submitted by Nancy Press

PNC/MLA continuing education survey forms were posted on HLIB-NW and also put up at the PNC/MLA Web site in January 2000 for the PNC/MLA membership; 82 completed forms were returned. Your Regional Medical Library has been mailing and tallying this survey for PNC/MLA since 1983. This version of the results contains all comments; a more concise version is also available.

1. Type of library

25 academic health sciences library
7 academic library
24 large hospital (200+ beds) library
11 medium hospital (75 to 199 beds) library
4 small hospital (1 to 74 beds) library
11 other:

-public
-biotech

2. Course Topics. Respondents were asked to put checks next to the five course topics they would find most useful. Respondents were also asked to suggest other topics.

38 Web DOCLINE, SERHOLD, and DOCUSER
37 Internet document delivery
36 New features of PubMed
34 Critically evaluating medical literature
27 Standards of self-measurement and developing goals for health sciences librarians
27 Information needs of health care administrators
25 Searching for clinical, evidence based medical information
21 Complementary medicine resources
19 Communicating/partnering with systems administrators
18 Public health surveys and epidemiology resources
17 Setting up a home page, including HTML and home page design
16 Providing health information to consumers and patients
13 Assessing consumer health information needs and planning targeted programs
13 Emerging infections diseases
12 Nutrition resources
11 Role of the librarian in providing in-patient information
10 American Indian/Alaska Native health issues
6 Preparing information for special consumer populations (i.e., non-English speakers or low literacy)

 

Other suggested subjects:

• Setting up an intranet incl. costs, considerations, expectations; intranet to deliver services and resources; designing and creating intranet (4)
• Benchmarking (2)
• I would like to see a class in how to continue to make libraries relevant in an ever-expanding universal access to health care on the internet.
• Another class that would be useful would be how libraries are adopting new technologies into the library environment--CD's (configurations, types of information); internet access to products. What formats are libraries adopting to access journals collections--are paper collections being cut back? Are budgets being cut back?
• Use of metadata to improve access to your web site.
• Managing electronic/fulltext information resources.
• E-journal access for hospital libraries--strategies for organizing, financing, licensing.
• Site licenses, state licenses-how to get them and what to watch out for.
• Knowledge management.
• Electronic resources.
• Web librarianship.
• Use of web editing software (FrontPage?)
• Web-fronted databases (creating databases, example: database of all the library database so only one place needs to be updated).
• Videoconferencing, teleconferencing.
• Providing CE via distance technologies (teleconf or electronic).
• Library/CME collaboration for hospitals.
• Knowledge management issues for librarians.
• Digital literacy/digital divide.
• Health issues of special populations, e.g., American Indians, East Africans, etc. or for chronic diseases, e.g., spinal cord injured diabetics.
• Electronic copyright issues.
• Copyright law for the video librarian.
• Indexing and abstracting health information for the web.
• Partnering with faculty on integrating library services into course curriculum.
• Managing bookmarks.
• Metatags.
• Dublin core.
• Patient record systems.
• Human-computer interface issues.

3. How long have you been in the profession of health librarianship? Respondents were asked to check one.

2	less than 2 years
9	3-5 years
12	6-10 years
23	10-15 years
33	over 15 years

4. Fees. Respondents were asked to check the maximum fee they would pay for a course of high interest.

3	$25
16	$50
43	$100
17	$200

5. Credit. Respondents were asked to check whether MLA credit for a CE course is an important factor for them.

25  yes
52  no