Abstract
Provision of access to reference electronic resources to clinicians is becoming increasingly important. We have created a framework for librarians to manage access to these resources at an enterprise level, rather than at the individual hospital libraries. We describe initial project requirements, implementation details, and some preliminary results.
Introduction
The new generation of clinicians is more likely to be efficient in computer search strategies. Studies among medical students and faculty have shown that electronic reference resources (“e-resources”) are preferred over paper [1,2]. The number and variety of licensed and/or freely available e-resources is steadily growing, and clinicians are asking for widespread and seamless access to them. Considering the advantageous enterprise-wide licensing options available, a centralized approach to e-resources management is now preferred.
Requirements
At Intermountain Health Care (IHC), we have created a new framework for managing links to e-resources. Before our project started, librarians at four hospitals managed and published local web pages with links to locally selected e-resources. In addition, IHC’s clinical information system had a different web page with links to e-resources.
The following requirements were identified:
Centralize the storage and access to a consolidated set of links to e-resources;
Enable direct maintenance of e-resources links by librarians;
Facilitate the use of e-resources links by multiple systems and web sites, including IHC’s clinical information system, library portals, and enterprise intranet;
Whenever possible, identify the user that is accessing an e-resource link;
Provide seamless user authentication for any e-resource that requires it;
Whenever possible, identify the user's physical location, connection method (e.g., VPN, intranet), and main clinical role (e.g., physician, nurse, patient);
Create a method to display announcements or news related to the e-resources;
Track user utilization of the e-resources.
Implementation
Motivated by the concept of “single source publishing,” we decided to implement the new e-resources management framework using XML technologies. First, we identified the core metadata associated with an e-resource link and created an XML Schema to represent these metadata. Second, using our existing knowledge-authoring environment [3], we implemented a web form to create and maintain these metadata. We trained the librarians on how to use the authoring environment and the new web form. Third, using XSL Transformations (XSLT) we generated an HTML page with the applicable e-resources links. The resulting page represents a customized set of e-resources links, taking into account the contextual information about the user (location, connection method, and role). The generated page also includes the necessary components for detailed usage tracking.
Preliminary results
The proposed framework was implemented in August 2004. The new context-aware corporate e-resources page has successfully replaced the local pages previously used by the hospitals. IHC’s clinical information system and intranet also use the new context-aware e-resources page. From December 2004 to February 2005, the system registered an average of 20,935 hits per month (a “hit” being defined as anytime an e-resource link is accessed). Detailed evaluation of the clinicians’ usage, as well as librarians’ satisfaction with the new framework, are ongoing.
References
- 1.Peterson MW, et al. Medical Students' Use of Information Resources: Is the Digital Age Dawning? Acad Med. 2004;79(1):89–95. doi: 10.1097/00001888-200401000-00019. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Tenopir C, et al. Medical faculty's use of print and electronic journals. J Med Libr Assoc. 2004;92(2):233–41. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.Hulse NC et al. The Knowledge Authoring Tool: An XML-based Knowledge Acquisition Environment Proc. of the 26th Int. Conf. of the IEEE EMBS; 3350–53. San Francisco, CA, USA: IEEE; 2004. [DOI] [PubMed]