Course Evaluation

1) How well does this course meet your expectations / learning objectives?

I have thoroughly enjoyed the course and it has added to my knowledge about web 2.0 resources and their availability and potential uses in a health library environment.

2) What are the difficulties encountered in accessing the course materials on the Internet at your workplace which have NOT been reported before?

I didn’t have any problems in accessing any of the resources.

3) Did you need to seek the permission of your trust IT before you accessed certain course materials on the Internet?

No, all of the information was freely available to us.

4) Do the readings meet the learning objectives of each topic?

Yes.  It was good to be able to go off and investigate other readings too once you gained your confidence on the course.

5) What is the average amount of time you spent on the course each day?

Due to work commitments, I didn’t get to spend as much time on the course as I would have liked.  Majority of the postings to my blog had to be done at home in the evening or at weekends – the only time I had to sit down and do the readings and investigate the resources in full. 

6) How do you find the interaction among participants of the course?

Everyone was very supportive of all comments and work undertaken.  Again, I don’t feel I had that much time to commit to other users blogs but I intend to ‘revisit’ the materials and my comments may arise retrospectively to the course.

7) Will you continue blogging and/or reading RSS after the course

Yes, definately.  The course was to give me a further insight into the use of Web 2.0 technology in a library setting as I want to be able to use some of the ideas to promote an outreach library service.

Action planning for the next 3 months and beyond…

• To ‘revisit’ the coursework and the readings in order to prepare a detailed plan for incorporating web 2.0 technology into a health library setting.
• Through discussion with a pilot group,  it would be anticipated that we can introduce the first library and outreach team resource early 2008 with evaluation taking place in early Spring. 
• Rollout to other interested teams across the site in the Summer of 2008 – with the possibility of having to introduce a different resource from that first piloted due to usage, interactivity and need.

Assignment 6: Library 2.0

At last, I’m catching up with myself!

I wanted to raise my thoughts about the implications of the technological trends on information literacy and how libraries can meet the challenges ahead.

CILIP give the definition of information literacy as

“knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner”

In a health library environment, I know all librarians can say that they aim to achieve this for their end user but with the introduction of so much new technology at a pace that seems faster than we can keep, how can we maintain the momentum for the user?  From doing quick searches of the internet, I can find relatively few health libraries who are embracing the new technology of blogs, wikis, podcasting etc to promote their services.  Higher Education institutions, such as Aston University and Birmingham University provide their end user with online tutorials on how to use the library services and resources, to name but two!  With students and staff leaving or graduating from HE to work in NHS, they come to expect the libraries to be up to date with their information and to be able to support the use of new and emerging technology.  Health Libraries need to concentrate on the staff and students of today as well as the staff and students of the future who will be conversant in such technology.

For our challenges ahead, I believe that if we take small steps by not trying to run before we can walk, we should be able to maintain a level playing field with the user instead of being left behind.  With so many things emerging for use as interactive learning tools on the web, how can we ensure that we achieve a balance?  For the outreach promotion here, I think I’m going to target a small user group first.  By meeting with a small team, you are able to promote the benefits to a user and with input from the end user, you can also find how they would want the resource to work.  By providing online demonstrations and engaging an audience, it may be easier to get the systems in place.  Following a recent training afternoon with IT staff, they are now more aware of what we are aiming towards with the library service and, moreso, supporting our delivery with more cross-working and understanding of our systems needs. 

In using the online technology available to us, cost-implications are low but the benefits that can be achieved by widening access are much more greater.

Assignment 5: Mix & Mash

I’m slowly catching up with everything again! 

I’ve heard lots of good reports about Podcasts from various sites and I must say, I’ve always been impressed by the technology of it all!  The readings this week have been very interesting and I particularly liked the idea of linking the library catalogue to Amazon to create a great mash-up!  How much time this would save both us and the library user! 

Whilst I’m developing an outreach service,  I was already thinking of using a screen-capture tool such as Camtasia studio to provide online tutorials for the end user in how to use library services, for example, Dialog databases.  Now that I have had a look at some of the podcasts available, it would be sensible to use a podcasting tool as the user would be able to carry the information around with them whereas screen capture would be limiting.

I visited the Johns Hopkins Medicine site and they provide updated podcasts on a weekly basis.  The links are to the top medical stories of that week and are indexed by ‘time- lapsed’ so you can skip to the relevant section of the podcast as well as viewing an archive.

I then delved into podcast searching on the internet and whilst there were many pages and directories available to the end user, I struggled to find a useful podcast for specific interests and to be honest, my head was spinning by the time I had gone through so many different sites!

My conclusion though, is that I believe podcasts would be good in a specialist health library environment – especially used as a promotional tool for the library service.  I will have to investigate adding this into the outreach library blog at the end of the course!

Assignment 4: Wikis

A bit late with this one I’m afraid!

Very interesting reading on Wikis – I’m still sitting on the fence with this one.  Whilst I can see the potential for a library service, the cautious side of me is thinking that this will take a lot more promotion than a blog!  I think to initiate it into our library service, a wiki would have to be introduced to small user groups and promoted amongst them as a current awareness and knowledge sharing tool than as a library news page.  It was interesting reading the article by Farkas and the ideas of an online community for a library service are good but would this really work in a health library setting? 

We have monthly team meetings of library staff to share ideas and experiences and I think that a wiki would be an excellent tool for this.  If we can promote a wiki through library staff using the resource and that they are comfortable with using a wiki, then to introduce this to library users at a later date would be easier.  With a good range of staff in clinical librarian/training librarian/outreach librarian roles and plenty of hot-desking across 3 sites – a knowledge sharing tool would be a good real-time use of new resources.

I carried out a search for Mental Health directories using Chainki and found a useful list of resources.  The only downside is that majority were American based.  I then changed the search to Organisations to see just a few UK based links.  On the upside, I logged onto the Library Success Wiki and found a whole host of links that can help support librarians work and that of the library user.  Again, this contains a lot of American content but it has given me a clearer picture as to how a wiki can be developed for individual user groups to access and maintain by adding their own links and commenting on yours. 

Assignment 3: Social Bookmarking

Well, this week has proven to have very interesting readings again!  Where to start?  In reading about social bookmarking, it gave me further ideas how I can add this into a library blog.  By highlighting relevant or subject discussion webpages to the library user, we can encourage the library user to add their comments and possibly provide alternative feeds to other relevant information or useful sites that we may not have flagged in the initial discussion pages.  I can see this being a very interesting topic to investigate further but as my previous colleagues have mentioned – how do you know you are highlighting the correct subject interest and how do you get a user to revisit your site?  Questions or statements?  I’m still trying to find that myself! 

Folksonomies are a further link to this – whilst it is good to target so many user groups – how can you ensure you use the correct search terms that a library user may use?  In reading the links, I was left asking the question – with so much information available to the end user, how do you stop the information being fragmented and make it specific? 

Flickr is a good resource but I was finding it hard to find a way this could be used effectively in a health library setting – with such links at Images MD and the big issue around copyrighted photographs, could this not raise a bigger problem rather than a solution?  Flickr would be good for highlighting library events but we can do this through Trust publications which tend to have a greater audience as everyone gets a copy of the newsletter on a bi-monthly basis.  I realise that this is against ‘current’ awareness but surely a greater target audience for photographs instead of trying to get people to visit a website they may not visit again or have any subject specific images to view? 

The reading by Samuel & Sinreich gave a good overall knowledge base about adding links as they are found and a reminder to do it – this in itself can provide an excellent current awareness tool.   Another question that is raising itself more now is what would be the time commitment to maintain all of the avenues available to you for blog-o-sphere world?  I think we will have to seriously consider what information we want to start with rather than trying to run before we can walk – the customer is always right of course and if they demand a greater service, then we should be able to supply it! 

Assignment 2: Blogs in Library settings

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the readings for this weeks assignment and I’ve been able to add to the ideas already in mind for creating a library blog!

Blogs can bring currency to library intranet and internet sites by making giving the library a ‘voice’ rather than a footprint.  I believe the users, whether current or potential, often find the library inaccessible or out-of-bounds with regard to misconceptions about who the library serves.  By creating a library blog for promotion of the service, this will show the staff that the library is there for everyone and not just Doctors and Nurses!  I received a telephone call today from one of the support departments who didn’t realise what services the library could offer their user group as they thought we were primarily for medical and nursing staff - a misconception that NHS libraries are still trying to erase!

In using a blog to make the information current, accessible and relevant, we should hopefully encourage more people to visit or use us in an outreach setting.  A library blog can be used to support learning by including categories for all user groups and provide a frequent question/answer support area for users to be interactive with each other.  Encouraging users to subscribe to RSS feeds of other blogs relevant to their areas of learning can also be embraced – NLH Specialist Libraries and subject areas can be highlighted on a library blog as well as links to other specific support sites such as BMA & Royal Colleges etc.  Posts relating to library news and training on offer as well as highlighting system alerts, ie e-resources added or restrictions in access, can help remove the frustration from the user if finding things aren’t working as they should.

In order for the blog to be successful and accessible, discussions should take place with the IT departments in Trusts to ensure that what you are doing is a) allowed and b) supported – an issue that has already been flagged by one fellow blogger!

I can’t wait to get started on preparing the first library blog – hopefully I won’t find too many barriers!

3 RSS Feeds for 3 User Groups:

Mental Health: Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies

I’ve chosen this RSS feed as it provides a general newsfeed for all staff groups interested in CBT.  It includes links to NICE guidance, individual and group studies and is a knowledge update provided by another Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust.

Health Management:

This RSS feed is provided from the Kings Fund and is useful for all Health Management staff including ward managers and senior managers in the NHS.  It includes information on Quality Standards, Clinical Audit and National Service Frameworks to name but a few!

Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (Journal)

This RSS feed provides current issue information for the APT journal.  This journal is widely used throughout the Trust and RSS feeds for library users should be encouraged to keep abreast of new developments in specialist areas and also removing the need to browse each print issue as they are arriving in the library.  RSS feeds would provide current awareness services direct to the desktop of the library user and, providing the Trust has a subscription to the journal, an additional link could be provided to the full-text access via TDNET.

Hello All!

Well, nearly failed at the first hurdle but here is a new blog!  Happy 3CsTs Learning – hear off you all soon!!