Objectives: The purpose is to see if there is a relationship between declining walk-in visitor counts and increased library web access. The overall objective is to evaluate library services and find better and more efficient ways to meet the needs of walk-in and virtual patrons. Methods: Compile past five years of walk-in visitor statistics from the library. Retrieve past five years of website statistics from Google Analytics. These two sets of data will be compared and analyzed for any correlation. We hypothesize the data will show a steady decrease in walk-in visitors along with a continued increase in website visitors. We hope to find a period during the past five years where the two values intersect. If a clear relation exists, we will identify possible factors that can be attributed to these changes. Results: The combination of online “visits” combined with walk-in visits gives an entirely different picture of the use of libraries by patrons. Conclusion: Librarians should not be wedded to success markers of past eras. By updating measures of recording “attendance,” a more truthful picture emerges about the true popularity of libraries. This type of data is essential, since libraries are under more pressure to justify their existence.

Henry Stewart Talks: The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection is a subscription database containing a variety of lectures on basic science and medical topics. Lectures in this database may be used as a supplement to existing college courses. Additional features of Henry Stewart Talks include several full courses available to faculty upon request and syllabus assistance to link course goals to lectures in the database. Other aspects of Henry Stewart Talks include evidence and expert transparency and ADA compliance of content.

In recent years many schools have begun to incorporate virtual reality tools and programs into their curriculum. This paper relates the results of a library pilot project on the usefulness of virtual reality headsets and programming for graduate students studying physical therapy and medicine. Authors review the existing literature on virtual reality use in education with a specific focus on libraries. This information is incorporated into lessons learned by researchers regarding hardware and software choice, attracting students, and potential deterrents or safety issues relating to virtual reality use in libraries.

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Objective: To determine if a personal digital assistant (PDA) with drug and evidence-based disease information software programs and with librarian training and follow-up can adequately meet at low cost the information needs of clinicians in rural areas with low information availability. Methods: A randomized clinical trial methodology was used. Eight hospitals were selected in rural Appalachia based on accepted definitions of rurality. The hospitals were randomized into two groups of four hospitals with forty PDA users in each group. Both groups were treated equally, except the information needs of one group were measured using a validated instrument before the intervention and in the other group several months later. The survey instrument measured factors such as level of satisfaction with information retrieved in the clinic, required time to find an answer, and frequency of answers found for clinical questions.

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Objective: The East Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine Library (ETSUQCOML) wanted to determine if the introduction of phone calls to an existing outreach visit increased the usage of the ETSUQCOML’s services. Methods: Eight hospitals and sixteen clinics were chosen to participate. Two site visits were made a month to each participating institution. A total of two phone calls and two emails a month were given to multiple contacts in the hospital or clinic. The hospitals and clinics were randomized to determine which received the phone call intervention. Interlibrary loan statistics and reference search statistics were then analyzed to determine if there was a statistically significant difference. The data were also analyzed to determine if the intervention was more successful in hospitals or clinics. Results: Librarians learned to what degree email and phone calls could be substituted for personal visits in an outreach service as a means of maintaining it and not experiencing a decline in service requests. Conclusions: In today’s economic times, it is important to maintain services to underserved health care providers but to do it in the most cost effective manner. This study has provided helpful data as to the possibility of substituting less expensive contacts such as emails or phone calls for more expensive ones such as face-to-face visits in order to sustain an outreach service. The authors are looking to extend this project to multiple end-points such as six months, nine months, and one year to determine sustainability.