Specific classification of elibrary resources says more about users' preferences.

BACKGROUND: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are a hierarchical taxonomy of over 42,000 descriptors designed to classify scientific literature; it is hierarchical with generic high order headings and specific low order headings. Over 1,000 resources in the Primary Care Electronic Library (PCEL - www.pcel.info) were classified with MeSH. METHODS: Each of the entries or resources in the primary care digital library was assigned up to five MeSH terms. We compared whether the most generic or specific MeSH term ascribed to each resource best predicted user preferences. RESULTS: over the four month period analysed statistically significant differences were found for resources according to specific key MeSH terms they were classified by. This result was not repeated for generic key MeSH terms. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of the use of specific MeSH terms reveals user preferences that would have otherwise remained obscured. These preferences are not found if more generic MeSH terms are analysed.

Using UMLS to map from a library to a clinical classification: Improving the functionality of a digital library.

The Metathesaurus of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) offers the possibility of mapping between various medical vocabularies. The Primary Care Electronic Library (PCEL) contains a database of over six thousand Medical Subject Headings (MeSH terms) describing the resources of the electronic library. We were interested to know if it was possible to map from MeSH to the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). Such a mapping would aid healthcare professionals to retrieve relevant data from our digital library as it would enable links between clinical systems and indexed material.

The Primary Care Electronic Library: RSS feeds using SNOMED-CT indexing for dynamic content delivery.

BACKGROUND: Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds are a method for disseminating and syndicating the contents of a website using extensible mark-up language (XML). The Primary Care Electronic Library (PCEL) distributes recent additions to the site in the form of an RSS feed. When new resources are added to PCEL, they are manually assigned medical subject headings (MeSH terms), which are then automatically mapped to SNOMED-CT terms using the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus. The library is thus searchable using MeSH or SNOMED-CT. Our syndicate partner wished to have remote access to PCEL coronary heart disease (CHD) information resources based on SNOMED-CT search terms. OBJECTIVE: To pilot the supply of relevant information resources in response to clinically coded requests, using RSS syndication for transmission between web servers. METHOD: Our syndicate partner provided a list of CHD SNOMED-CT terms to its end-users, a list which was coded according to UMLS specifications. When the end-user requested relevant information resources, this request was relayed from our syndicate partner's web server to the PCEL web server. The relevant resources were retrieved from the PCEL MySQL database. This database is accessed using a server side scripting language (PHP), which enables the production of dynamic RSS feeds on the basis of Source Asserted Identifiers (CODEs) contained in UMLS. RESULTS: Retrieving resources using SNOMED-CT terms using syndication can be used to build a functioning application. The process from request to display of syndicated resources took less than one second. CONCLUSION: The results of the pilot illustrate that it is possible to exchange data between servers using RSS syndication. This method could be utilised dynamically to supply digital library resources to a clinical system with SNOMED-CT data used as the standard of reference.

The Primary Care Electronic Library (PCEL) five years on: open source evaluation of usage.

BACKGROUND: The Primary Care Electronic Library (PCEL) is a collection of indexed and abstracted internet resources. PCEL contains a directory of quality-assured internet material with associated search facilities. PCEL has been indexed, using metadata and established taxonomies. Site development requires an understanding of usage; this paper reports the use of open source tools to evaluate usage. This evaluation was conducted during a six-month period of development of PCEL. OBJECTIVE: To use open source to evaluate changes in usage of an electronic library. METHOD: We defined data we needed for analysis; this included: page requests, visits, unique visitors, page requests per visit, geographical location of users, NHS users, chronological information about users and resources used. RESULTS: During the evaluation period, page requests increased from 3500 to 10,000; visits from 1250 to 2300; and unique visitors from 750 to 1500. Up to 83% of users come from the UK, 15% were NHS users. The page requests of NHS users are slowly increasing but not as fast as requests by other users in the UK. PCEL is primarily used Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday is the busiest day with use lessening through the week. NHS users had a different list of top ten resources accessed than non-NHS users, with only four resources appearing in both. CONCLUSIONS: Open source tools provide useful data which can be used to evaluate online resources. Improving the functionality of PCEL has been associated with increased use.