Health Information Services Available for People Living With HIV/AIDS: Perspectives of Library and Information Professionals

There is an urgent need for availability of life-saving health information services as well as adequate marketing, advertising, and dissemination strategies to people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), and to the broader public at large, especially in the context of a recent UNAIDS estimation that the number of people living with HIV in the United States, at the end of 2003, exceeded one million for the first time. This study explores the HIV/AIDS health information services that are available within the local community of Knoxville, Tennessee, and presents focus group perspectives of nine library and information professionals about awareness and use of these services by PLWHAs. The study forms part of a larger plan to apply a community informatics (CI) approach to examine the provision of health information services for PLWHAs in terms of how PLWHAs and other stakeholders including health care service providers, academic community at the University of Tennessee, community leaders and activists, and faith-based organizations, use and apply information and communication technologies (ICTs) to empower and enable PLWHAs to meet their information needs, goals, and aspirations. Here we report findings from the project’s first phase of documenting perspectives of library and information professionals about existing HIV/AIDS information services, users of these services, barriers and challenges to effective use, and the role of health information professionals in the context of developing ideal information support services for PLWHAs

A world-systems perspective on the role of telecommunications in global development

Until recently, an economic perspective has dominated studies of the effect of telecommunications on social and economic development. There are reasons to believe, however, that this perspective unnecessarily limits our understanding of the problems of development. Theories of development and world structure converge in world-systems theory. This world-systems perspective combined with information society theory provides a theoretical basis for understanding the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in globalization, not only for developing countries, but for the worldsystem as a whole. This research is premised on the view that the world operates as an interconnected network with increasingly interdependent economies. Since ICTs have not yet reached a substantial level of measurability in many countries, measures of telecommunications serve as a proxy for ICT growth and measurement of the effects of information content. The world-systems approach offers an alternative perspective that can provide a richer examination of the complex relationship between telecommunications and development. The role of telecommunications in development, broadly defined as economic, political, social, and cultural change, is explored. A structural equation model is developed to examine that perspective within the context of information society theory. Results of this model suggest telecommunications plays a broader role in development than that which has typically been limited to an economic perspective. Results also suggest that policies of multilateral development organizations do not reflect this broad perspective of development and do not, therefore, collect the data that are necessary to fully understand the role of telecommunications in development