News from the Schools

The Department of Information and Library Studies (DILS) is the major department within the new Faculty of Information Studies at UCW Aberystwyth. DILS has an established international reputation in information management, text handling, database applications and information retrieval. It has the largest number of students working at postgraduate level of any department within UCW. The DILS expertise centres upon the design, application and evaluation of information systems, from analysis of user requirements and information flows through to the monitoring and evaluation of implemented systems. DILS has targeted health information as a priority area in its development plan. For several years it has offered courses for information professionals, and graduates of the department hold a variety of posts in health care. The range of activities in health information is expanding rapidly. Current research includes two-year funding for an examination of the processes of analyzing and determining the information requirements of health professionals. There are some grounds for believing that techniques currently applied are not fully adequate for the analysis of user needs in health care. A particular emphasis of the research is to assess the transferability of techniques for analysis of information requirements between different groups of professionals, with an emphasis on groups as yet under-researched. A separate project, in collaboration with the Health Promotion Authority for Wales, involves three phases. Firstly, an examination of the information needs and information flows involving health promotion officers; secondly, the establishment of statistical and bibliographic databases relevant to those needs; and, thirdly, an evaluation of the delivery of information from the system to remote health promotion units. The department is responsible for Phases 1 and 3 and the Health Promotion Authority, using commercial sponsorship, for Phase 2. The department has undertaken research in information retrieval over a period of several years. It has particular experience in the area of text retrieval software and software to facilitate online interaction for end-users. Earlier work was undertaken in these directions for the European Space Agency. New projects under discussion include the logging of CD-ROM database transactions in medicine to evaluate the search behaviour of clinicians; research into the continuing education needs of information professionals in health care; and assessment of the patient care implications of information supplied by NHS libraries.