Piloting Consumer Health Information Services in Collaboration with a Community Research Engagement Program

At an academic health science center, librarians partnered with a community research engagement program to offer a suite of consumer health information services. The services included training staff in the use of online consumer health resources, purchasing a print collection of monographs, and creating a guide to both the online and print resources for staff use. Focus groups were conducted to assess information needs, and the workshop attendees’ online health information competency was assessed presession and postsession. This article details planning and intervention efforts, and proposes future activities to meet the information needs of HealthStreet and its clients.     

“But,We Don't Have a Library”: Exploring Approaches to Addressing Branch Campuses’ Library Needs

Librarians at Central Oregon Community College's Barber Library explored how to best serve the needs of three satellite campuses across a large geographic region. While initially intending to start an embedded librarianship program, a pair of surveys showed the relationships and awareness necessary for the foundation of such a program were lacking. Using the information gathered in the surveys, the authors attempted to identify and implement methods for building better relationships and greater library awareness across all campuses.     

Correcting Biased Cohen’s Kappa in NVivo

This study demonstrates that NVivo, a popular research tool for content analysis, produces biased Cohen’s kappa as it calculates the reliability statistic at the character level, which is unsuitable for most content-analytic studies adopting a higher unit of analysis (e.g., sentence, paragraph). Based on empirical data and a statistical simulation, this study proposes a method of bias correction applicable to situations where two independent raters conduct binary coding.     

Gleaning Meaning from Case Studies in International Comparison: teachers’ experiences of reform in Russia and South Africa

This paper considers how case study approaches may be used cross‐nationally. It outlines five key stages in the process of conducting case study research and of learning from it: selection, verification, cumulation, generalisation, and application. The research used to illustrate these principles is a study of teachers’ experiences of changes in education in post‐communist Russia and post‐apartheid South Africa.     

Career progress in centralized academic systems: Social capital and institutions in France and Italy

We analyze the role of social capital in academic careers. We distinguish between ties with reputed scientists and laboratories (scientific and technical human capital) and ties with influential actors with respect to recruitment/promotion decisions (political capital). We use institution-wise bibliometric indicators to measure separately the two types of capital for a large sample of French and Italian academic physicists between 2000 and 2003/2005. Controlling for scientific productivity, seniority and gender issues, career progress is explained by: the scientist's affiliation to important public research organizations (scientific and technical human capital - France); his/her social ties with senior members of the discipline, who exercise control over careers (political capital - Italy), and the commitment to work with senior colleagues in his/her own university (political capital - Italy). Significant differences exist between the two countries also with respect to the importance of productivity, seniority, and gender.     

To Establish the Reference Intervals of Lipid Profile in Punjab

Overnight fasting samples of 1,031 apparently healthy people of Punjab visiting the hospital over a period of 3 years were tested for serum lipid profile. The mean ± SD of serum total cholesterol, triglycerides, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol and very low density lipoprotein cholesterol in mg/dl were 182.2 ± 33.9, 122.4 ± 33.4, 44.1 ± 6.8, 113.9 ± 32.0, 24.6 ± 7.1 respectively. When these subjects were grouped according to age and sex, no appreciable difference was observed between most of the groups. Serum triglycerides were found to be low and HDL-C was high in females when compared with males of similar age and vice versa. With advancing age, total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein cholesterol levels were found to be higher in women. The present study suggests that the obtained lipid values should be taken into consideration during clinical evaluation.     

Lack of Circadian Pattern of Serum TNF-α and IL-6 in Patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome

The present study was designed to test the hypothesis of a circadian variation in circulating levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in women with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). Serum levels of IL-6 and TNF-α were measured at 4 h intervals of the day in 50 women with FMS satisfying American College of Rheumatology criteria for FMS (age 36.68 ± 9.89) as well as 50 healthy control women (age 32.82 ± 10.53). Serum TNF-α levels were substantially increased in patients with FMS but showed no circadian variation. In contrast, no difference in the levels of IL-6 was found. Moreover, there was also no circadian variation in both the groups of patients and controls. We conclude that no circadian pattern exists in the circulating levels of serum IL-6 and TNF-α in patients with FMS, although TNF-α levels are found raised in patients with FMS.