Nancy K. Roderer

User information seeking behavior in a medical web portal environment: a preliminary study

The emergence of information portal systems in the past few years has led to a greatly enhanced Web-based environment for users seeking information online. While considerable research has been conducted on user information-seeking behavior in regular IR environments over the past decade, this paper focuses specifically on how users in a medical science and clinical setting carry out their daily information seeking through a customizable information portal system (MyWelch). We describe our initial study on analyzing Web usage data from My-Welch to see whether the results conform to the features and patterns established in current information-seeking models, present several observations regarding user information-seeking behavior in a portal environment, outline possible long-term user information-seeking patterns based on usage data, and discuss the direction of future research on user information-seeking behavior in the MyWelch portal environment.

Evaluating information prescriptions in two clinical environments

OBJECTIVE The research sought to evaluate whether providing personalized information services by libraries can improve satisfaction with information services for specific types of patients. METHODS Adult breast cancer (BrCa) clinic patients and mothers of inpatient neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients were randomized to receive routine information services (control) or an IRx intervention. RESULTS The BrCa trial randomized 211 patients and the NICU trial, 88 mothers. The BrCa trial showed no statistically significant differences in satisfaction ratings between the treatment and control groups. The IRx group in the NICU trial reported higher satisfaction than the control group regarding information received about diagnosis, treatments, respiratory tradeoffs, and medication tradeoffs. BrCa patients posed questions to librarians more frequently than did NICU mothers, and a higher percentage reported using the website. Questions asked of the librarians by BrCa patients were predominantly clinical and focused on the areas of treatment and side effects. CONCLUSIONS Study results provide some evidence to support further efforts to both implement information prescription projects in selected settings and to conduct additional research on the costs and benefits of services.

Public health practitioners' information access and use patterns in the Maryland (USA) public health departments of Anne Arundel and Wicomico Counties.

PURPOSE To increase understanding of the information needs and use of public health practitioners. SETTING From June 2005 to May 2006, the library offered a course in public health information resources to eighteen practitioners in two counties, access to the librarys licensed electronic resources through a tailored web portal, and consulting services. EVALUATION METHOD We combined usage statistics from the web portal, self-report and observational data collected during training and shadowing of participants. CONCLUSIONS The data from this project indicate that usage of licensed information resources and services is infrequent but broad ranging. A few users register at the high end of the usage range, but one use of one high quality article can have a significant impact on policy decisions. Time and competing responsibilities often constrain the retrieval and use of resources for evidence-based decision making and an informationist or power-user model may be more appropriate than training all practitioners to integrate searching into their workflow. This study indicates (i) that evidence-based public health practice requires seamless and broadly based information access; and (ii) that the currently existing patchwork does not support the level of use or take into account the time constraints of information needs for public health practice.

Scholarly communications program: Force for change

The changing landscape of scholarly publication and increasing journal costs have resulted in a need for proactive behavior in libraries. At Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, a group of librarians joined forces to bring these issues to the attention of faculty and to begin a dialog leading to change. This commentary describes a comprehensive program undertaken to raise faculty awareness of scholarly communications issues. In addition to raising faculty interest in the issues at hand, the endeavor also highlights an area where library liaisons can increase their communication with the units they serve.

WelServe: The DBMS for capturing and tracking Welch Medical Library's embedded informationist service delivery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

ABSTRACT WelServe is the database management system Welch Medical Library developed for quantitative assessment of services. The informationist team uses WelServe to capture data about direct service contacts with members of the research, clinical, and academic units at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. WelServe data is used for library management and for reporting productivity data to higher units, including the Welch Advisory Committees, composed of deans and managers from the hospital and the schools of nursing, public health, and medicine. WelServe also supports reporting for the American Association of Health Sciences Libraries and the Association for Research Libraries.

An elemental strategy

As medical libraries evolve and grow in the digital era, much has been much written about different aspects of the changes that have occurred. Less literature traces interrelated developments in a specific library over an extended period of time. To address this lack, the management team of the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University wrote a chapter [1] for the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) book, Difficult Decisions: Closing and Merging Academic Libraries [2], which described the evolution of the Welch library between 2000 and 2013, a period in which a long-range strategic plan was developed and implemented. The ACRL book chapter reviews the status of library services, collections, and facilities as of 2013; discusses staffing and financial issues; and describes the library plan as of 2013, as this excerpt shows: On the surface, the saga of the Welch Medical Library is about a library building and a collection of books within it, but there is also a story about the dramatic evolution of library services and expectations in the context of changing technology. While these threads are tightly interwoven, and both are important, it seems likely that it is the latter that will have the most lasting impact on users of the library and the work that they do. Our story begins with the opening of the Welch library building in 1929. The library was to function as a central library for the medical campus of Johns Hopkins, and the building also accommodated the Institute of the History of Medicine (IHOM) and its collection. As the campus grew, so did the librarys staff, collection, services, and locations, but the building continued to serve its central function reasonably well for over 50 years. Of particular importance to the Hopkins community was the grand reading room, which houses the Sergeant painting of the Four Doctors which commemorates the founding of the Johns Hopkins hospital and medical school in 1889 and 1893 respectively. The Welch library staff aggressively pursued the application of evolving technology to library services and collections, and, as elsewhere, library materials and services increasingly began to be used from outside the library building. By 2000, both the problems with the existing building and the direction of electronic services seemed to call for a new vision of library services and a relook at the building. Through consultation with library users and with the assistance of an architectural team, it was envisioned that by 2013 library services and collections would be predominantly electronic, provided to users “wherever they are.” The period of 2000–2012 saw rapid increases in electronic collections and evolution of embedded services to library users, both guided by a series of action plans. All physical branches of the central library were closed, and plans were developed to reuse the central library portion of the Welch library building in support of graduate student education. The library staff moved out of the Welch building, maintaining a small service desk on site. Progress since 2013 is slow but remains true to the concept of serving the users wherever they are. A renovation of the Welch library building, focusing on the main reading rooms and building infrastructure issues, was completed in early 2014. Since then, the building has drawn increased use and seen many events hosted in the grand reading rooms. The services provided to users wherever they are continue to grow. The informationists and other staff are more deeply engaged than ever with faculty, researchers, clinicians, and students, and library services are more integrated into the work of users. These activities have been and will be documented in additional publications and presentations.

Web-based teaching: Surviving and thriving in a pluralistic online world

Online education in the field of Library and Information Science facilitates enrollment and participation by diverse and geographically dispersed students. However, questions have arisen about how best to administer this mode of delivery and how to address differences in the cultural, linguistic, and pedagogical expectations of students and faculty that may affect learning outcomes.

The library of the future: Interweaving the virtual and the physical. Sponsored by SIG USE, SIG DL, SIG ED

It is increasingly easy to imagine the time in the future when most of the information and some of the support needed by library users is available electronically. The ways that people will interact with information will change, and libraries will need to design spaces that seamlessly combine the physical and the virtual. Such a library environment of the future is approaching quite rapidly in some disciplines. This panel uses a recent architectural study conducted by Hillier and DEGW Architectural Consultants for the Welch Medical Library of Johns Hopkins University to explore the implications of the library of the future on the design of the physical library facilities, considering especially changing patterns of use and the roles of librarians.