as was the case here.

This review analyzes the existing research on the information needs of rural health professionals and relates it to the broader information-needs literature to establish whether the information needs of rural health professionals differ from those of other health professionals. The analysis of these studies indicates that rural health practitioners appear to have the same basic needs for patient-care information as their urban counterparts, and that both groups rely on colleagues and personal libraries as their main sources of information. Rural practitioners, however, tend to make less use of journals and online databases and ask fewer clinical questions; a difference that correlates with geographic and demographic factors. Rural practitioners experience pronounced barriers to information access including lack of time, isolation, inadequate library access, lack of equipment, lack of skills, costs, and inadequate Internet infrastructure. Outreach efforts to this group of underserved health professionals must be sustained to achieve equity in information access and to change information-seeking behaviors.

A "Digital Divide" in information and technological literacy exists in Utah between small hospitals and clinics in rural areas and the larger health care institutions in the major urban area of the state. The goals of the outreach program of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah address solutions to this disparity in partnership with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine-- Midcontinental Region, the Utah Department of Health, and the Utah Area Health Education Centers. In a circuit-rider approach, an outreach librarian offers classes and demonstrations throughout the state that teach information-access skills to health professionals. Provision of traditional library services to unaffiliated health professionals is integrated into the library's daily workload as a component of the outreach program. The paper describes the history, methodology, administration, funding, impact, and results of the program.

As a rural state, Ohio has a vital interest in addressing rural health and information needs. NetWellness is a Web-based consumer health information service that focuses on the needs of the residents of Ohio. Health sciences faculty from the state's three Carnegie Research I universities--University of Cincinnati, Case Western Reserve University, and The Ohio State University--create and evaluate content and provide Ask an Expert service to all visitors. Through partnerships at the state and local levels, involving public, private, commercial, and noncommercial organizations, NetWellness has grown from a regional demonstration project in 1995 to a key statewide service. Collaboration with public libraries, complemented by alliances with kindergarten through twelfth grade agencies, makes NetWellness Ohio's essential health information resource.

Background: There is a small body of research on improving the clarity of abstracts in general that is relevant to improving the clarity of abstracts of systematic reviews.

Objectives: To summarize this earlier research and indicate its implications for writing the abstracts of systematic reviews.

Method: Literature review with commentary on three main features affecting the clarity of abstracts: their language, structure, and typographical presentation.

Conclusions: The abstracts of systematic reviews should be easier to read than the abstracts of medical research articles, as they are targeted at a wider audience. The aims, methods, results, and conclusions of systematic reviews need to be presented in a consistent way to help search and retrieval. The typographic detailing of the abstracts (type-sizes, spacing, and weights) should be planned to help, rather than confuse, the reader.

Outreach is now a prevailing activity in health sciences libraries. As an introduction to a series of papers on current library outreach to rural communities, this paper traces the evolution of such activities by proponents in health sciences libraries from 1924 to 1992. Definitions of rural and outreach are followed by a consideration of the expanding audience groups. The evolution in approaches covers the package library and enhancements in extension service, library development, circuit librarianship, and self-service arrangements made possible by such programs as the Georgia Interactive Network (GaIN) and Grateful Med.