Publishing Literature Searches on the Internet - what is the most user-friendly interface?

Introduction

The Library Service at Innlandet Hospital Trust has since 2009 conducted literature searches for evidence-based clinical procedures, pathways and care plans. All of the searches are published on the Internet. Innlandet Hospital Trust follows the principle of transparency and publishing literature searches is one of our contributions. The structure of the literature search is based on Brian Haynes’ 6S Knowledge Pyramid. The search for pre-appraised evidence is essential because this literature have gone through a filtering process to include high quality studies that are regularly updated (1). Innlandet Hospital Trust has developed a search engine called the Knowledge Egg (2) based on Brian Haynes’ Knowledge Pyramid. The Library Service’s goal is to make the result page for the literature searches as user friendly as possible, and to look like the Knowledge Egg. We have learned from oral feedback that the employees associate the egg with the pyramid. There have been major challenges in relation to the hospital’s firewalls regarding publishing literature searches. The conclusion in 2009 was to use Google Sites to publish the searches outside the firewalls. Once made, the pages worked well behind the firewalls. Early 2012, the Library Service plans to create a new look for the results pages because it is now possible to move the literature searches behind the firewalls. The new web platform is SharePoint. 

Question

What is the most user-friendly interface for literature searches conducted for evidence-based clinical procedures, pathways and care plans? We used the SPICE model to structure the question formulation (3).

Methods

The method to find out what the empoyees wanted was an anonymous user survey (4). Both quantitative and qualitative research method was used in this survey. They were asked to compare two result pages (5, 6) and to express specifically what they wanted in the new result page. The user survey was sent by e-mail to 34 employees. 19 of the employees answered, which represent 55.88 %. Based on the results from this survey the Library Service created a new result page appearance. In addition to the survey a systematic literature search was performed. 25 databases were searched (7).

Results

The literature search gave no interesting findings. From the survey it turned out that the employees liked the egg shaped result page best. Some suggested minor changes. We followed up 5 out of 7 suggestions for changes. Based on these results we designed a new result page to use in SharePoint.

Discussion

The new result page was first made as a single web part in SharePoint with pictures of an egg formed in a table for best possible stability. When working in SharePoint we work inside the hospital’s portal using a VPN client for Mac computers. The VPN client is highly unstable and sometimes we used hours trying to access. When we first entered the hospital’s portal, our supplier of SharePoint also is very unstable. We got kicked out every 5-20 minute, which made us quite stressed while working. This was not a good solution. The framework will still be in the hospital’s web platform SharePoint but the actual literature searches needed another format. The solution was a presentation made in Keynote, Apple’s answer to PowerPoint. When converting the Keynote presentation into PDF all of the links followed correctly and we didn’t need any expensive software (8). In SharePoint we uploaded the PDF files, a process that went smoothly. The clickable PDF files works well in Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox. This solution turned out to be time-saving. The Keynote main template of the result page could be worked on offline. To prepare for a literature search we only needed to copy the main template. When working with a search, we could easily work on the Internet outside the hospital’s firewalls. Approximately, we save 1 hour or more per literature search. It was also important to consider that documenting literature searches should be easy to learn for other librarians. Keynote is much less complicated to learn than SharePoint. At the new start page in SharePoint for the literature searches, we present the searches by subject and alphabetically. We expect to use this interface in 2-3 years.