The COVID‐19 (Coronavirus) pandemic: reflections on the roles of librarians and information professionals

This Regular Feature explores the role of health science librarians in the coronavirus pandemic. COVID‐19 has spread rapidly all over the world. All major cities around the globe are in lockdown. In Pakistan, the first case was diagnosed on 26 February 2020, and currently, there are more than 2039 diagnosed cases and 26 deaths as on 31 March 2020. Across the country, there are further 12 000 suspected cases. This will undoubtedly increase if precautionary measures are not taken. Pakistani universities, colleges and schools were in lockdown. The role of university librarians in this emergency included raising awareness through public health education, providing support to medical staff, researchers and providing ongoing traditional services to regular library patrons in Pakistan. The Regular Feature also provides links to useful resources. JM.     

公共健康信息的公共获取问题研究

全球公共健康危机的加剧引起公众对健康信息公共获取的普遍关注，从我国公共健康信息公共获取的现状出发，分析我国公共获取健康信息的障碍与问题，提出实现健康信息零障碍获取的建议。     

Creating an Evidence-Based Culture Within the Schools of Public Health and Medicine

Information technology is having a huge influence on health care. With ease of access and an abundance of information, today's health care personnel are expected to practice and develop policies or programs based upon evidence in order to avoid inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Our library has the responsibility to serve the needs of students, faculty, and practitioners of medicine and public health and strives to create an information literate workforce. In this article, the authors reflect on the library's instruction program and evaluate and plan for the future order to determine if the library's instruction program is properly developing an evidence-based medical and public health workforce.     

Health Information and Health Literacy: Public Library Practices,Challenges, and Opportunities

This study investigated 18 libraries in two public library systems in Oklahoma to find out how they are addressing health literacy and facilitating access to consumer health information; how library staff members view their roles and responsibilities relative to health information and health literacy; what challenges libraries face; and what strategies are being used. Staff members recognized several challenges to providing health information and to developing programs, including staff and patron difficulties with reference interviews, and patron lack of awareness of library resources. Staff members often had only a partial understanding of health literacy, and were unaware of system strategies to address health literacy or provision of health information.     

Health literacy and COVID‐19

In early 2020, the world experienced an unprecedented health crisis. When the pandemic of coronavirus was declared by the World Health Organization, it brought with it sudden and dramatic changes to everyday life. In the UK, the key message from the Government was to ‘Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’, sending out a clear warning that failing to stay at home would put other lives and the ability of the NHS to cope at risk. This editorial discusses COVID‐19, how society responded and the vital role that health literacy plays in saving lives during a global health emergency.     

Framing social determinants of health within the professional public health community: research translation and implications for policy change

Despite what experts know about the importance of social determinants of health (SDOH), poor health is generally understood by the public as an individual problem ameliorated through lifestyle and/or healthcare. To remedy this knowledge gap and promote policy change, public health professionals are investing in media advocacy to raise public awareness about SDOH and promote collective responsibility for health improvement. However, policy theory suggests this may be insufficient. More attention to the role of professional communities, as mediators of research translation and important policy actors, is warranted. We conducted a content analysis of news articles published by the American Public Health Association and found substantial attention to SDOH. However, the discourse was more biomedical than expected given the evidence regarding the relative importance of the major categories of health determinants. This may be a barrier to policy change and detract from the field’s efforts to promote political action.     

Can your public library improve your health and well‐being? An investigation of East Sussex Library and Information Service

This article is only the second in the Dissertations into Practice series to highlight the role of public libraries in health information. It is the result of an investigation into the provision of health information in East Sussex Library and Information Service, which formed the basis of Anneliese Ingham's dissertation for her MA in Information Studies at the University of Brighton. At the time Anneliese was doing her research, the service was experimenting with different ways of providing healthcare information at one of its main libraries, and they were interested in the impact of this. The provision of health information to the public is one of my own research interests, and I was Anneliese's dissertation supervisor. I thought she produced a very good piece of work, and the results she highlights in this article are applicable to all public library authorities. Anneliese graduated with an MA in 2012 and worked for East Sussex Library and Information Service, which she joined whilst she was still studying. AM     

Statewide Initiative to Embed Consumer Health Librarians in Public Libraries: A Case Study

In 2004 a collaborative, statewide outreach project in Delaware was undertaken where consumer health librarians were embedded in public libraries. In order to explore the effect of the embedded librarians on the quality of health information provision, unobtrusive reference visits were made to half of the public libraries in the state. The query “Do vaccines cause autism?” was posed to library staff; resources provided were recorded. In 67 percent of visits, public library staff provided authoritative health information resources. It appears the embedded librarians had a positive residual effect on the provision of authoritative health resources for addressing an ambiguous query.     

图书馆应对突发公共卫生事件信息服务研究——以新型冠状病毒感染肺炎疫情信息服务为例

[目的/意义]概述图书馆应对突发公共卫生事件的理论依据,对当前国内外不同类型图书馆开展突发公共卫生事件进行回顾和调研,以期为今后国内更多图书馆开展应急信息服务提供借鉴经验。[方法/过程]通过网络调研、文献调研以及对比分析的方法,系统地梳理和分析美国图书馆、英国图书馆、新加坡图书馆以及国内医学专业图书馆和省级公共图书馆,针对当前新型冠状病毒感染肺炎疫情和既往突发公共卫生事件的信息服务实践,总结国内外可供借鉴的经验。[结果/结论]大型图书馆应建立健全应急管理事件预案和处置机制、充分发挥图书馆信息集成作用以为不同层次用户及时提供信息服务、利用多媒体技术进行突发公共卫生信息报道宣传。     

基于RSS技术的公共图书馆健康教育模式

健康教育的实质是一项社会性的教育活动,这正符合公共图书馆教育职能的本质。但是目前公共图书馆这方面职能的发挥还有一定的局限性。本文就如何加强公共图书馆的健康教育职能,提出了使用RSS技术进行健康信息定制推送的解决方案。     

突发公共卫生事件舆情环境下的群体智慧涌现研究

本研究提出一种从突发公共卫生事件的舆情信息中提取群体智慧的方法,揭示了突发公共卫生事件舆情环境下群体智慧涌现的模式与规律。以群体免疫相关话题为例,利用依存分析的关系抽取(relation extraction with dependency parsing,REDP)方法提取微博、评论含有的三元组,以结构化表示突发公共卫生事件舆情环境下公众的知识条目,基于舆情知识三元组、网络拓扑结构挖掘突发公共卫生事件舆情环境下的群体智慧涌现模式与规律。研究结果表明,本研究所提出的方法能够从突发公共卫生事件舆情中提取群体智慧,同时发现,随着突发事件的演变,舆情的热度和群体智慧并不是线性平稳增加的,涌现存在临界现象和跳跃式前进的特征。舆情知识网络具有小世界、无标度网络结构,群体智慧主要集中于微博信息中,具有动态属性。     

Informing the public health

Why with an increase in the amount of health information, and ways of accessing it, so many people experience poor health? What is the role of health library and information professionals in improving public health? These questions are of great interest to me. There are many examples of initiatives, particularly in the public library sector, which address health issues, however they are often very local and best practice is not always shared. Clearly changing the health status of a population requires more than information, but information is clearly an essential component. If health information is to be effective in improving public health then we need to address health literacy, and this is where health library and information professionals can play a significant role. Through this journal and the other activities of the Health Libraries Group I hope we can share good practice and explore new ways that health library and information workers can improve the health of individuals and communities.     

Impact of a consumer health information specialization (CHIS) sponsorship program on the ability of public library staff to provide consumer health information

Objective:In 2018, the Network of the National Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) launched a sponsorship program to support public library staff in completing the Medical Library Association''s Consumer Health Information Specialization (CHIS). The objectives of our study were to: (1) determine whether completion of the sponsored specialization improved ability to provide consumer health information; (2) identify new health information services, programming, and outreach activities at public libraries; (3) investigate benefits of the specialization; and (4) determine the impact of sponsorship on obtaining and continuing the specialization.Methods:We used REDCap to administer a 16-question survey in August 2019 to 224 public library staff who were sponsored during the first year of the program. We measured competence in providing consumer health information aligned with the eight Core Competencies for Providing Consumer Health Information Services [1] as well as new activities at public libraries, benefits of the specialization to public library staff, career gains, and the likelihood of continuing the specialization based on funding.Results:More than 80% of 136 participants reported an increase in core consumer health competencies, with a statistically significant improvement in mean competency scores after completing the specialization. Ninety percent of participants have continued their engagement with NNLM, and more than half offered new health information programs and services. While more than half planned to renew the specialization or obtain the Level II specialization, 72% indicated they would not continue without NNLM sponsorship.Conclusions:Findings indicate that NNLM sponsorship of the CHIS specialization was successful in increasing the capacity of public library staff to provide health information to their communities.     

网络健康社区中的主题特征研究

[目的/意义] 探究不同类型网络社区中健康主题特征分布,促使各网站平台能够更好地提供在线健康信息服务。[方法/过程] 以糖尿病为例,选取来自健康论坛的社会化标签和社会化问答社区的问答记录作为研究对象;通过数据编码和文本处理的方法,得到八大类主题,并比较两种网络社区中该八大主题分布情况的异同。[结果/结论] 两种网络社区中糖尿病主题冷热分布大体趋于一致。在最为用户所关注的主题上,两类社区各有侧重,分别是“诊断和检查”、“社会生活”。以上探讨和发现对在线健康信息服务质量的提升有诸多启示。     

突发公共卫生事件中高校图书馆微信公众平台远程服务现状与策略——以36所“双一流”A类高校图书馆为例

[目的/意义] 调研当前新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情特殊时期，高校图书馆通过微信公众平台提供远程服务的现状，探讨突发公共卫生事件发生时，高校图书馆开展远程服务的策略，为高校图书馆通过微信公众平台提供远程服务提供借鉴。[方法/过程] 调查36所"双一流"A类高校图书馆微信公众平台数据，分析研究高校图书馆通过微信公众平台开展远程服务的现状和存在的问题，并提出优化策略。[结果/结论] 在新媒体环境下，微信公众平台已成为高校图书馆开展远程服务的重要平台。高校图书馆远程服务需常态化，当突发公共卫生事件发生时，从资源保障、服务保障、阅读活动、读者远程教育及心理疏导等方面入手，为学校教学科研、人才培养提供有力支撑。     

Consumer Health Reference Interview: Ideas for Public Librarians

This two-stage study seeks to help public librarians become better prepared, and more confident and competent, when answering medical/health questions. At the first stage, eleven barriers that public librarians often encounter in the consumer health reference interview were identified through a comprehensive literature review, and at the second stage, input from professional consumer health librarians on how to overcome the barriers was gathered via a qualitative survey. Findings of the study provide concrete and practical strategies that will help public librarians more successfully conduct the reference interview to assist library users in their health information-seeking journey.     

我国公共医疗健康信息公益性增值利用研究

文章在对我国公共医疗健康信息增值利用现状分析的基础上,对增值利用中的障碍进行了初步分析,提出了应从公益性原则出发,优化公共医疗健康信息采集、质量标准、共享信息链,促进我国公共医疗健康信息资源增值利用.