Widget Mania

Ok, blog posts are sloooow especially thanks to my part time status atm.

Summer is all about projects. Weeding the collection, updating web guides and tutorials and creating new ones (this summer it's converting all research guides to libguides), and evaluation, evaluation, evaluation.

This week I succumbed to widget mania. Our local libguides/database lead offered to create customized Ebscohost search widgets, so my research guide conversions and expansions are now being sidetracked by THE HUNT FOR WIDGETS.

Here are my current happy-makers...

1. Aaron Tay's thoughtful post Does embedding search widgets increase usage? Using Google analytics to track this. Nice musings on usage and link to his instructions on how to build your own widget. Thank you for sharing the know-how!! Maybe I'll actually use it :)
   
   
2. Information providers who provide a custom search widget builder that's publicly available
   So far Gale is the only one that I know of. Gale Virtual Reference Library has been one of our most heavily used electronic sources, interesting since it's been pretty well buried on our site. I HEART Gale's widget builder
   
   
   

   
   
   

   
   
   
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Information providers who provide search widget builders in their administrative module.
   Ebsco and CSA do this, not sure which others do.
   
   It's a nice option IF you know about it. For myself, I'd much rather have a publicly accessible widget builder. Makes me feel like I'm getting my hands dirty. Plus I don't have to send yet another email to one of our techies :)
   
   
4. Information providers who offer pre-constructed search widgets
   Web of Knowlege
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   Enter a topic to search Copyright 2009 Thomson Reuters

   
   
   
   
   
   WorldCat: Haven't tried these yet.
   CQ Researcher: Sadly, not authenticated! *Sniffle*
   
   
   
   
5. Information providers who provide widgets that push attractive and authoritative content
   CDC, you rock my world!

Data And Statistics

Libguides will transform the users' experience - right?

I'm thrilled that our library is adopting LibGuides. For years I've envied the web architecture savvy of a business librarian colleague of mine. He's managed to create piles of customized pages for his course integrated library instruction, then link those pages logically with general research guides such as "Marketing."

LibGuides promise the easy creation of modular, user friendly research guides. Easy even for the non-architecturally inclined (moi!). I'm drooling to expand my pages beyond guides to consumer health, finding tests and measures, EndNote, etc. It'll be exciting to port over the content from the health care version of finding bills, laws, and court cases (content first requested by nursing faculty but later adopted then requisitioned again by several nutrition instructors - not bad for a non-law/poli sci libn like me!).

And to make the summer project even bigger - expanding into guides to evidence based practice, health care videos, handheld/pda products, anatomy sources, and more. MLA sections for collection development and for nursing, plus ICIRN, should really help. I've never belonged to a listserv as active as the NAHRS one!!

iPad panned by Nielsen and Anderson

There has been some discussion about purchasing iPads for checkout in our library. Nifty idea and I'm all for it (the laptop checkout has been a smash hit), though reviewers aren't completely pleased with the device or the apps being developed for it.

Last week, Jakob Nielsen unveiled his first usability study of the iPad. His summary — well, it sums it all up:

"iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems."

Kent Anderson under, The Scholarly Kitchen, May 2010

What a nurse wants, what a nurse needs

This year the nursing faculty started telling me what they really want instead of just responding to my suggestions.

Not just journals and books. Not just ebooks.

Our nurses also want online streaming videos showing nursing skills.

They want drug guides and other ebooks that can be downloaded to handheld devices. Speaking of handheld devices, the things that would be really useful at the bedside are drug calculators, clinical calculators, and guides to general procedures. Who cares if your iPad can tell you what to do about a leak with a chest tube? If that happens, you don't have time to pull out your device to look up a procedure.

It would be handy to have other downloadable+online point of care tools to support the clinical curriculum. UpToDate, anyone?

And of course more evidence-based resources.

This is the fun stuff. Figuring out what they really use versus what they want or even what they need, what is available out there, how it's available, and whether I can finesse a purchase or justify a subscription.

I enjoyed this webinar+white paper from Ovid:

Improving Nursing Practice with Information and Technology.

It shed an interesting light on the preferences of our local nursing instructors and students


Where do nurses access online info? 84% from home, 68% from work, tiny % at library. This echoed the results of our recent survey of online & distance ed nursing students. Nice to get this validation.

Nurses and medical librarians reported that the most requested types of information are concise, evidence based, available through "Google-like" tools. FYI, Google was reported as the top information tool used by nurses.
What a disturbing trend. To whom at Google could I address the thank you note and fruit basket for the expert care of my recently born son?

Nursing has been slower than other professions in moving to predominantly online information sources. Nursing2010 and AJN surveys reported 79% of nurses preferred print for reading full-text, in depth articles, though they preferred online for searching.
Well, yeah. Just like the rest of us.

Top professional nursing websites:

• NursingCenter.com
• Medscape.com
• PubMed/MEDLINE
• Allnurses.com
• Nurse.com
• NursingWorld.com
• WebRN.com
• NurseZone.com

Haven't studied this, but I'm sure that visits to these sites make up the majority of student device use during nursing classes.

31% of nurses reported using social media for professional purposes, with goals of learning about the profession, asking nursing-related questions, learning about upcoming conferences, etc. Top sources included listservs and YouTube (for educational and training purposes), though Facebook, Twitter, and other sites are gaining prominence. (n=700)

38% reported daily use of handheld, mobile devices such as smart phones. Most important professional reasons = finding general treatment info (61%), patient education info (48%), reading journal article abstracts (25%), viewing multimedia and podcasts (19%), etc.

The Ovid white paper stated that the use of mobile devices is growing quickly. The webinar emphasized the need for nursing administration to support the technology (adopt it to improve professional practices and deal with concerns about hipaa/privacy and frivolous/personal use of these devices).

Nursing topics most commonly researched using mobile devices: drug information, disease information, therapeutic recommendations, and differential diagnosis

Mostly commonly used handheld apps deliver synoptic rather than in depth info.

Nurses ranked mobile app attributes (greatest to least impt): Readability of text, search ability, ease of download, cost of download, speed of download, visual appeal.

Top nursing blogs: AllNurses.com, NurseZone, and AJN’s blog, “Off the Charts”

Ovid predicts

• the rise of simultaneous writing and peer review
• multiple publishing/delivery methods (print, online, downloadable app) will become the norm
• rich media will be ubiquitous

lealibrarian predicts

• continuing steep rise in product prices to support the trends listed above, beyond the margins of many library budgets
  
• shrinking availability of in-depth information as information access and presentation take center stage
  
• couple these trends with the chronic shortage of nurses and health care facility budget woes, and in 15 years patients will mostly see PAs and nursing assistants who will be working with touch pad devices that are logo rather than text-based. mchealthcare.