6014.0: Thursday, October 25, 2001 - 9:30 AM

Abstract #22546

Boston AIDS information outreach project

Katherine Schilling, MLS, AHIP1, David S. Ginn, PhD1, Richard A. Stevens, MPH2, Mary McKeon, MSLS1, and Joseph J. Harzbecker, MSLS, AHIP1. (1) Alumni Medical Library, Boston University Medical Center, 80 East Concord Street, L-12, Boston, MA 02118, 617-638-4271, kschill@bu.edu, (2) AIDS Services, Boston Public Health Commission, 1010 Massachusetts Avenue, 6th Floor, Boston, MA 02118

The Boston AIDS Information Outreach Project, funded by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) through the New England Regional Medical Library, was implemented to improve access to HIV/AIDS and other biomedical information for City of Boston and Title I AIDS funded programs in Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire. The initial period of this project ran from October 1999 through March 2001. The Project, a joint effort of the Medical Library of the ****** University Medical Center and the ****** Public Health Commission AIDS Program, provided community-based and AIDS service organizations access to the collections, educational services, and reference expertise of the Medical Library of the ****** University Medical Center. The Project facilitated access to biomedical information on HIV and AIDS by providing information skills training to staff from the approximately 60 Title I and City of Boston Prevention, Education, and Care funded programs. The training program included two workshops designed to help agency staff become more effective at identifying, retrieving, evaluating, and using relevant HIV/AIDS information in support of their daily educational, prevention, counseling, and client service activities. A Web site with quality-filtered links was created to facilitate faster, more effective HIV/AIDS information access. Nearly 200 agency staff attended training workshops during the initial period of the grant. Post-training evaluations were conducted to gauge participants' perceptions of the instruction and use of information resources. This paper provides an overview of the Project, presents workshop evaluation results, and discusses the implications of information-access and information-seeking skills on HIV/AIDS care. See med-libwww.bu.edu/library/baiop.html

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the session, participants will be able to:

  1. Recognize how HIV/AIDS service providers can be trained to use information tools and resources to improve their abilities to serve clients more effectively.
  2. Identify ways in which HIV/AIDS service providers can integrate the use of information tools and resources into their daily work routines to perform their jobs more effectively.
  3. Recognize the value of and potential uses for information resources that can be found on the World Wide Web or identified through bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE.
  4. Recognize that service providers can form partnerships with academic institutions to improve access to training opportunities and library services.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS, Internet Tools

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Boston University Medical Center, Alumni Medical Library Boston Public Health Commission AIDS Service
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

The 129th Annual Meeting of APHA