Chris,
Your project sounds as if it's an official study of
what we are trying to do for our users here at Exeter.
Don't know whether you have ever seen our site but it's an
attempt to bring together the resources that we know, from
experience actually working with our users, are needed for
those involved in Health Care locally. Because we serve a
very wide and varied user-base, the majority of whom do not
have access to the Hospital intranet, or indeed to the NHS
Net, we decided to mount a website on the Internet. We also
mirror it on the Hospital network with a few minor
alterations where it is used by hospital personnel as a one
stop shop to local, national and international resources.

The hospital here has been rebuilt at some distance from
the Medical Library so it is increasingly difficult for
users to access our resources during the working day. At
the same time access to IT, both at home and in the
workplace has improved. Our site therefore enables anyone
to access the majority of our resources at any time from
anywhere.

To the website however, we have also linked our user
registration files so we can keep in touch directly with
those users with an email account, keeping them aware of
new developments within our site or of new resources as
they become available. They can also use this service for a
direct link to us when they have information queries.

We have recently added a search engine to the site and we
receive a weekly feedback of its use so we can see what
people are looking for - though not who is looking.

We have a counter on both the Networked version and the
Internet version so we can get an idea of the number of
times per month the site is accessed.

It is also used as a training aid and a quick introduction
to the resources available to health care workers. It is
now probably one of the most actively used area of our
service.

The University of Exeter is busy developing distance
learning courses for places as far flung as Thailand and
Mongolia and we are being consulted as to availablity of
our resources in support of these courses via the Internet.

Don't know whether any of this is helpful for your project
but it seemed from your message that it had some bearing on
it. If you want to have a look at the site it's at

http://www.ex.ac.uk/~jmaxted/librarypage.html

One thing that bothers me a bit is that this gathering
together of so much material is only really being exploited
by our own users. Health care library users elsewhere could
obviously get access to the same resources if the
information was more widely disseminated or known about.
I've been wondering about the possiblity of producing the
content regionally as a basic template and other health
care libraries inserting it into their own local template
where they can each maintain their own local information -
journals holdings lists, access to their catalogues, local
diaries of events etc. I know this is in some measure what
the NELH is aiming at but it still has so far to go whereas
in the meantime ours is a practical little working tool.
It wouldn't be an enormous undertaking to organise this.

Oh well, food for thought. Best wishes, Jill.
..........................
On Thu, 04 May 2000 16:20:40 +0100 Christine Urquhart
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The Value and Impact of Virtual Outreach Services (VIVOS)
> The VIVOS project is one year project (1 Feb 2000 - 31 January 2001) being
> conducted by the Department of Information and Library Studies at The
> University of Wales Aberystwyth, with funding from Resource: Council for
> Museums Libraries and Archives.
>
> The aim of the project is to develop and evaluate methodologies for
> determining the value and impact of virtual (i.e. electronic) outreach
> services in the health sector and to produce project management guidelines.
>
> These services will form the local bases to underpin the NeLH and will
> promote access to information resources for primary-care and
> community-health staff. It is therefore important to establish a rigorous
> set of methods for assessing effectiveness of the services themselves and
> of associated training programmes, passing on the collective experience of
> libraries involved. Project deliverables will include:
> · Project-management checklists for virtual outreach health library projects
> · A toolkit of possible methods for evaluation of progress and
> implementation of virtual outreach projects
>
> Research will be conducted at five sites around the country. The advantages
> of this multi-site methodology include the opportunity to study particular
> developments in depth, particularly as each of the five sites offers a
> different approach to virtual outreach services.
>
> Further details about VIVOS can be found by accessing the Research section
> of the Department of Information and Library Studies web page (under
> Christine Urquhart in the Index to Current Research) via the University of
> Wales Aberystwyth home page http://www.aber.ac.uk. The department is in the
> Faculty of Social Sciences. The current URL is
> http://www.dil.aber.ac.uk/dils/Research/RFocus5/5sub1/5s1_pr8.htm
> Alternatively, please contact:
>
> Dr Christine Urquhart (Project Director) Alison Duncan (Researcher)
> Email: [log in to unmask] Email:[log in to unmask]
>
>
> Dr Christine Urquhart
> DILS, Dept. Information and Library Studies
> University of Wales Aberystwyth
> Aberystwyth
> SY23 3AS
> UK
> tel. 01970-622162
> fax 01970-622190, email [log in to unmask]

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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