The aim of a survey, undertaken at an English National Health Service (NHS) trust hospital in the summer of 1996, was to examine health professionals' awareness of evidencebased medicine (EBM), their attitudes towards problems in implementing EBM locally and their views of the role of the library in supporting EBM. A postal questionnaire (response rate 40%: 182/475) provided baseline information for planning. More doctors than nurses or PAMs (professionals allied to medicine) had heard of the term EBM, but most of the health professionals were in agreement with the principles of EBM despite not understanding the term fully. Most of the health professionals wanted access to resources at the workplace, and doctors in particular preferred to do their own searching. Many health professionals doubted whether a librarian could find the relevant research articles, suggesting the need for better promotion of library services in support of EBM, emphasising value-added services.
Recent studies of computer-based information-handling by scientists have tended to look at such activities across all the sciences. This is true, in particular, of the recent detailed Royal Society (RS)/British Library (BL)/Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) survey. The present study aims to complement these by concentrating on the biological sciences only. It surveys the usage of information technology and related factors by researchers at four institutions -an agricultural faculty, a university school of biology, a government research establishment and a pharmaceutical laboratory.It is found that there are differences in usage, depending on the institution and specialism involved. It also appears that senior researchers in biology are typically more information-active than junior researchers, but that senior/junior differences in the use of information technology are relatively minor, and can mostly be explained in terms of the pressures on senior staff time.When compared with the RS/BL/ALPSP survey, some results of the present study agree well (e.g. regarding the average level of online access to information). Others differ (e.g. electronic information usage in the pharmaceutical laboratory is higher than the earlier survey might suggest). Overall, the present study indicates that, though the information-handling activities of biologists may differ on average from other specialisms, their total spread is so great that most approaches can be matched by some group within the biological sciences.
This paper reports the findings of a part of a larger study investigating the sources of consumer health information (CHI) available to the public, with particular emphasis on the use of electronic sources of health information. During the investigation discussions were held with managers and information officers of CHI services to examine provision. Detailed here are examples of the services provided by the Trent region. In consideration of the study's emphasis on the use of electronic sources of health information, the availability of electronic public access community information systems as sources of health information within the Trent region of the UK is discussed, and examples of such local government‐run systems are reviewed.
It is clear that, in relation to sexual issues, the costs of adolescents remaining in a state of information poverty may be immense. What is rather less clear, however, is how this deficit should be redressed -how and by whom information about sex should be provided and what information is regarded as necessary by the adolescent consumers of that information. These considerations are the focus of a study currently being conducted at Loughborough University in the Department of Information and Library Studies. This paper explores issues surrounding sex information for adolescents within the existing literature. It describes the role of sex information within the context of the growing consumer interest in general health information. Secondly, it identifies the issues commonly included in sex information and outlines both 'official' 1 sources of information about sex, eg. school sex education courses, and 'unofficial' sources of information, eg. via peer groups. Finally, those sexual issues which are rarely, or never, discussed by any information sources are briefly considered. A broadly social constructionist approach is used to explore the complex positioning of adolescent information users.'The value of information is not intrinsic, but lies in the uses to which it can be put. From these uses, advantages can be derived which are beneficial to the 'owner' of the information and which would not have been attainable without it. If access to information is controlled, whether economically or in any other way, the potential benefits of possessing it will be lost by those to whom it is denied. These propositions underpin the concepts of 'information wealth' and 'information poverty'... 2
Continuing change in the provision of, and access to, scien tific information has stimulated interest in the nature of current information usage by scientists. Recent studies have looked at this question in terms of science as a whole. The present study complements these by concentrating on the biological sciences only. It surveys research information usage in four institutions - a university agricultural faculty, a university school of biology, a government research estab lishment and a pharmaceutical laboratory - and comple ments a study of information technology usage by biological researchers which has already appeared. It is found that biologists have a spread of information needs which paral lels in its diversity that of all the sciences taken together. Changes in information-handling in biology are occurring, but to differing extents, depending on the institution and the biological specialism.
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