Beyond google: finding and evaluating web-based information for community-based nursing practice.

Nurses are challenged to find and use reliable, credible information to support clinical decision-making and to meet expectations for evidence-based nursing practice. This project targeted practicing public health and school nurses, teaching them how to access and critically evaluate web-based information resources for frontline practice. Health sciences librarians partnered with nursing faculty to develop two participatory workshops to teach skills in searching for and evaluating web-based consumer and professional practice resources. The first workshop reviewed reliable, credible consumer web-resources appropriate to use with clients, using published criteria to evaluate website credibility. In the second workshop, nurses were taught how to retrieve and evaluate health-related research from professional databases to support evidence-based nursing practice. Evaluation data indicated nurses most valued knowing about the array of reliable, credible web-based health information resources, learning how to evaluate website credibility, and understanding how to find and apply professional research literature to their own practice.

Merging silos: collaborating for information literacy.

Collaborating across disciplines can create additive teaching-learning benefits by bringing together expertise, knowledge, and training from various perspectives. However, there are challenges to effective collaboration that need to be articulated and understood by the partners to develop a useful learning product. In this project, nurse educators and health sciences librarians developed workshops for nurses practicing in community settings. Issues that surfaced reflected a division of content and presentation style along discipline lines. Bringing together expertise involved identifying basic content to present and eliminating extra details, setting the context for learners using a practice example, and alternating handoffs to cover content and practice applications. Effective collaboration requires mutual understanding of discipline-specific information "silos" and shared negotiation of teaching and learning goals.

Transition from in library use of resources to outside library use: the impact of the Internet on information seeking behavior of medical students and faculty.

Advances in information technology have introduced both new capabilities and interesting challenges in accessing medical literature. More and more information resources exist in electronic format, such as online databases, journals, books, etc. instead of the traditional print format. In late 1998, there were thirty-five journal titles available online; in 2001, the number rose to over 4,000.1 Desk-top access to online resources is changing library use patterns, which challenges libraries to adjust to this transformed information access environment. Studies of the impact of the internet on information seeking behavior of users in medical environments could provide very valuable information for medical libraries seeking to adapt to this rapid and great evolution. This study aims to explore the impact of the Internet on information seeking behavior of medical students and faculty and their medical library use, to address the possible reasons for this change of information seeking behavior, and to identify the measures essential to the transition from traditional in-library use of resources to remote access. This study is conducted in two phases.