Re: The Krafty Librarian's post "Life as a Healthcare CIO".
Summary: Article about how hospital IT decisions are strictly limited due to HIPPA and money, but that this hurts many parts of the hospital including the library.
Absolutely. But I certainly don't blame the IT people. Well, not by themselves.
KL says that she feels that "hospital IT departments lack an adequate method to proactively address these situations where the round peg does not fit into the square hole." Totally. But so does EVERYONE else in the world. We all have a difficult time foreseeing potential problems and how they could be planned for or seeing anything but your own processes, practices and problems, that is, we do if we even try either at all.
Of course, difficulty and lack of trying is not an excuse. IT departments and everyone else SHOULD be solving the problems that they have a hand in creating and can do something about.
So the national and state libraries in Australia have endorsed the following principles to address the challenges facing the "new library universe":
Reshaping our collections
1 Resources in electronic format will be acquired in preference to print, where available. Collection development policies should reflect this preference.
2 NSLA recognises that commitment to consortium purchasing of electronic resources provides greater purchasing power, and therefore increased access, for all. NSLA libraries should consider consortium purchasing of electronic resources wherever practicable.
3 Hard-copy serial holdings will continue to be minimised.
4 The key acquisition and cataloguing responsibility and priority for each NSLA library is the unique and heritage materials relating to that jurisdiction. These materials might be in any format.
Finding our collections
5 Cataloguing of other collections will be minimal, within accepted standards.
6 NSLA libraries will work towards all collection holdings being visible through Libraries Australia or LibrariesNZ.
Delivering our collections
7 The key digitising priority for each NSLA library is the unique and heritage materials relating to that jurisdiction.
8 Interlending and online document delivery will be used for low-use items in preference to duplicate purchasing,
unless the item has significance for the local or distributed national collection.
9 Interlending and online document delivery services should aim to maximise access, to eliminate user charges
and to automate processes to increase efficiency.
Collecting and preserving our digital heritage
10 NSLA libraries support the development of a national infrastructure of trusted digital repositories as crucial to preserving our digital heritage.
Expanding user expectations
11 Mediated online information services will be expanded and strengthened.
12 NSLA libraries will provide and maintain digital space for community creativity and contributions.
From "The Big Bang: Creating the new library universe: Encouraging flexibility, rapid response and innovation within the library sector," a NSLA (National & State Libraries Australasia) 2007–09 report.
Woah. Pretty bold. I like their style. "Go big or go home."
Read The 'Net: A Tangled Web of Health Information on Yahoo! Health. Some good but incredibly basic information about information on the web. (Woah. Meta.) "Lot's of junk on the web." Yep. "School, government and non-profit sites are probably more trustworthy." Uh-huh. "Your doctor should be the final judge on health info." Totally. And at the bottom, if you want to know more about using health web sites in general, there's a link to the US National Library of Medicine. A library? Libaries know about information too? Wow. Who knew? Perhaps your local librarian might know about good information sources, online or off, as well. No. It's better to go to your doctor (or your local "president and CEO of the American Institute for Preventive Medicine") for to learn about the nature of the info-universe out there. They're the experts on looking up stuff, right? And they've got plenty of extra time to sit chatting about the bias and trustworthiness of online publications and portals. No appointments necessary. Just walk in and ask the librarian at the reference desk, er, I mean the doctor at his/her doctorin' table and ask them. Good luck and say hi for me!
(Allergy alert: May contain sarcasm.)
Just finished reading:
Harris R & Wathen N. 2007. "If my mother was alive I'd probably have called her.": women's search for health information in rural Canada. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 47(1):67-79.
which concluded with the following suggestions (some of which are pretty obvious but are important to spell out specifically nonetheless).
- "...an important, overarching consideration for those designing and delivering health reference services should be the promotion of communitywide awareness of such services."
- "...women want and need not only health information per se, but to have it presented, and ideally discussed, in the context of a caring, interactive relationship - one that respects the woman as the expert when it comes to her own needs, concerns, and context."
- "For many, 'health' is incorporated in the concept of 'well-being' or 'quality of life,'" and "Any health reference service, therefore, should be interlinked with other subject areas that patrons may view as part of health and well-being, or, as one of the women in [the] study put it, 'the emotional side of health.'"
- Health information programs and services should be designed not only to help patrons find high-quality information, but also teach them basic skills for searching, identifying high-quality sources, and knowing what types of information require follow-up action, such as consultation with a healthcare provider."
The basic message was that "It seems naive, if not cynical, to assume that the healthcare needs of women who live in rural communities will be met by simply deepening the supply of Internet-based health information..."
Labels: health, librarianship, reading
