(via Roberta Craig, OSF St. Anthony Medical Center)
You won’t want to miss the HSLI 2016 Conference being held on from Wednesday, November 9, to Friday, November 11, at the beautiful Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, IL. The conference has an excellent selection of continuing education courses being offered on Thursday, November 10, and there is no additional cost for the courses (your choice of 2 courses is Included in your conference registration fee).
Technology to Enhance User Experience (8:00 AM – Noon)
Description: User experience is a method of assessing libraries that is not common in health sciences libraries. The term user assessment comes out of website design (as usability). However, other industries have found it useful to assess how users experience their services and spaces, and the idea and use of user experience research has grown over time. There are several ways of defining “user experience” to various physical and virtual spaces and services that a library may want to evaluate. For libraries, this can mean analyzing how users interact with your website to improve your virtual presence, observing users to improve your physical space, or interviewing how users research to improve services and instruction. This workshop will focus on defining user experience and see what other libraries are doing to improve their services. We will talk about low-cost and simple, yet impactful activities to turn your library into a user-centered environment.
Getting Started with Outreach (8:00 AM – Noon)
Description: This interactive class will provide a background in cultural competence and outreach skills as librarians make outreach efforts to underserved and minority populations in their community. The goal of this course is to offer concrete ideas to enable librarians to initiate outreach programs with minority communities. Topics to be covered include locating community demographics, the importance of developing relationships, the basics of building and developing community-based partnerships, recognition and acceptance of cultural differences, and the importance of cultural competency. Some basic concepts of program planning and evaluation within a culturally diverse environment will be covered. Participants will engage in group discussions to explore models for developing their own programs.
Engaging Assessment to Show Your Value & Make Decisions (1:30 – 5:30 PM)
Description: As libraries are increasingly asked to demonstrate their value and the contributions they make to their institutions, library staff need efficient and effective strategies for assessment. Best practice in assessment means embedding assessment into the library’s practices on a continuous basis rather than treating it as a separate and additional task. The workshop will present an integrated and systematic approach to developing and assessing library activities that includes identifying impact outcomes and aligned activities, establishing criteria, collecting and analyzing data and evidence, and using the results for improvement and telling the story of the library’s impact. Participants will have the opportunity to practice using the tools and techniques presented.
Third Party PubMed Tools (1:30 – 5:30 PM)
Description: The freely available PubMed API (application programming interface) makes it possible for programmers from outside of the National Library of Medicine to develop alternatives to PubMed.gov for searching NLM’s vast database of biomedical journal literature citations. This three-hour workshop will introduce several popular and free third-party PubMed tools, comparing and contrasting them with the PubMed.gov interface. Through case studies, group exercises and hands-on practice, participants will become familiar with the strengths and limitations of search tools such as PubGet, Quertle, eTBlast and others. This workshop is intended for intermediate and advanced PubMed searchers. It is highly recommended that you bring a laptop with for this course.
To register for the conference please go to the website. Also, be sure to reserve your hotel room by Wednesday, October 19.