Physicians have many information needs that arise at the point of care yet go unmet for a variety of reasons, including uncertainty about which information resources to select. In this study, we aimed to identify the various types of physician information needs and how these needs relate to physicians' use of the database PubMed and the evidence summary tool UpToDate. We conducted semi-structur...

The health sector is characterized by a human resource base lacking in numbers, specialized skills, and management skills. West African Health Organization (WAHO) recognizes the need within the West Africa sub-region for bilingual professionals who are skilled in public health, management, leadership, and information technology to build human capacity in public health and developed the Young Pr...

OBJECTIVE The research studied the status of hospital librarians and library services to better inform the Medical Library Association's advocacy activities. METHODS The Vital Pathways Survey Subcommittee of the Task Force on Vital Pathways for Hospital Librarians distributed a web-based survey to hospital librarians and academic health sciences library directors. The survey results were comp...

BACKGROUND Community pharmacists are in a key position to provide information on drugs and thus promote the rational use of drugs. OBJECTIVES The present study was designed to determine the needs and resources of drug information in community pharmacies. METHODS A prospective institution based cross-sectional study was carried out and data were collected on 48 community pharmacists in Gonda...

Metadata itself is often called 'data about data', information that typically describes what a document is, what it is about, and where one may locate it (Zeng & Jin, 2008). There are various metadata standards, such as Dublin Core and IEEE LOM. Each standard contains an element set or scheme that defines the structure and semantics of elements, such as the DC Metadata Element Set, now referred...

QUESTION What is the best approach for implementing a statewide electronic health library (eHL) to serve all health professionals in Minnesota? SETTING The research took place at the University of Minnesota Health Sciences Libraries. METHODS In January 2008, the authors began planning a statewide eHL for health professionals following the five-step process for evidence-based librarianship: ...

Efficient use of the water resource requires internalization of all costs in the price of water, including environmental and resource costs. However, water resource management tends to be highly political and increasing water prices are a sensitive and complicated policy matter. Hence, there is a need for increased understanding of the implementation process and the attitudes towards implementa...

BACKGROUND To evaluate medical and dental students' utilization of electronic information resources. METHODS A web survey sent to 837 students (49.9% responded). RESULTS Twenty-four per cent of medical students and nineteen per cent of dental students searched MEDLINE 2+ times/month for study purposes, and thiry-two per cent and twenty-four per cent respectively for research. Full-text arti...

Africa has faced problems in the area of media communication due to a lack of resources, technology and manpower and poor planning. In recent years, Africans have begun to argue the point of a need for comprehensive communications planning that considers economic limitations. An effective form of education and communication for Africa should present information in an inexpensive, ad hoc manne...