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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Text 4 Health: Addressing Consumer Health Information Needs Via Text Reference Service, Van M. Ta Park
Text 4 Health: Addressing Consumer Health Information Needs Via Text Reference Service, Van M. Ta Park
Faculty Publications
This study seeks to provide empirical evidence about how health-related questions are answered in text reference service in order to further the understanding of how to best use texting as a reference service venue to fulfill people’s health information needs. Two hundred health reference transactions from My Info Quest, the first nation-wide collaborative text reference service, were analyzed identify the types of questions, length of transactions, question-answering behavior, and information sources used in the transactions. Findings indicate that texting-based health reference transactions are usually brief, and cover a wide variety of topics. The most popular questions are those seeking general …
Preparing Public Librarians For Consumer Health Information Service: A Nation-Wide Study, L. Luo, Van M. Ta Park
Preparing Public Librarians For Consumer Health Information Service: A Nation-Wide Study, L. Luo, Van M. Ta Park
Faculty Publications
A nationwide survey study was conducted to gain understanding as to how to prepare public librarians for consumer health information service. Findings indicate that the popular health information needs encountered by public librarians cover a wide variety of topics, including the human body, a medical/health condition, a disease, a medical concept, and fitness/diet/nutrition. The top two challenges faced by public librarians when providing consumer health information service are difficulty in interpreting patrons' questions and lack of knowledge about available and trusted/appropriate medical/health information sources. Public librarians wish to receive training on a number of topics that could help address the …