'This blog post details our experience organising a series of Randomised Coffee Trials within the Yorkshire (YOHHLNet) and Northern Health Libraries Networks.' Participants are health library staff.
NHS Knowledge and Library Services Community of Practice joins the Green Libraries Campaign to support the campaign's growth and evolution as for new green intiatives and activities in 2024 onwards. News release. We have a sustainability action on this year's delivery plan - will this help?
In this editorial, Anthea Sutton and Veronica Parisi reflect on ChatGPT, how it may contribute to systematic searching, and provide their overview of some recent training they attended on ChatGPT, AI and systematic literature reviews.
Today a perceived lasting legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic is that more information literacy instruction is happening online than pre-pandemic, including ongoing adoption of synchronous modes of instruction in course-based and co-curricular contexts, and sustained integration of asynchronous learning resources either in standalone formats or as fundamental elements in what is described as a growing adoption of a more modular, scalable approach to information literacy instruction. At the same time, the role of in-person information literacy instruction has by no means been forgotten, with all OCUL libraries offering a majority of instruction this way by Fall 2022, when pandemic restrictions eased up. However, an ongoing legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic has been lasting changes in how librarians teach, and the nature of collaborative partnerships at work in shaping this information literacy instruction, to increasingly draw from a broader range of modalities to offer students a more flexible learning environment.
Interview and survey findings highlighted several strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to support future development of online knowledge sharing platforms.
Discussion
Online knowledge sharing supports six ‘pillars’ of successful research and innovation partnerships. This requires distributed forms of leadership and linking of different knowledge sharing strategies, and careful combination of platforms with communities of practice.
Conclusion
Online knowledge sharing provides pragmatic and timely strategies for health professionals in the UK to apply research evidence to their practice. Our study provides generalisable, practical insights in how to develop and implement a knowledge sharing platform.
Notably, from their initial exposure, students associated e-books primarily with a source of new information, rather than as a time-saving tool. Although e-books were perceived as easy to use, this aspect did not strongly influence students' attitudes and intentions to use them as much as their perceived usefulness did. The study reveals that students, particularly in social sciences, have long viewed e-books as a vital technology for exploratory knowledge acquisition. While they perceive e-books as easy to use, this perception likely stems from their habitual use for managing learning activities, rather than from recognizing any added value of the technology itself.
Results: Thematic analysis revealed three themes: tablets are convenient to access online information and older adults reported technical, security concerns, emotional and cognitive challenges regarding use of smart tablets. Older adults also requested one-on-one support, assistance, and topic specific learning for future training sessions.
Conclusions: Future studies should focus on providing detailed, clear instructions at an acceptable pace for older adults.
Four main themes related to how youth search online emerged: mind-set shapes the search process; external factors shape the search process; key attributes of helpful information; and cues affecting trustworthiness of online information. Findings can inform the development of youth-friendly online mental health information that is perceived as helpful and trustworthy by youth. Ensuring youth have access to quality online mental health information, accessible to how they search for it, is critical to the mental health and development of youth.
Results
We included 79 studies and identified themes, including question realism, answer reliability, answer utility, clinical specialism, systems, usability, and evaluation methods. Clinicians’ questions used to train and evaluate QA systems were restricted to certain sources, types and complexity levels. No system communicated confidence levels in the answers or sources. Many studies suffered from high risks of bias and applicability concerns. Only 8 studies completely satisfied any criterion for clinical utility, and only 7 reported user evaluations. Most systems were built with limited input from clinicians.
Discussion
While machine learning methods have led to increased accuracy, most studies imperfectly reflected real-world healthcare information needs. Key research priorities include developing more realistic healthcare QA datasets and considering the reliability of answer sources, rather than merely focusing on accuracy.
Evidence-based practice is vital to nursing, and health and social care, but research suggests it is less widespread than it should be. One reason may be that front-line practitioners do not always have the support, time and knowledge to search for and review evidence.
To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Positioned as a review, our study elucidates the applications of ChatGPT in medical libraries and discusses relevant considerations. The integration of ChatGPT into medical library services holds promise for enhancing information retrieval and user experience, benefiting library users and the broader medical community.
In this article, Christine Urquhart discusses some different research designs, and different research methods that may help students and practitioners find useful answers to questions about professional practice beyond the standard survey. Researchers could consider research designs such as quasi-experimental techniques, controlled before-after studies, and interrupted time series. The basic principles of such methods are outlined and some examples cited. Other research techniques outlined include those that research subjects might find more interesting to do, such as conjoint analysis and vignettes
Online knowledge sharing provides pragmatic and timely strategies for health professionals in the UK to apply research evidence to their practice. Our study provides generalisable, practical insights in how to develop and implement a knowledge sharing platform.
While web analytical tools (e.g. Google Analytics) used by such websites can provide descriptive measures of users, there is a disconnection between this data and the current understanding of health information-seeking behaviour. In this work, we leverage a theoretical model to interpret the Google Analytics data. Drawn on the visualisation of user behaviours based on this model, our research shows that better website design can be informed, and the evaluation of health websites can be performed on the basis of different user profiles.
The purpose of this commentary is to provide useful guidance on conducting rigorous searches of the literature that inform the design and execution of research. Guidance for less formal literature reviews can be adapted from best practices utilized within the formalized field of evidence synthesis. Additionally, researchers can draw on guidance from PRESS (Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies) to engage in self-evaluation of their search strategies. Finally, developing an awareness of common pitfalls when designing literature searches can provide researchers with confidence that their research is designed to fill clearly articulated gaps in knowledge.
To educate our campus’s health sciences audience and wider community on these topics, we have developed a range of instruction about visual health misinformation. We describe our strategies and provide suggestions for implementing visual misinformation programming for a variety of audiences.
This column will discuss how to navigate searchRxiv to find, reuse, and cite published search strategies, as well as the process of depositing search strategies.