Browsing by Author "Lin, Yongtao"

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    Creating and Assessing a Subject-Based Blog for Current Awareness within a Cancer Care Environment
    (2013-04-14) Vaska, Marcus; Lin, Yongtao
    Introduction The Health Information Network Calgary (HINC) is comprised of a group of libraries providing information services and resources to urban and rural sites in the Calgary Zone of Alberta Health Services. Establishing a current awareness service is a necessity in any discipline, especially in health care. Web 2.0 and social networks have transformed how health care professionals and researchers create knowledge, access information, collaborate, and disseminate research. One of the earliest forms of social media, blogging has taken the world by storm (1) . Although there is a wealth of literature on the use of blogs in providing current awareness services for libraries, there is a pronounced gap on how blogs are assessed or evaluated, especially for information alert purposes (2) . Background Clients within the HINC subscribe to e-mail alerts and RSS feeds, a trend particularly evident within the Cancer Care environment where a number of researchers have already implemented feed readers to remain aware of current 2 literature. However, they often comment on challenges associated not only with maintaining alerts and managing RSS feeds, but also in selecting and creating alerts for unpublished materials. The need for a librarian-facilitated current awareness strategy became more and more apparent. The literature reviewed addressed the value of an alert, namely to indicate a gap in the participant‘s knowledge, rather than to deliver content the librarians may have perceived as useful (3). The authors saw the creation of a subject-based blog as an opportunity to disseminate current awareness “grey” information to this specific research community. Method/Anticipated Results The Grey Horizon Blog was created in April 2012 using Blogger. The selection and re-aggregation of information involves ongoing assessment of user needs and continuous work on the Blog. A weekly global email-digest listing of the postings will be distributed two months after the launch. Several metrics will be employed in October 2012 to evaluate the Blog. Blogger itself tracks the number of pageviews over time. Google Analytics was set up as it tracks additional information on access and use of the Blog. As clients may be using feed readers to read Blog entries and may thus not visit the Blog at all, Feedburner has also been incorporated to track the number of times that the Blog RSS is accessed, as well as calculating the number of subscribers. A post-survey will be conducted in six months to complement the web statistics data. The additional feedback and comments will help us determine whether the Blog has successfully created an easy platform for users to keep current with unpublished literature, the type of resources found most important, and whether the amount of time spent maintaining the Blog met expectations. Discussion It is anticipated that this case study will portray how to successfully plan a subject-based blog to meet users’ current awareness information needs in grey literature. Further efforts will focus on targeting the Blog to the topic areas in grey literature where users feel more information is needed. The findings from this assessment will direct us to potential marketing opportunities and changing technology that haven’t been fully utilized in our Grey Horizon Blog.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Open Access & Shades of Grey
    (2009-12-18T19:42:29Z) Vaska, Marcus; Lin, Yongtao; Waller, Andrew; Reaume, Renee
    Open Access (OA) is a trend that is undoubtedly on the rise. This poster presentation showcases the role that Open Access publishing plays in the realm of grey literature (GL). OA increases access, awareness, and visibility of previously hidden material, thereby acting as an essential complement to peer-reviewed findings. This poster also highlights how Open Access is supported in Libraries and Cultural Resources (LCR) at the University of Calgary (U of C). There is a $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund, which helps authors pay OA article processing fees. The University of Calgary institutional repository is over six years old and is the second largest university repository in Canada. The University of Calgary Press has a few OA journals and is investigating Open Monographs. LCR has digitized a large number of resources ranging from by-laws to historical photographs and made them freely available. LCR is a node in the Synergies project which is designed to bring Canadian humanities and social sciences journals more securely into the online environment; some of these journals will be Open Access initially and other journals may opt for OA in the future. Lastly, archivists, curators, and librarians in Libraries and Cultural Resources have established a mandate to deposit the results of their scholarly activities (e.g. articles, presentations, book chapters, etc.) in the U of C institutional repository. During the First International Open Access Week, which ran from October 19-23, 2009, LCR carried out a number of activities. For instance, there was a large staffed display on OA in the main (MacKimmie) library and smaller displays in the branch libraries. The campus media reported on LCR Open Access programs daily. The week culminated with a presentation by Bioline International founder Leslie Chan to a full house. The poster presentation is also an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of GL and OA to research and teaching as well as to raise questions for future discussions on how to facilitate better and more responsive access to digitally-created content.
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    Raising Awareness of Grey Literature in an Academic Community Using the Cognitive Behavioral Theory
    (TextRelease, 2009-12-14) Vaska, Marcus; Lin, Yongtao
    Cognitive skill training, part of cognitive behavior management, is based on the cognitive behavioral theory. The principle that thinking controls behavior has been widely used by educators to develop methods to improve the performance of students, while clinicians provide multifaceted health promotion and psychological counseling programs. The plan of our educational project is to raise awareness among students, faculty members, and researchers of material not produced via standard commercial publishing channels, emphasizing the role that grey literature plays in teaching and research in our academic community. Pre-test surveys conducted prior to these ventures indicate that while both researchers, students, and faculty members may have used grey literature resources at some point during their research pursuits, more than one-third (36.7%) believe they haven't done so, a significant number expressing uncertainty in not knowing how to find, effectively use, and evaluate grey literature. In terms of specific grey literature resources, the majority (85.7%) of users have had rich experiences with association and government websites, but lack familiarity with other useful resources such as subject-based directories, databases, or well-established grey literature repositories. "When opportunity knocks, you should probably open the door!" (Schwann, Petermann, and Petz, 2008). This statement indicates the value and importance of theories in promoting new practices in health services. A theory can lay the foundation of a teaching or learning goal by describing the purpose, intervention, and assumed outcome of a proposed endeavor (Wayne State University). As health sciences librarians, the need to promote grey literature in terms of visibility and accessibility, thus raising awareness, forms the basis of our teaching goals and is thereby the focus of this paper. Undoubtedly, as the barrier between black and grey literature becomes narrower with the advent of technology that seeks to uncover the unrecoverable, challenges will inevitably arise, especially when deciding what exactly about grey literature needs to be promoted. The cognitive-behavioral theory helps describe various factors regarding lack of awareness and misguided conceptions about searching for elusive material, while also guiding the selection of sources of grey literature and the methodologies we have adopted in our promotion project. Three such educational initiatives that we have developed, based on the principle that change will occur only as you think differently, include the creation of a Grey Literature Speaker Series (http://glspeakers.wetpaint.com), where subject specialists/liaison librarians at the University of Calgary discuss their experiences and challenges with uncovering and using grey literature in their subject areas; a joint presentation to faculty members and students at the University of Calgary Faculty Technology Days showcasing the impact and role that technology, such as mobile computing, has played and continues to play when it comes to the grey literature; and library information sessions to cancer researchers based on user experiences, expectations, and needs when it comes to seeking non-traditional material. The One-Minute-Paper, distributed after a session to assess participant learning outcomes, reveals that knowledge of different sources and current trends in grey literature has significantly increased. We therefore advocate the use of the cognitive behavioral theory as a channel for developing education programs and promoting grey literature in our academic community.
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    ItemOpen Access
    The Touchdown Suite: How a Digital Environment Reshaped Librarians' Roles in Information Fluency
    (2012-04-18T19:40:29Z) Vaska, Marcus; Lin, Yongtao
    An Information “Touchdown Suite” model, “offering a range of library services and resources supporting teaching, research and patient care activities” (Bryant, n.d.), was followed in an applied research environment affiliated with a tertiary cancer care facility to provide collaborative and customized information support, enhancing creativity, and critical thinking. This emerging space creates ample opportunities in how information fluency is adapted and evolves in this digital culture, by providing access to electronic material, facilitating networking, supporting interaction and promoting knowledge sharing via training programs, research group meetings, one-on-one consultations, webinar hosting, celebration events, and panel discussions. Ever since its first unveiling, the Touchdown Suite has seen a steady increase of traffic flow, as more and more users discover the potential of this space. As librarians, we embed ourselves in supporting the development of skills at all levels of understanding information, and view this space as continuing to engage both researchers and ourselves in knowledge creation, dissemination, and communication.