EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES - A WEB-BASED TOOL TO SUPPORT LIBRARY TEACHERS IN DEVELOPING COURSES AT THE LIBRARY

Anna Mia Eborn

Karolinska Institutet Library

Today, one of the roles of the Karolinska Institutet library is to provide courses in medical information retrieval. With the rapid development of information technology, the most important task of the librarian is to teach users how to manage information on their own. In the year 2000, the library held over 400 courses, mainly for students, but also for KI staff and medically-related companies.

To support the library teachers a web-based tool called Educational Resources was developed on the library's intranet. It gathers together as much information as possible that can be of help to the teachers. Once a library teacher is assigned a course, she/he can go to the web page and find all the necessary material. In a formalized group analysis (which is carried out when the course is ordered), the teacher can learn what the group requires and their estimated level of experience in the field. She can also look through and down-load material (in form of Power Point slides, instructions, etc.) from previous courses. Additionally, the tool contains a statistical follow-up system and links to a variety of sources concerning pedagogical theory and practice. The main purposes of this tool are :

1) to facilitate access to information about course participants.

2) to create and maintain a system that collects and distributes teaching materials.

3) to generate pedagogical ideas and development.

This project has decentralised access to necessary information and teaching materials for all library teachers who have then been able to liberate time from a pressed schedule and instead, concentrate on pedagogic development and creativity.