QUESTION How were traditional librarian reference desk services successfully eliminated at one health sciences library? SETTING The analysis was done at an academic health sciences library at a major research university. METHOD A gap analysis was performed, evaluating changes in the first eleven months through analysis of reference transaction and instructional session data. MAIN RESULTS ...

THEAUTHOR SUGGESTS THAT CURRENT CONDITIONS ARE nearly ideal for the effective meta-assessment of online reference services (ORS),in part because expected patterns and modes of service have not yet been established for emerging and evolving online environments, and in part because the distance between theory and practice regarding reference service in general is at its perigee. Meta-assessment i...

The Internet enables global dissemination and retrieval of information at any time, as a result, it has a tremendous impact on how libraries provide reference services to this new web-based clientele. One impact is the increase in off-site library users who make in-person reference interviews impossible. To serve this new 'cntele, academic libraries are setting up electronic reference services ...

Internet-of-Things (IoT) services offer a great potential in many different enterprise application areas for improving efficiency gains to completely new business processes (BPs). However, due to diversified nature of the devices involved and uncertainty of business objectives associated when structuring BP aware IoT services, significant concerns of standardizations still have to be overcome. ...

BACKGROUND The many forms of healthcare fee exemptions implemented in Burkina Faso since the 2000s have varied between total exemption (free) and cost subsidisation. This article examines both options, their contextual variations and the ways in which they affect access to healthcare for vulnerable people as well as the operation of the health system. This research is part of an interdisciplina...

The World Health Report 2013 provides a major boost to the health research community and, in particular, to those who believe that health research will make its greatest impact on improving health when it is organised through a systems approach. The World Health Report 2013, Research for Universal Health Coverage, starts with three key messages. Firstly, that universal health coverage, with ful...

BACKGROUND The objective of performance assessment is to provide governments and populations with appropriate information about the state of their health care system. The objective of this paper is to present the most recent developments in performance assessment and their application in urban contexts. METHODS Literature review in PubMed (1970-2004). We identified additional papers and grey ...

This Chapter describes an infrastructure for multi-modal perceptual systems which aims at developing and realizing computer services that are delivered to humans in an implicit and unobtrusive way. The framework presented here supports the implementation of humancentric context-aware applications providing non-obtrusive assistance to participants in events such as meetings, lectures, conference...

The integration of communication and computation technologies, the availability of pocket mobile computers, and the widespread penetration of mobile radio access networks will enable a range of new context-aware mobile services to be offered to the users. Research on methods and technologies for the development of such services requires the involvement of experts in several technological domain...