Outreach impact study: the case of the Greater Midwest Region

Objectives:

The purpose of the study was to assess the impact that funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), Greater Midwest Region (GMR), has on member institutions'' ability to conduct outreach on behalf of NN/LM.

Methods:

The study employed both content analysis and survey methodologies. The final reports from select GMR-funded outreach projects (n = 20) were analyzed based on a set of evaluation criteria. Project principal investigators (n = 13) were then surveyed using the same evaluation criteria.

Results:

Results indicated that outreach projects supported by GMR funding improved access to biomedical information for professionals and the general public. Barriers to conducting outreach projects included time constraints or commitments, staffing, scheduling and absenteeism, inadequate space, and issues associated with technology (e.g., hardware and software, Internet connectivity and firewall issues, and creation and use of new technologies).

Conclusions:

The majority of project principal investigators indicated that their attempts to conduct outreach were successful. Moreover, most noted that outreach had a positive impact on professionals as well as the general public. In general, it seems that negative outcomes, as with most barriers to conducting outreach, can be mitigated by more thorough planning.

Highlights

• The provision of funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), Greater Midwest Region (GMR), had a positive impact on an institution''s ability to conduct outreach.
• The provision of GMR funding to conduct health information outreach yielded positive outcomes.

Implications

• Regional offices should make efforts to accurately capture and record the impact that funding has on member institutions'' ability to conduct outreach.
• Many barriers to conducting outreach can be mitigated by more thorough planning.

The mission of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) is to advance the progress of medicine and improve the public health by providing all US health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improving the public''s access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health [1]. The National Library of Medicine''s (NLM''s) vision statement emphasizes the elimination of health disparities. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NLM both attempt to understand and eliminate health disparities between minority and majority populations [2]. One of NLM''s goals in trying to achieve elimination of health disparities is to improve access to affordable and easy-to-use health-related information [3]. It is thought that such a dissemination of knowledge will help solve health disparities [4]. Ultimately, NLM believes that improved access to health information will result in higher quality health care. This effort is served through research and community outreach. NLM supports some outreach directly through the NLM Division of Specialized Information Services (SIS), Office of Health Information Program Development (OHIPD), and extramural programs. In addition, NN/LM, which NLM administers, provides and supports outreach as part of NLM''s overall mission [5]. NN/LM places a primary emphasis on rural, minority, and other underserved populations [6].NLM was interested in evaluating NN/LM programs, and one of the key programs of the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) is its funding to support outreach in the region. NLM was also interested in promoting awareness among library school students about NLM and NN/LM and about the value of libraries doing outreach to underserved populations with the community. In September 2009, NN/LM GMR announced the availability of funds for a subcontract to a library school located in the region to assist with evaluating network programs. The GMR operates under a contract from NLM, providing network services to approximately 1,100 libraries and information centers in a 10-state region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin). One of 8 regions in the NN/LM, the GMR conducts much of its outreach by offering subcontracts and awards to network members.Funding was offered to engage a group of students, under faculty guidance, to plan and implement a study that would determine the impact that GMR funding has on the ability of network members to perform outreach on behalf of NN/LM. The study was intended to be conducted in two phases: a planning phase, in which students were to develop an impact study proposal, and an implementation phase, in which students were to implement the study outlined in the proposal. The desired outcomes of the impact study included:

• What did the institutions accomplish with the NN/LM funding?
• What outcomes did the institutions report from their NN/LM-funded outreach projects?
• What changes have been made in their institutional programs as a result of the funding they received?
• What lessons did the institutions learn through implementation of their NN/LM-funded outreach projects
• What changes would the institutions recommend to NN/LM about their funding programs?

The School of Library and Information Science (LIS) at the University of Kentucky received an outreach impact study award from NN/LM GMR in the fall of 2009 for its project, “Learning By Doing: Engaging LIS Students in an Outreach Impact Study.” Project funds were used to provide scholarships to support student participation.     

Do discounted journal access programs help researchers in sub‐Saharan Africa? A bibliometric analysis

Prior research has suggested that providing free and discounted access to the scientific literature to researchers in low‐income countries increases article production and citation. Using traditional bibliometric indicators for institutions in sub‐Saharan Africa, we analyze whether institutional access to TEEAL (a digital collection of journal articles in agriculture and allied subjects) increases: (i) article production; (ii) reference length; and (iii) number of citations to journals included in the TEEAL collection. Our analysis is based on nearly 20,000 articles – containing half a million references – published between 1988 and 2009 at 70 institutions in 11 African countries. We report that access to TEEAL does not appear to result in higher article production, although it does lead to longer reference lists (an additional 2.6 references per paper) and a greater frequency of citations to TEEAL journals (an additional 0.4 references per paper), compared to non‐subscribing institutions. We discuss how traditional bibliometric indicators may not provide a full picture of the effectiveness of free and discounted literature programs.     

Inquiry-based learning with young learners: a Peirce-based model employed to critique a unit of inquiry on maps and mapping

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) has become a common theme in both school and higher education in recent years. It suggests a model of curriculum development and practice that moves educational debate beyond teacher or student-based approaches towards a model of teaching and learning in which the endeavour is shared. This paper discusses an investigation into the practice of IBL among primary schoolchildren in the setting of the Primary Years Programme of the International Baccalaureate. Three ideas from the work of the philosopher C.S. Peirce are used to provide an epistemological base for analysing the pedagogical practice of IBL: semiotics, reasoning and community of inquiry. Findings are presented under these three headings to illustrate the potency of Peirce's conceptualisation of learning. Drawing in particular on findings from a unit of inquiry on maps and mapping, it suggests an empirical frame for IBL for the use of teachers in the development and assessment of IBL.     

Toward a cosmic sociology of education

We old warriors of ideology critique and wissensoziologie should not be too hard on ourselves for having forgotten reflexivity and the labors of putting paradigms, including our own, back into the context of history and social movement. Normal science is our necessary bread and butter. We achieved a lot by shaking the liberal foundations of sociology of education, although in America, despite a mandatory ‘inclusiveness’ in educational studies, in the higher science of sociology of education, liberalism still holds sway, underneath the triumphant pyrotechnics of advanced multivariate analyses. You may have some qualitative research, however, even focused on studies of race and gender. Still, class analysis did, and again now, does, make a dent, accumulating careful empirical research, both in ethnographies and models of statistical causality. Likewise, when postmodernism took the stage, curriculum studies added new light and meaning to understanding the school text. More recently and less prominently, ‘spirituality’ now revitalizes interest in ‘holistic’ education, even ‘transcendental learning’, as Miller calls his revival of the nineteenth-century American Transcendentalist movement, in education.     

Faculty Learning and Professional Growth in the Sabbatical Leave

Innovative Higher Education - The faculty sabbatical leave has been present in many institutions of higher education since its inception at Harvard University in 1880 but is relatively...     

Cascaded spiral microfluidic device for deterministic and high purity continuous separation of circulating tumor cells

Inertial microfluidics is an emerging class of technologies developed to separate circulating tumor cells (CTCs). However, defining design parameters and flow conditions for optimal operation remains nondeterministic due to incomplete understanding of the mechanics, which has led to challenges in designing efficient systems. Here, we perform a parametric study of the inertial focusing effects observed in low aspect ratio curvilinear microchannels and utilize the results to demonstrate the isolation of CTCs with high purity. First, we systematically vary parameters including the channel height, width, and radius of curvature over a wide range of flow velocities to analyze its effect on size dependent differential focusing and migration behaviors of binary (10 μm and 20 μm) particles. Second, we use these results to identify optimal flow regimes to achieve maximum separation in various channel configurations and establish design guidelines to readily provide information for developing spiral channels tailored to potentially arbitrary flow conditions that yield a desired equilibrium position for optimal size based CTC separation. Finally, we describe a fully integrated, sheath-less cascaded spiral microfluidic device to continuously isolate CTCs. Human breast cancer epithelial cells were successfully extracted from leukocytes, achieving 86.76% recovery, 97.91% depletion rate, and sustaining high viability upon collection to demonstrate the versatility of the device. Importantly, this device was designed without the cumbersome trail-and-error optimization process that has hindered the development of designing such inertial microfluidic systems.