March 8, 2006

Informed Caring Website
Collection Development Policy

Purpose

• The Informed Caring (IC) Website fulfills two main objectives of the IC Project:
  Develop, implement, and maintain an IC Website Portal (Portal) that offers seamless access to information resources for answering typical nursing, allied health, and public health questions at the point of need.
• Establish a Virtual Health Library (VHL) of free and licensed resources, along with library services, for addressing the knowledge-based needs of the user community.

User Community

The user community consists of nursing, allied health, public health, and public library professionals in the IC Partner organizations across northeastern Wisconsin.

Organization of the Portal

The Portal is organized into four sections, each of which offers a port-of-entry for various information needs:

Health Topics
A health topic is defined here as a particular subject of general interest to members of the user community.  Each health topic is pre-searched to produce a balanced set of relevant resources that are assembled into a “packaged” overview of the subject.  The initial selections for health topics are diabetes, asthma, mental depression, oral health, and public health. Each health topic will contain the following sections:

• Overview
• Review articles
• Quick Lessons (still ascertaining if these links will work)
• E-books
• Guidelines
• Patient Education

Evidence-Based Practice
This section is intended to address the following questions:

• What is evidence-based practice (EBP)?
• How does knowledge-based information support EBP?
• How to recognize when such information is needed?
• How to select an appropriate source for finding the needed information?
• How to formulate a PICO question to frame a request for information?
• How to access knowledge-based information effectively and efficiently?
• How to interpret and evaluate the information that is retrieved?
• How to apply the resultant information in one’s work?

Professional Resources
This section aids users in navigating the Web world of professional resources for nursing, allied health, and public health.  Users are able to locate the following kinds of information here:

• Multicultural resources and information
• Links to major medical and organization sites, such as Theheart.org and cancer.org
• Links to nursing resources: NANDA, Nursing Care Planning sites, Nursing on the Net
• Links to professional nursing organizations, such as STT, ANA, AACN, and NLN
• Guidelines for evaluating Websites and their products

Virtual Health Library
The VHL is a work-in-progress that will continue to evolve as online usage patterns and user preferences are measured and analyzed over the course of the IC project.  In general, the VHL consists of quality online journals, texts, and databases conveying knowledge-based medical, nursing, and health sciences information aimed at supporting healthcare workers at the point of need.  The current VHL configuration features the following major online resources:

Source: Ovid Technologies, Inc.
Books@Ovid (Published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins)

• Griffith’s 5-minute Clinical Consult; Dambro, Mark R. (ed.); 2006
• Lippincott’s Nursing Drug Guide; Karch, Amy M. (ed.); 2006
• Manual of Lab & Diagnostic Tests; Fischbach et al. (ed.); 7th ed.
• Nurses’ Guide to Clinical Procedures; Smith-Temple, Jean (ed.); 5th ed.

Journals@Ovid
EBM Reviews (Cochrane DSR, ACP Journal Club, DARE, and CCTR
Ovid MEDLINE

Source: EBSCO Information Services
CINAHL Plus
Biomedical Reference Collection
Clinical Reference Systems
MEDLINE
Health Source—Consumer Edition
Health Source—Nursing/Academic Edition
Clinical Pharmacology
Nursing and Allied Health Collection: BASIC
BadgerLink

Source: National Library of Medicine
PubMed

Link Selection

1. Scope

a. The Informed Caring portal provides a subject-organized gateway to primary information resources, mostly within the portal, under the following structure:

• Overview
• Review articles
• Quick Lessons (still ascertaining if these links will work)
• E-book
• Guidelines
• Patient Education

b. Sites that are not within the portal will be selected using the following criteria

i. Authority

1. The author or organization can be identified.
2. If an organization, it has a good reputation.

ii. Purpose/Objectivity

1. The website is appropriate for the audience.
2. The website includes a way to contact the authors or sponsors.

iii. Site Content

1. The website is deemed a high quality information resource for typical nursing, allied health and public health questions.
2. The website is accurate, relevant and useful.
3. The date of original information provided by the website can be determined.
4. At least 80% of the website’s links are current.

iv. Design

1. The website is well organized and easy to navigate.
2. The website is consistently available and quickly accessed.
3. Priority is given to sites that meet ADA requirements.
4. If registration is required, the sponsor’s privacy policy is fully disclosed.