Attitudes of teaching staff at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand towards embedding evidence-based information literacy skills programmes into the graduate entry medical programme 1 and 2 curriculum.

Information literacy (IL) is recognized as the overall critical literacy for the 21st Century. Although large amounts of digital information are available, there is concern within higher education that students lack the competencies to assess and analyse sources in terms of relevance to their courses. Information literacy skills are of critical importance in teaching medical students to engage with evidence-based medicine (EBM), often within a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum. Information practices that underpin academic and professional life should be embedded into the learning experience of the subject, and not taught extraneously in isolated silos. Attitudes of teaching staff at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand towards embedding evidence-based information literacy skills into the Graduate Entry Medical Programme 1 and 2 curriculum were examined. Existing integration of IL skills into the curriculum was shown to be limited, and not as high as perceived by educators. Five barriers against the integration of IL skills, and six opportunities for embedding information literacy, were identified in the curriculum. Awareness of evidence-based practice was found to be high, and collaborative teaching of IL skills with librarians was accepted by a large majority of educators. Dynamic Purposeful Learning (DPL) was proposed as a constructivist framework into which collaborative teaching of IL skills could be placed. DPL draws on active and collaborative learning, as well as cognitive scaffolding and apprenticeship, and is suited to PBL in the context of medical education

THE GREYLIT PROJECT: INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATIVE CHALLENGES IN CAPACITY AND RESOURCES PPT

The broadest definition of grey literature covers a body of literature that cannot easily be found by means of conventional published channels, and includes government research, non-profit reports and reports from other primary resource materials. In the digital age, the reputation of the source is of prime importance. As such, the Institutional Repository (IR) is able to play an important part in validation of the integrity of material. The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) has invited the Witwatersrand Health Sciences Library (WHSL) to partner with them in adding suitable South African public health and health policy documents to their Grey Literature Report. In order to co-operate, WHSL has had to formulate a strategy for digitization of the material that it wishes to contribute to the Grey Literature Report. This paper describes some of the challenges applicable to the digitization of healthcare material at WHSL

ABSTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS

Second International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives, abstracts of presentation

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

THE EMBEDDED LIBRARY: A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN OR IN HELL?

This case study covers a number of areas in which a 90 year old medical library has been able to redefine purpose and services, and considers both the positive as well as the negative aspects of the embedded relationship. According to the Shumaker assessment of readiness for embeddedness, the Witwatersrand Health Sciences Library (WHSL) and the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand were more than ready to embrace a partnership by 2010. A survey indicated that a high proportion (93.5%) of academic staff felt that evidence-based information literacy (IL) should be included in the formal medical undergraduate curriculum. Tensions between faculty and librarians with regard to in-curriculum teaching of IL skills, as discussed in the literature, were not evident in this study. A majority of respondents (69.4%) indicated that librarians, in conjunction with both medical practitioners as well as pre-clinical scientists, should be involved in co-teaching IL skills to students in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Embedding into formal teaching has led directly to a change in status and job description for the librarian, from a full support service position to a 50% academic and 50% support service role, with dual reporting structures. Simultaneously, successful embedding of e-resources occurred with the acquisition of cloud based software that enables the creation of content, sharing of knowledge and measurement of results. Marketing is accomplished by wordplay. Further collaborations include physical refurbishment of several sections, and a “serendipity of service” demonstrates that these areas have been used in ways that were never envisioned prior to restructuring. Additionally, professional librarians at WHSL actively contribute to Faculty’s research output by collaborating with systematic review teams for evidence-based practice in structured searching of the literature. Librarians are co-authors of these systematic reviews in the professional literature of the different subject disciplines

Running wild, running free : capturing, harnessing and disseminating knowledge flows in support of animal health

Keynote paper delivered at the 5th International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists, held 4-7 July 2005 at Onderstepoort, South Africa with the theme Running wild, running free: capturing, harnessing and disseminating knowledge flows in support of animal health.1 p. : col. photohttp://www.library.up.ac.za/vet/icahi

Evidence-based medicine as a web-based information-seeking model for health care practitioners

D.Litt. et Phil.The practice of medicine changes constantly and rapidly. Consequently, it is difficult for clinicians to learn about innovations, given the vast quantity of information available. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the process by which practitioners turn clinical problems into questions, and then systematically integrate personal clinical expertise with the best available external evidence as the basis for clinical decisions. To practice EBM, the practitioner is required to search the literature for relevant material, and then to synthesise knowledge and apply findings to each patient. Clinicians require fast and specific access to multiple data sources, but the availability of electronic full text documents has substantially exacerbated the lack of time to read the clinical literature owing to the demands of clinical practice, and is further compounded by the fact that the Web contains much health-related misinformation. Clinicians therefore require a means of searching the literature that will enhance the retrieval of accurate and evaluated clinical data from ranked resources, whereby the most relevant information is retrieved first from the most likely source. Strong correlations exist between four primary steps in EBM, and the formula commonly used in search strategy design in the field of information seeking. The similarities inherent in these steps suggest that an evidence-based approach to information seeking might enable endusers in the health professions to enhance their searching skills and to translate the clinical question into an appropriate information-seeking strategy. A main problem and two sub-problems were investigated, namely whether: · a Web-based EBM information-seeking model could be designed to enhance the information-seeking skills of healthcare practitioners · it was possible to design an information-seeking model more closely aligned with the clinical decision-making model familiar to healthcare practitioners · it was possible to design such a model in a manner that could further enhance the translation of the clinical question into an appropriate information-seeking strategy. Various models in medicine and the domain of information seeking were investigated. It was found that the model of the clinical decision-making process accorded with all six phases of the information-seeking process (ISP), whereas other information-seeking models only addressed the ISP from the formulation of the problem onwards, thus ignoring prior stages of initiation, selection and exploration in the ISP. A Web-based EBM information-seeking model (Model C) was devised and tested for compatibility against a general Web-based information-seeking model, and was found to be valid. Model C was further empirically assessed against a Web site design methodology, and was again found to be compatible. A unique approach to EBM information seeking is thus offered by Model C, which incorporates all aspects of the clinical-decision-making metaphor, as well as the “PICO” EBM filters (Patient/Problem, Intervention, Comparative Intervention and Outcome), into a facet analysis template for the design of a clinical search strategy. Prior to selection of the EBM information resource, Model C further allows for the ranking of each resource and for the design of individual browsing and/or analytical search strategies, as appropriate, so as to enhance EBM information seeking amongst healthcare practitioners

Time and Space Resolved Heat Transfer Measurements Under Nucleate Bubbles with Constant Heat Flux Boundary Conditions

Investigations into single bubble pool boiling phenomena are often complicated by the difficulties in obtaining time and space resolved information in the bubble region. This usually occurs because the heaters and diagnostics used to measure heat transfer data are often on the order of, or larger than, the bubble characteristic length or region of influence. This has contributed to the development of many different and sometimes contradictory models of pool boiling phenomena and dominant heat transfer mechanisms. Recent investigations by Yaddanapyddi and Kim and Demiray and Kim have obtained time and space resolved heat transfer information at the bubble/heater interface under constant temperature conditions using a novel micro-heater array (10x10 array, each heater 100 microns on a side) that is semi-transparent and doubles as a measurement sensor. By using active feedback to maintain a state of constant temperature at the heater surface, they showed that the area of influence of bubbles generated in FC-72 was much smaller than predicted by standard models and that micro-conduction/micro-convection due to re-wetting dominated heat transfer effects. This study seeks to expand on the previous work by making time and space resolved measurements under bubbles nucleating on a micro-heater array operated under constant heat flux conditions. In the planned investigation, wall temperature measurements made under a single bubble nucleation site will be synchronized with high-speed video to allow analysis of the bubble energy removal from the wall

Time and Space Resolved Wall Temperature Measurements during Nucleate Boiling with Constant Heat Flux Boundary Conditions

The lack of temporally and spatially resolved measurements under nucleate bubbles has complicated efforts to fully explain pool-boiling phenomena. The objective of this current work is to acquire time and space resolved temperature distributions under nucleate bubbles on a constant heat flux surface. This was performed using a microheater array with 100 micron resolution that allowed effectively simultaneous measurements of surface temperature while supplying a constant dissipative heat flux. This data is then correlated with high speed (> 1000Hz) visual recordings of the bubble growth and departure from the heater surface acquired from below and from the side of the heater. The data indicate that a significant source of energy during bubble nucleation and initial growth is the superheated layer around the bubble. Bubble coalescence was not observed to decrease surface temperature as significantly as bubble departure from the surface. Since bubble departure is typically followed by a sharp increase in the heater surface temperature, it is surmised that the departing bubble effectively removes the superheated layer, allowing a high local heat transfer rate with the bulk fluid through transient conduction/micro-convection during rewetting