Reference Librarian Northeast Ohio Medical University Library Rootstown, Ohio
Disclosure: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Background: From 2016 to the present, Northeast Ohio Medical University's (NEOMED) Department of Family and Community Medicine has received grant funding from the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to improve the primary care workforce by enhancing inter-professional training for primary care clinicians, teachers and researchers, with specific attention to underserved populations, across the care continuum. In late 2019, the grant leadership approached NEOMED Library to create a central website to preserve and disseminate the instructional content created through this grant in a way that would be seamless for the end user.
Description: Using LibGuides, a single site was created to host a collection of modules authored by faculty members who led the grant. Content was organized according to 5 themes (Health Disparities, Population Health, Health Care Transformation, Research, and Provider Wellness). Each theme has its own table of contents, followed by sub-pages containing embedded presentations, video lectures, and other learning objects. At the beginning of the site, a landing page, about page, and team members page with contact information was created to provide participants with context on the project. Branding for NEOMED’s College of Medicine and HRSA were included on these pages. Usability heuristics and information architecture principles were considered when designing the layout and structure of all pages. To ensure seamless access for non-NEOMED participants, this site was not restricted; anyone with the link can access it without having to login.
Conclusion: Since its creation in January 2020, the site has had 2,341 pageviews. The grant team sees this as a success, considering the small group of users who are grant participants. Feedback from these participants was positive, with emphasis on the overall appearance and structure of the site. Once the grant ends in 2022, the site will transition from being a platform for grant participants to access materials, towards a site that is used to store the modules for usage in other adjacent projects, such as faculty development or continuing education. The library sees this as a success and recommends it as a model for other libraries to consider when aiming to preserve and disseminate scholarly content created through grants.
.png)
