We've just seen Fiona's message to the list and noted too
that someone has metioned our site as a possible example of
a library-designed internet site for medical/health care
information.

In case it helps, Here is a little about how our site came
to be.

We provide a service to a very disparate userbase most of
whom are located at some distance from the library. We, the
staff, are university employees but provide a service to
the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. We serve all hospital
personnel and are not just medical. We are also used by the
Universities of Exeter and Plymouth and by the Community
Trust and the Health Authority. Our users all have
different degrees of computer competence and access. The
trend at the time we set up our site was to place
information on Trust intranets, but because so few of our
users were actually from the Royal Devon and Exeter
Healthcare Trust - and most of those could not get access
to the intranet anyway as this Trust was still living in
the dark-ages as far as ICT was concerned - we decided to
mount the site on the internet where anyone could use it at
any time. This had proved wonderful for our users and we
have made as many resources as possible available over the
internet for them. Our Trust has now started to sluggishly
pull its socks up so we have mirrored the site on the Trust
intranet for the sake of their pride. (Quite honestly it
would be easier to just have a page on the intranet and a
link out to the internet but for training purposes and for
those staff who still don't have internet access, they can
at least see our journals and general library details, but
to access any of the resources they will obviously need
internet access.)

We have concentrated on making available the resources we
know from experience our users are asking for. This is
one great advantage of having the site managed by the
library staff. We try to organise it as logically as
possible but it has grown so rapidly that we are seriously
thinking as to how to best reorganise the Hotlinks page in
particular. A site map is becoming a matter of urgency.
Increasingly the site is used interally for training,
directing users who are frequently unfamiliar with internet
searching, to the basic resources we know they will need,
with a "one stop shop" for finding them.

Incidentally, we have also linked the website with our
register of users. Any user with an e-mail address is
included in a Library Users email group where they can
cantact us with queries or where we can notify them of
developments of particular importance on the website or
pass on details of sites pertinent to their particular
research interests. This Trust still does not hold with
email access for its staff, so we provide the service via
users own email addresses, whether university or home.
Other library members without computer access are
encouraged by us to register for a web-based free address
such as Mailcity or Hotmail which they access from their
workplace. We use that as our point of contact.

We produce a regular Library bulletin which is circulated
to all members with an email address keeping them abreast
of developments within the library and informing them of
any new service we are able to provide. Both the email
group and the website have done much to overcome the
problems of isolation from our users and to raise our
profile.

We have recently added a search facility to our website.
One of the best things about this is that we now get a
weekly feedback on usage and this will enable us to see
what people are searching for and add suitable links
accordingly.

Hope this may be of help to Fiona or anyone else thinking
of doing anything similar, geared to the requirements of
their particular users.

Jill Maxted (University of Exeter)
Exeter Medical Library, Postgraduate Medical Centre,
Barrack Road, Exeter, EX2 5DW. Tel. 01392 403002
e-mail [log in to unmask]

VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~jmaxted/librarypage.html



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